Skopje - the final leg of our trip to Macedonia

Statues!
Statues everywhere!
It's the first thing that strikes you about Macedonia's capital - from the 22-meter high 'Warrior on a Horse' to modern bridges sporting dozens of 'em.
174 kilometres and a 3½ hour bus journey brought us to the Republic of Macedonia's capital city and the final destination of this trip.
Skopje is an interesting and slightly surreal city.  The controversial Skopje 2014 plan saw the building of many of those statues, plus new bridges and grand buildings.  Much of the original architecture was destroyed in a devastating 1963 earthquake and the project aimed to recreate lost neoclassical buildings.  It's a little bit 'Las Vegas' though, especially standing next to the mock galleons moored on the Vardar river bank.

With a craft brewery, we were looking forward to a change from Skopsko and Zlaten Dab lagers.
And we weren't disappointed when we found ourselves at Kolektiv (Macedonia Square) within a short time of arriving.   This is a good bar on the central Square, owned by Temov, the cities microbrewery.  It looked great inside, but everyone was out on the terrace in the hot weather.  Admittedly it was much pricier than other places we'd been, but with some tasty food and beer, I felt it was worth it.  There were around 11 taps, serving up craft lager, IPA's, Stout and Fruit beers. 

Next stop was the Temov Brewery tap itself, Pivnica Star Grad, ( ul. Gradište 1, Stara Skopska Čaršija) located close to the citadel on the north side of the river.  In essence it's an elaborate shed, perched atop a hill, with the brewing kit visible to the one side. Outside there is a shaded terrace area with a small fountain in the middle.  
I wanted this - I expected this - to be my favourite bar of the trip, but it kinda let me down. Service left a lot to be desired and I can't quite get my head around why there were less beers at the brewery tap than they had down the hill at their own outlet, Kolektiv.
On the plus-side I did have my only stout of the trip here, the 4.5% Pistol Stout (many menu's had dark beers on them, but whenever we asked for them they were out of stock for the summer months).


Next stop was the obligatory visit to an Irish pub: St Patrick (Kej 13-ti Noemvri 8).  We didn't go out our way to go there, but as we walked along the riverside restaurants looking for somewhere to eat and watch the World Cup football this jumped out as the best option.  In the outdoor covered terrace they had a giant screen where we bagged the last unreserved table and had a hearty platter of good value food.  We stayed on to sink several Lasko Pivo's whilst watching Belgium beat Brazil in what turned out to be one of the competitions best games.

Much of the next day was spent climbing Mount Vodno for some wonderful views of the city and surrounding countryside.  Getting up and being atop this elevated spot was, for me, the best bit of my visit to Skopje and a thoroughly enjoyable morning.
Being veggie, I miss out on much traditional fare, but at lunch we managed to track down 
tavče gravče - Macedonian style baked beans.

I like my baked beans.

So it was a treat to have these alongside several other platters, dining at a restaurant by the riverside.  The beans were great, but the 'baked potatoes', that I was expecting to be a good rustic spud, were definitely McCains wedges. 

After a revisit to Kolektiv for a tasty double-IPA, we walked westwards from the centre to Kino Karposh (Radnjanska), roughly 20 minutes from the heart of the city.  This is a nice spot, with a chilled outdoor terrace and a bar, whilst the inside is characterful.   Here I picked a SuperNova from Serbian craft brewery Kabinet.  It was the most expensive beer of the trip - this worked out at about £3.50 - but it really hit the spot as a top-notch, strong, tasty pale ale.


We just had time for yet a bit more Skopsko in a bistro in the centre, before readying ourselves for the next days crack-of-dawn flight home.
Macedonia: it's been great.  It may not have been the kind of beer and bar madness that occurs on a trip to, say, Belgium or Germany, but we've had a couple of quality ales, visited some nice bars, seen some great places and taken home some good memories.
Nazdravye!

A Bit of Beer in Bitola

The second stop on our Macedonia Trip

We caught a bus for the 90 minute journey east from Ohrid to the city of Bitola.

The countries second largest city offers up several reasons for tourists to visit: ancient ruins, a National Park on it's doorstep and a pleasant centre full of churches, mosques and with a long pedestrianised cafe-lined street, Širok Sokak.

