Festive pubbing in Shaldon and Dawlish

Twas the last Friday before Christmas when we made a few stops along the south Devon coast from Shaldon to Exeter.

Traveling along one of the most scenic bits of railway in the country, we hopped off at Teignmouth station, then set off on foot to Shaldon.
It's 28-minutes walk from Teignmouth to Shaldon, not the 15-minutes I'd fraudulently promised
Mrs PropUptheBar. 
"There's more stuff in the way than I thought", I said by way of an excuse.
"Yes.  The sea."

You're almost touching distance from the most westerly point of Teignmouth, from where you can catch a ferry on a fair-weather day.  We - of course - went on a day with wickedly high winds curtailing ferries.

So, across the road bridge we headed, then through the charming narrow streets of the fishing village as we made our way to the Ferry Boat Inn...

Ferry Boat Inn (The Strand, Shaldon, TQ14 0DL)
A handwritten sign warned 'Drinks Only' which explained why there were only half a dozen in - I suspect the weekday lunchtime trade in Shaldon in winter-time are mostly looking for a bite to eat.
Come in the warmer months of the year and you can accompany your Doom Bar with food from the Garden Grill - the riverside seating is superb, but not in gale force winds. 

From a choice of three cask ales, I picked the local Teignmouth Brewery 'Deck Hand' a reasonable and well-kept 4.5% golden ale.
The best seat by the fire had been taken, so we sat at the end of the bar, 'Last Christmas' part of wall-to-wall seasonal music.

 

It turns out we needed food ourselves, which led to us investigating the eating options in the village.   We ended up in the London Inn, which had a place in the beer-guide in '20 and '21, Shaldon enjoying revolving entries over the past few years. 

The London Inn (The Green, Shaldon, TQ14 0DN)
There's a dining room to the left and bar to the right, although pretty much the whole bar was taken up by folks eating, so not really a place to settle for a lunchtime drinking session.
The cask choice was St Austell 'Tribute' or Otter, the 'Otter Bitter' badged as a house beer. Not a bad pint - doing a good job of washing down a hefty portion of winter veg pie and mash. 
Hefty price tag too, but not as much as the Tomahawk Steak...

Leaving the pub, there was no let-up in the windy weather, hence still no ferry and a trek back to the station. We caught the next train one stop to the coastal town of Dawlish.

During Oxford Beer Festival, I told one of the CAMRA folks that I'd been attempting to tick off all the beer guide pubs in Devon.
"Don't bother with Dawlish," he replied, kinda missing the point of 'complete'.

But I figured he may have a point and that these were unlikely to be pubs offering exotic craft beers for Mrs PropUptheBar.
I knew she'd be happy as long as we she saw the black swans...

The first of the two current GBG ticks involved a short walk along Dawlish Water, through a park and some narrow lanes, beyond the tourists and the fudge shops to the older part of town. 

The Swan Inn (94 Old Town Street, Dawlish, EX7 9AT)
The Swan proved to be a cracking basic locals pub with two rooms, although the lights were off in the back room which we didn't get a chance to see.
The front room had bench seating on two sides, fireplace facing the bar, a grand total of three tables, pub quiz at 7, darts board in a corner.

A handful of cheery locals sat at one table, one of them with his cans of Coors lined up.  I couldn't help pondering if he'd brought these with him or if they kept a 4-pack in the fridge for the fella because he rates canned Coors above the keg lagers available??

The Teignmouth 'Portside' suited me fine, the other cask option being more St Austell 'Tribute'.

"Mind the steps", the locals warned us as we left, suggesting the immediate downward drop beyond the door has caught out one or two visitors.  More to the point, watch out for the van racing along the road with no pavement at the bottom of the steps.  One more stride into the road and I'd never be completing all those Devon beer guide pubs.

Heading back towards the seafront, our second pub faced the ducks on the water, the bowling club, and green parkland.

The Brunswick Arms (9-10 Brunswick Place, Dawlish, EX7 9PB)
This is a Heavitree House, which in my limited experience means a proper boozer with fizzy pints being knocked back at a rate of knots, although whatpub claims it to be 'family orientated'.
Not on our visit, as we had to squeeze through the folks in the front part of the pub - spirits high as we'd crept past acceptable knocking-off time on the last working weekday before Christmas.
Reminding us of the time of year, we entered to Chris Rea's festive hit, pleasingly at a low volume that was barely audible over the chatter. 

Cask hand pumps were relegated to the quieter back section of the bar - 'Doom Bar', 'Jail Ale', Otter 'Bitter', Hanlon's 'Yellow Hammer' - all of which I shunned for the cask 6% Sandford's Orchard cider.  

 

Heading out into the dusk, we made our way to the next train back to Exeter.
I've explored to the pubs of Exeter pretty extensively, but opening hours have always led to the Exeter Brewery Tap eluding me.  I just happened to have timed it just right this time...

Exeter Brewery Tap (Unit 1, Cowley Bridge Road, Exeter, EX4 4NX)
The brewery is located in a red-brick building adjacent to the train lines, five minutes walk from St David's station, the final approach through a dark gravel car park with the challenge of avoiding the big puddles in the potholes.
With limited opening, and signs pointing you down a corridor past the brewing kit, I figured this may be a brewery tap of the basic variety.  But the bar turned out to be a fairly big room with bench seating, old pics and breweriana on the wall and quite a pub-like feel to it. 

Someone's got carried away with the Christmas outfit..

The four cask beers available were 'Avocet', 'Ferryman', 'Fall's Over' and 'Lighterman', so nothing unusual with all these being easily found in this part of the world.  But you get to drink it a few meters away from where it's created and I couldn't deny I had a superb pint of 'Falls Over'.

It took a visit to the Imperial (very busy, far too many Christmas jumpers) to get the Exeter Brewery Christmas beer (the Santa's Sack at the top of the post).

Then as luck would have it, we just missed our bus, which meant that Mrs PropUptheBar had no choice but to partake in some craft beer in the Cuckoo Taproom to end the evening.
A good nightcap for a good day out on the south coast.