Weaving around Witney

The 7th Annual Witney Beer Festival and a Couple of Pubs for good measure....

Forty-five minutes on the S1 bus took me to the West Oxfordshire town of Witney, basking in glorious Bank Holiday sunshine on May 5th.
Witney is part-Oxford commuter-belt, with a sprawling housing estate and a troublesome teenager racing around the green on a loud, souped-up motorbike.
But it's also a Cotswold town, with charming stone brick buildings, a market, craft fair, and a butter cross. 
And 'Wellworth It!' - about as 'proper' a shop as you can get.  None of the retailers in the Westgate centre have displays of coloured buckets and sweeping brushes outside.


I started my morning with a Wetherspoon breakfast in The Company of Weavers (31 Market Square, OX28 6AD).  This is housed in what used to be the Palace Theatre.   It became a gym for a while, before 'Spoons arrived in 2012.  Witney was famed for its blanket making and the name and decor of the pub reflects this, with an old loom on display and some lovely woollen lampshades.  It was very busy with people looking grumpy on this particular Saturday morning - the family at the next table to me getting very, very angry because the blueberries were missing from their porridge.

Looking past the 16th century butter cross towards Wetherspoons Company of Weavers

The main reason for coming to Witney on this occasion was the bank holiday beer festival at the St Mary's The Virgin Church.  There was already a queue, folks waiting for the doors to open, the prospect of sitting in the sunny churchyard, beer-in-hand, obviously bringing folks out early.
It's not every day that you get a beer festival in a church so it was nice to get there before it became too crowded and take in the surroundings...
They had an ambitious amount of beer to get through in one day.
70 beers on the list.... Roughly 72 pints in a barrel.... That's 5,040 pints (plus the ciders).  All served a startlingly good value price. Which probably equated to quite a few headaches in Witney on the following Sunday morning!
There was a good showcase of local breweries, including Bellingers, Church Hanbrewery, Little Ox, and Oxbrew.  A fitting start to the Oxford Beer Week.  

Fans of the higher ABV were well catered for with some weighty offerings from Tring, Battle Down and Hook Norton.  But it was the North Cotswold Brewery 'Monarch' that I couldn't resist.
A tasty 8.8% Belgian-style brown ale and a completely irresponsible choice at 2pm in the sunshine.

Before I got carried away and tried all the beers that were 6% and above, I decided to move on as I also wanted to visit a couple more spots in town.

There are two pubs which look out onto Church Green: The Fleece, which is the preserve of Good Pub Guide gastropub enthusiasts;  and The Angel,  a proper town local, which I decided to call in to.
The Angel (42 Market Square, OX28 6AL) dates back to 1707 and has some great, bulging, historic bay windows at the front.  Inside it retains a bit of an olde-worlde feel with low beamed ceilings, but there are modern trappings of several TVs showing the Premier League, fruit machines and a juke box.  The beer range comes from Marston's, my pick being the Wychwood house beer 'Angel Ale'.

The Three Horseshoes, Witney

Next, I popped into the Horseshoes (78 Corn Street, OX28 6BS), an alternative to the New Inn on the same street which keeps old-school lunchtime and evening hours and caught me out.

You can tell the Horseshoes is going to have lost some of its character by the fact that they've hacked 'The Three...' off the start of the name.  The focus has been geared towards dining here, although the small bar area by a large fireplace in the front room has a bit of country charm. 
I settled here with an Otter 'Amber Ale', almost always a reliable beer choice.

My final stop this afternoon in Witney was the marvelous Eagle Tavern (22 Corn Street, OX28 6BL).  This is oft-touted as the best pub in town, with an unspoilt traditional stone and timber interior and a friendly welcome.  There are a few different nooks and crannies in this pub, plus a beer garden to the rear.
A lovely, well-served 'Hooky Gold' brought a nice afternoon in Witney to a close.