We kicked off with a bit of sightseeing, walking through the extensive park and down to the Roman ruins of Heraclea Lyncestis, where we were absolutely sweltering in the July sunshine.   
Back in the centre and just north of the small river we had a walk around the Old Bazaar.  
Here we stumbled across Bar - Čaršija (Титоввелешка 24) where we declared that it was certainly time for a refreshment break.

The quirky, welcoming Bar Carsija in Bitola

"We have many types of beer.  So, Skopsko or Zlaten Dab?"

The entry is through a covered archway, leading to a small courtyard and outside bar nestled amongst ancient buildings dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries.  The wooden-roofed section to the side has rickety bookshelves, beer posters and vinyl LPs nailed to the crossbeams.
It's a really atmospheric place and probably one of the nicest we found on our whole trip.
There were a few big-brand imports here (Tuborg seems strangely popular in these parts) but I ended up back on the Zlaten Dab.

Our next destination was Bourbon Street Pub (Leninova 17).  I should have guessed it was Bitola's Irish pub.  We stayed on a high table along the alleyway leading to the pub, so I didn't really explore the bar itself properly and see how much Irish paraphernalia they'd amassed. They did have a good selection on the beer list though, with a craft beer section.  I believe this came from Temov Brewery in the capital, so I skipped this, as I wanted to save that for when we got to Skopje.  Instead I picked a bottle from the local Bitola brewery, the 5% Bitolsko Piva.  

Green Army?  Whose Green Army?
Could this be a distant outpost of the Plymouth Argyle supporters club?

For our second day staying in Bitola we wanted to head out of the city a little and explore a bit of Pelister national park.  We caught a taxi to the village of Dihovo 5km away.  From this sleepy, charming village we followed a short trail up the river to a waterfall (spoilt only by the insistence of some visitors to leave all their rubbish behind).   We then followed a trail uphill towards the St Atanas monastery, giving us some elevated viewpoints back towards Bitola.  I'd love to have completed a much more extensive walk, but we hadn't packed the right gear for this trip and hadn't started early enough (uphill at 1pm in scorching sunshine had me sweating like a trooper and declaring myself as 'unfit').
But it was worth it to be in surroundings like this...

Returning to the village we called in at Villa Dihovo, entering with some trepidation as we weren't sure this was somewhere we could just stop for refreshments.  As it was we were given a warm welcome, sat under a parasol in the garden and served with great home-brewed beer.  The host here is Pece Kvetovski, an ex-professional football player, who offers accommodation, acts as a guide to the national park and has a passion for slow-cooked food with ingredients straight from the garden.  He's very keen to stop and have a chat and obviously proud of this wonderful spot.  As well as brewing the beer he also makes home-made wine and raika, although we didn't try these on this occasion.  The beer was a cloudy wheat beer and was of a good quality.  Pece modestly just calls it a hobby, but I wasn't kidding when I told him it tasted really good and was such a welcome break from Skopsko lager.

Pece's home brew at Villa Dihovo - apologies that I got a picture that doesn't do any justice whatsoever to the location and could, frankly, just be someones back garden in Dunstable.

We made a mistake on the way home, getting the taxi to drop us off at Connect Pub.  It's only once we'd got out that I realised we were on the edge of town and I'd been a bit misled by the marker on my tourist map.  Sorry, but there is no reason to head all the way out here if you're visiting Bitola, especially as Connect have another café/bar venue in the centre.  The Connect Pub was in a modern building with a large covered terrace in front of it.  There were 8 TV screens around the sides, which would be brilliant for watching football, but not so good when they're showing Gordon Ramsay on the Kichen24 channel, sound-tracked by Belinda Carlisle on the sound-system.  We drank a bottle of Skopsko.  Again. Then made the long, long walk back to the centre.

Bitola is a little off the beaten track for tourists compared to Ohrid, but it's a rewarding place to explore.  If I were to do it again I'd catch a taxi to the heart of the national park - although I'm glad we visited Dihovo and sampled Pece's home brew, which will be a beer-highlight of my trip.   Next up: Skopje.

