High Wycombe Pub Crawl

Bottle shop at the Beer Emporium

I hadn't visited Wycombe for many a year - since August 2011 for a midweek league cup football match to be precise, so it was a fine time to make the trip again and head off on some pub explorations.
On arrival we made a beeline from the train to the Mad Squirrel Brewery Shop Emporium (4 -5 Church St, HP11 3DE).  This is a craft beer fan's delight with 20 taps on the bar and an interesting bottle shop opposite - surely something to please everyone here?  Around 8 of the taps are devoted to Mad Squirrel's own beers, whilst the others feature notable breweries: Track, Electric Bear and Vibrant Forest on our visit, plus a couple of ciders.
This was a good enough selection for us to change our plans, realising that we couldn't do the place justice with a flying-visit.  The staff were helpful and friendly; the beer choice superb; the pizza delicious and the toilets very cold!  I thoroughly recommend a visit to the Emporium - perhaps too good a start to the crawl?

Bar at the Chiltern Taps with, horror of horrors, the 'countdown to Christmas'.

Next up was a swift half in the Chiltern Taps (120-123 Oxford Road, HP11 2DN) close to the bus station.  This is somewhere I can remember drinking pre-football in 2011 when it used to be the William Robert Loosley Wetherspoons.  In it's new guise sport rules with numerous TVs throughout, plus pool tables on the upper floor.  After the choice in the last venue the 4 ales were a little underwhelming, although there was a good selection of Lilley's cider as an alternative.

This is where my plans fell apart somewhat.  I intended to catch a bus out to West Wycombe, a couple of miles along Oxford Road, to visit a heritage listed pub The Swan.

Front room of West Wycombe's George & Dragon

It occurred to me on the bus that perhaps a village pub may not be open all day and....sure enough....of course it wasn't. Fortunately there are two other pubs in this village to prevent me having to hang around by the bus stop back being moody.  We opt for The George & Dragon Hotel (High Street, West Wycombe, HP13 3AB).  This proved a pretty good alternative destination, dating back to 1760, with a charming historic front room.  It's dimly lit with fire place and wooden beams and columns.  This is a Rebellion Brewery house and we choose the seasonal ale 'Braveheart'.  The George is reputed to be haunted by an 18th century serving girl, but we were too busy drinking-up and missing our bus back to spot any ghostly presence this afternoon.

After this diversion we make it back to the centre of High Wycombe.  My 'interesting fact' about the town is that it is the only place which carries out the tradition of 'Mayor Making'- weighing the mayor to ensure he hasn't grown too fat on taxpayers expenses.  Yep, wifi on and I'm Googling crap in Heidrun (14 Paul's Row, HP11 2HQ). Google tells me that Heidrun is a Norse mythological goat, which grazes on a sacred tree and produces mead for the fighters in Valhalla.  To accompany my trying to discover the origins of the bar name, there's a good selection of beers on 20 taps.  I opt for the only (I think) imported option - a New England IPA from German micro Fuerst Wiacek, which is a tasty tipple.

The next stop is Bootlegger (3 Amersham Hill, HP13 6NQ) very close to the rail station.  This is busy with a mix of football fans returned from Adams Park and rugby aficionado's bellowing at the League World Cup on the TVs.  We find a quieter spot by the bank of bottle fridges to the side of the pub and I'm happy to have found a pint of local ale available from Fisher's Brewing Co.  They set up in 2015 but have only moved into their own High Wycombe premises in 2017.

There's just time to clock up another pub before heading homewards.  A five minute walk from the Bootlegger takes us to the Belle Vue (45 Golden Row, HP13 6EQ).  This is a pleasant, relaxed corner boozer, regularly appearing in the Good Pub Guide.  I finish the day on a Rebellion IPA, straight from the barrel in the tap room, reflecting that this has been an interesting and varied pub crawl.  Easily accessible by train, I think I'll be back for another day here, maybe checking the opening times for The Swan next time and visiting some of the good looking pubs that I couldn't fit in today.