The local supermarket ale selection.  Not a Punk IPA to be seen.

A Trip to Ohrid, Macedonia

A warm Sunday evening in July saw us landing at Ohrid airport, in the south of Macedonia.
I sorted some money out from a mathematically challenged cash machine (I can't have 6000 denars because it can only supply multiples of 500???) Huh?
Then we picked one of the countries top 10 worst drivers to take us the 9km into the lakeside town.
Bags dropped at the hotel, we headed straight out to sample some traditional Macedonian nightlife in, erm, the Dublin Irish Pub...

The Dublin Bar (Kej Macedonia), to be fair, is okay, although why pubs the world-over can't successfully come up with a new theme is a mystery to me.
With the second half of the evenings World Cup football game booming out of the TV, I found myself drinking local brew Zlaten Dab, brewed by Prilepska Pivanica.
A promo team were giving out scratch cards to anyone drinking the beer and I soon found myself the proud owner of a Zlaten Dab baseball cap and keyring. Unfortunately that seemed to be all the prizes they had - if there'd been a t-shirt and a golf umbrella to win, I may have drank myself under the table on the first night to complete my Zlaten Dab collection.

Zlaten's big rival in the country is Skopsko, brewed by Pivara Skopje in the capital and owned by Heineken.
We first sampled this next day, sitting on the outdoor terrace, under large canopies next to a small square at Magic (Tsar Samoil). It would be the first of many of these beers. With just 6 breweries listed on Ratebeer for the whole country, this wasn't going to be a trip with a huge variety of beer. By the end of the week Mrs PropUptheBar would declare that she'd had enough lager to last the whole year and never wanted to see another bottle of Skopsko ever again.
Skopsko is a 4.9% pale lager. In a blind tasting I probably would stand no chance of telling the difference between any of the big-name Balkan brewer's main offerings. But Skopsko never gave me a baseball cap and keyring , so I'm going to claim that Zlaten is definitely the best!

Local sweet-treat, Ohrid Cake.

Observations about the bars of Ohrid:
- There are loads of pleasant spots, all of which will serve you pretty much the same range of lagers, plus good local wines and bargain cocktails if that's what you fancy. There's some lovely places with terraces perched above the lake shore. Of these I liked Terraza Aquarius (Ulica Kosta Abrash), where we enjoyed a couple of beers watching the sun disappear for the day.

- A bottle or large glass of local beer will cost a very reasonable £1.20 - £1.50 on average in the tourist bars.
- They're very generous with peanuts.
- The concept of a smoking ban has come nowhere near Macedonian establishments - you can smoke everywhere in copious quantities.

Ultimately, this wasn't a place for my beer explorations, but it is a magical place to spend a few days, swim in the lake and explore the old town. The view over Lake Ohrid from the citadel or from the breakfast roof-terrace of our hotel was simply magical.

Picture-postcard view from Ohrid - the church of St John at Kaneo overlooking the lake.

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.

Burton Pub Crawl

Second Time Lucky for the Oxford Beer Festival Helpers Trip...

Back in February the weather beat us and the Oxford CAMRA bus couldn't make the trip up the snowy M40.  We weren't exactly basking in glorious Spring conditions this time around, but just after midday the coach disgorged 50 beer festival helpers and associates, armed with maps, lists of pubs and eager to explore this iconic Staffordshire brewing town.

First port of call on my list was the Coopers Tavern (43 Cross Street, DE14 1EG).
This is a Heritage Listed pub, attractive both inside and out and serving a cracking choice of ales to start the day.
I so wanted to be sat on the great high bench seating in the serving room at the back of the pub, but being slow off the bus saw us well and truly beaten - best seats taken and a queue to be served.

The pubs near the station were proving popular with football fans as Bolton Wanderers arrived to play Burton Albion in a relegation six-pointer.  We declared the Last Heretic micro-pub as being far too busy and called in, a few doors up the road, to the Roebuck Inn (101 Station Street, DE14 1BT).
This was effectively the Ind Coope brewery tap for many a year and Draught Bass was launched here in 1976.  So only fit and proper, I thought, to sample the Bass here - I guess reading the blog of Retired Martin has affected me and I've being unwittingly lured to the red triangle.
The Roebuck is a single-roomed locals pub, busy with folks watching a dull 0-0 Liverpool-Stoke draw on several TVs and a good 'proper' town pub.

The next destination involved doubling-back upon ourselves and skirting the shopping area to get to The Fuggle and Nugget (81 High Street, DE14 1LD). 

The last incarnation of this terraced shop unit was a hairdressers, before it was converted to a micro-pub in 2015.
With no bar, the beer choice is on a blackboard and the friendly owners will take your order and pour the beers from the stillage in a small side room.
I opted for 'Easy', red ale from Derbyshire brewer Abstrakt Jungle, from a choice of four beers.
Kudos for one of the smartest displays of pump-clips decorating the walls that I've seen - impeccably grouped by brewery by someone who's possibly got too much time on their hands.

We called into the bar of The National Brewery Centre (Horninglow Street, DE14 1NG) - due to it being one of the few pubs on our list that served food.
Rather disconcertingly there was a wedding party in attendance who were all packing the bar on our arrival.  Now, I don't begrudge people getting married, but a wedding party in a pub is possibly worse than a gaggle of children over-energised by one-too-many Robinson's fruit shoots.  Too many smartly dressed people making me feel like I'd somehow crept in in my scruffy attire, breaching the dress-code.  
We had to stay as I was lectured that a pint of Bass was not a suitable substitute for lunch and if I didn't eat I'd make myself poorly.  Which is, of course, absolutely true.

The bar is housed in what were once the engineering, craft and maintenance workshops of the Bass Brewery.  Beers here come from the Heritage Brewing Company, a 25 barrel brewery built within the National Brewery Museum and recreating beers from the past.  I tried a 5.6% IPA called 'Masterpiece' which was fantastic.

Next up was the Alfred (51 Derby Street, DE14 2LD) for some Burton Bridge Brewery ales.

The mid-terrace pub dates back to the 1860s.  A central bar serves two separate rooms, plus there is an interesting little room behind the bar, but I'm guessing the cardboard boxes stacked on the seats back there meant the landlord didn't want us sitting there.  A tasty 'Festival Ale', a 5.5% XL mild was my chosen tipple in the Alfred.

The Old Cottage Tavern (36 Byrkley Street, DE14 2EG) was, in my humble opinion, a bit of a back-street gem.  It consisted of three rooms - a front bar busy with dogs, a cosy snug to the side and a basic wood-panelled lounge to the rear.  We settled in the latter, watching the football scores come in on the TV, where the landlady joined us for updates on the fate of Burton Albion.  They achieved a cracking 2-0 win over Bolton, but a Barnsley victory meant relegation places would be decided on the final day of the season a week later.

Four beers on the bar came from Burton Old Cottage brewery - I plumped for the 'Oak', a 4% copper ale before being drawn towards  'Dual Diamond', a recreation of a fearsome brew from the past.  The 3.6% keg Ind Coope 'Double Diamond' represented everything that CAMRA was founded to fight against.  But this is brewed to the stronger, full-bodied bottle receipe that preceded the keg version.  I'm still not sure I actually liked it, but it was good for novelty value and historical intrigue.

Two more 'micro's' to try then.  The first of these was the Weighbridge Inn (Grain Warehouse Yard, Derby Street, DE14 2JJ).

The pub is in what was once the coal yard offices and has been serving up drinks since 2015.  It doesn't fit into my definition of a micro.  Rather, it's a small bar.  They have lager drinking regulars, a spirits shelf and 'prosecco for £4.20'.  The location is full of quirky character, with two small rooms to drink in.
I had a nice pale ale brewed by Old Sawley from Long Eaton, across in Nottinghamshire.  Skipped the prosecco this time.

Next up was a visit to the Last Heretic (95 Station Street, DE14 1BT).  It was still busy, with a few football fans back from the ground proclaiming today's match to be the best of the season.  Beers and ciders are served from a small tap room, through a glass door behind the bar.