More Oxfordshire Pubs by Bus

Several weeks on from our last trip south of Oxford on the buses, it's time to grab a Thames Travel day pass again with a couple of new destinations to make for.

Beer garden weather has passed and the nights are drawing in as we catch the X32 down to Milton.  Milton lends its name to a sprawling business park, but a few minutes walk up the road leads you to the peaceful village.  What brings us here is the Plum Pudding (44 High Street, Milton, OX14 4EJ) where an autumn beer festival is underway.  This is a great traditional village pub.  Inside it has stone floors, tables and pews of different styles and sizes and a lovely log fire burning away.  It's named, as the pub sign gives away, not after a seasonal dessert but after a local breed of pig - the Sandy and Black.  It's the beer festival bar, set up under canvas in the back garden, which has attracted us here on this occasion.
There is a cracking selection of 16 ales, most of which are unusual finds in the county , with one - Ferry Ales from Lincolnshire - being a new brewery to me.
Halloween themes are dominant - a 'Fright Night', a 'Pumpkin Ale' and a superb 'IPA of the Dead' from Kelham Island.  We also grabbed a bite to eat here and I can thoroughly recommend the Plum Pudding for tasty home-cooked food.

Catching the bus again, it's a short trip to the centre of Didcot. From here we make a 1½ mile walk south to East Hagbourne.  It may only be separated from the edge of Didcot by a few fields, but the main street of the village is charming and historical with thatched roofs, red-bricked Georgian manor houses and fine cottages lining the road.
In East Hagbourne is the Fleur De Lys (30 Main Road, OX11 9LN), a characterful pub consisting one long room with low ceiling and black wooden beams.  It has a cosy feel even without the fire-place lit.  We were promised dogs in the Fleur and we weren't disappointed!  This is a very dog-friendly pub.  On the bar were three real ales on tap, two from the usual Greene King stable and the third, which I opted for, a Purple Moose Madog Ale.

Dog-friendly Fleur De Lys, East Hagbourne, Oxfordshire

Coming back out of Didcot, with dark skies threatening rain, we jump on the bus and make the 30 minute trip to Abingdon.
First stop here is The Broad Face (30-32 Bridge Street, Abingdon, OX14 3HR) just a couple of minutes south of the Town Square, towards the river Thames.  This is one of the more unusual pub names in the UK and it's origin seems uncertain.  Possibly the bulging, broad face of a villain hanged at the old gaol across the road, or the bloated face of someone drowned in the river.  Or maybe a more dull explanation that the wide side of the building presents a 'broad face' as you approach from the bridge.  It seems we'll never know.  Inside one half is set up for dining whilst the other is more of a bar.  There's an impressive 8 beers on hand pumps from which I pick a hoppy pale ale from the always reliable Oakham Brewery.

A brisk trek around the corner leads us to the Kings Head & Bell (10 E St Helen St, Abindgon, OX14 5EA).  This has some history attached to it, dating back to 1554 when it was a coaching inn named just The Bell.  Much of it is renovated and is 'modern and stylish', to quote their website,  but we grab a seat in the tiny front room with a large hearth and stone floors which feels more traditional.  I'm not the most modern and stylish fellow, to be honest.  A pint of the local Loose Cannon ale, Falconet on this occasion, brings the day to a close.

The bus routes south of Oxford have made me aware that there are a number of towns and villages to easily explore.  I've found a number of lovely pubs in two days-out in the area but there are more to visit and more directions to head off in.

Abingdon's peculiarly named The Broad Face - a great real ale spot since it's latest landlords took charge in 2016

A Thames-Travel-Bus South Oxford Crawl

On a bright, sunny, September weekend we decided to head south of Oxford on a trip to the historic North Star at Steventon, which I'd been meaning to get to for some time.  

We grabbed a Thames Travel Day Ticket and set out on the X40 from St Aldates .
The plan was to explore and tick off a couple more pubs as we made our way to the North Star.   
We hopped off the bus at Dorchester on Thames (well, a lay-by on the A4074, a short walk from there).  My plan here was to visit the George Hotel but this was scuppered by a gathering wedding party, among'st whom I would have stood out as quite a scruffy bugger. 

Plan B, then. A walk across the fields to Long Wittenham.  Plan B wasn't researched to the extent of checking distances properly and it turned out to be a much longer trek than intended.  At the end of our (oops) 3 mile walk we were rewarded with arrival at the Plough (24 High Street, OX14 4QH), a pleasant 17th century inn.

We only had a brief glimpse of the interior - one small bar with wooden beams to duck under - with the large garden being a big draw today.  There were three beers on cask and I opted for the guest from Milestone Brewery (I have a flawed superstition that drinking a Nottinghamshire beer on a match-day will lead to a Nottingham Forest win - flawed because it doesn't work).  

The beer garden at the Plough is huge.  It's a riverside pub where you can't see the river from the pub - the garden stretches on past a kids bouncy castle, down a couple of hills to eventually get to the Thames, a couple of hundred meters from the bar - one hell of a trek if you wanted to carry a tray of drinks to sit by the river bank.  

A ploughman's lunch just about provided the energy to make the trek back, and eventually we were back on the X40 on our way to Wallingford.

The Dolphin (2 St Mary's Street, Wallingford, OX10 0EL).  

Tucked in a pedestrian side street off the main square, this is a comfortable and welcoming boozer, affectionately nick-named the 'Dolly in Wally'.  

Despite being a Greene King house, they offer up a couple of interesting guest ales - this time both from the West Midlands.  We arrive as all interest is focused on the Saturday afternoon football results, showing on the main bar's TV.  

I happily noted that Forest had won: job-done with the Milestone Hoptimism earlier! 🍻

Wallingford is somewhere I need to explore a bit better and I'd definitely make a return trip to the Dolphin.  On this occasion though it was a flying visit, with a quick dash to catch the bus to our next destination.  

The X2 took us just over 5 minutes out of town before we rang the bell and alighting at the historic village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell.  

The place we were headed to here was the Good Beer Guide listed Red Lion (Brightwell St, OX10 0RD).  It's a 16th century thatched village pub with a cosy rustic interior and a peaceful sun-trap beer garden to the rear.  It's a lovely spot, although quiet at 6pm in the evening and I was a little disappointed that they didn't appear to have any real ciders, despite winning a cider-pub award not so long ago.  

Back on the bus, it was a 30 minute ride westwards to Steventon.

A walk down the Causeway took us to the wonderful North Star Inn (Stocks Lane, Steventon, OX13 6SG).  

The North Star Inn, Steventon. 

The garden was a hive of activity with a band setting up to entertain the Saturday evening crowd, but for me it's the interior that I wanted to experience.  There would once have been many rural pubs like this, but now it's a rarity.  There's no bar - service is from a stable door along the passageway or a hatch looking out to the garden if you're outside. 
The small main room has a settle facing a fireplace, with iron fittings attached to it which would have once had curtains to draw to make the handful of seats next to a fire even more cosy.  A cheerful local insisted on taking us on a tour of the other two, less remarkable, rooms and then chatted away to us about the pub and village in general.  
The beer was straight from the barrel on stillage.  I enjoyed a pint of White Horse 'Village Idiot'.  
My theory that pubs with outside toilets are always great is maintained here, but the solitary gents WC could become frustrating and involve some queuing if staying for longer.

Main room of the North Star Inn, where my photographic skills
let me down a little to really represent this amazing pub interior

As we have a gap until the next bus, we call in to The Cherry Tree (33 High St, Steventon, OX13 6RZ) up on the main road opposite the bus stop for a final beer of the day. This is a sprawling Wadworth pub, with multiple rooms, wooden beams and a warm, welcoming atmosphere. It has a huge car park which harks back to past times when this would have been the main road prior to the dual-carriageway A34 being built.

I think we made great value of the day pass on the buses and had a pleasant day out exploring some new places not so far from home, even though I did incorporate a 6 mile ramble by mistake.