Troublesome characters heading into the Last Heretic micro

We put £1 in the charity tin for a Habanero and Scotch Bonnet pickled onion, which came with an animated, enthusiastic warning from the barman that they're hot as hell.  As half the bar heard that, I found myself the unwanted centre of attention for a brief moment as I tackled it.  Lovely.  No  embarrassment of it being too hot in front of an audience.  And all for charity.  

Micropub life in Burton-on-Trent

Just time before the end of the day for a swift couple of halves in the Devonshire Arms (86 Station Street, DE14 1BT).  It was a bit of a flying visit here, with two final beers from Burton Bridge and Morton Brewery to set me up for the trip home.  

Burton was great.  It's got more good pubs than I could get around in a day.  I want to come back and drink more Bass.

Best of luck for Burton Albion staying in the Championship.  And a big thank you to the important folk at Oxford CAMRA who arranged this trip (twice!).

Lured by the Siren

Siren Craft 5th Anniversary & a short exploration of Wokingham

What a difference a day can make...yesterday I took the opportunity to paint picnic tables outside in warm sunshine & blue skies.  Then by Saturday morning Beast II (© all the newspapers) had hit, bringing with it Arctic winds and more snow.
I'm frustrated that I didn't get any photo's which demonstrate quite how bad the weather was this day.  The best I can do is point out that there are at least 10 woolly hats in the picture below...

On Saturday 17th March, Siren Craft Brewery opened their doors in an industrial unit near the village of Finchampstead to celebrate their 5th anniversary.  So with tickets pre-booked, we jumped on the shuttle bus from Wokingham station to get there ready for opening time.  There were two temporary bars set up in the brewery, plus more beers available in the recently added Tap Room (the warmest place in the venue, where all the in-the-know folks bagged their seats on arrival).

The programme offered up a spectacular list of intriguing, experimental and often very strong beers.

Mrs PropUpTheBar declared her first choice, 'Fresh Cream 1: Coconut' (an 11% 'bourbon milkshake with toasted coconut') to be a 5* beer and she's usually the meanest beer rater ever seen on Untappd.

The Brett IPA 'Wilde Geest', the 'Salted Caramel Shattered Dream' and the 'Maiden 2017' 11.3% barley wine were all highlights - in fact there wasn't anything that we tried during the afternoon that we didn't rave about a little bit.

And among'st some great music they played Black Lace's 'Agadoo'.  

That wasn't a dance - I was just shifting from foot to foot to combat the cold....

We sampled everything we wanted to, popped a couple of bottles in the backpack, then caught the shuttle back to Wokingham, giving ourselves ample time to visit a few of the towns pubs. 

Jam Jars

Close to the railway station is The Queens Head (23 The Terrace, Wokingham, RG40 1BP). It's a picturesque old English pub and charming inside as well as out, with low beams and a log fire.  This was a Six Nations day so the pub was full of part-time rugby fans occasionally shouting "G'wan Wales" and such like at the TV. 🏉 😠
Each beer has an identically coloured jam jar sample in front of it, to help you choose.
I picked the Hogs Back 'TEA'.  Great to have it served in a lovely Hogs Back tulip glass, which quite possibly made it taste better.
Apparently the garden is very nice, but probably not when it's -2℃.  

As we walked towards the centre of town, we spotted the Broad Street Tavern (29 Broad Street, RG40 1AU), which had a Cask Marque sign and looked like it may be worth calling into as the next retreat from the cold.

The red-bricked Broad Street Tavern

This is a Wadworth house with their full range of cask ales on offer.  I opted for the '6X' which I hadn't had in a while and which was tasty and in good condition (or was I just suckered in by another beer served in the right glass?).
It's a bustling town boozer, with a long room stretching back past the bar, plenty of customers and, yep, more rugby on TV.
There was a relaxed and pleasant atmosphere in the Broad Street Tavern.

Grabbing a bite to eat from an interesting-sounding menu we opted for a Baked Cheese Board Sharing Platter.  Both agreeing that we would have happily not shared it.  

We made a final push on through the centre of town in increasingly heavy snow - perhaps I've bit a bit too blasé about the trains home running smoothly and this bout of bad weekend weather not causing any disruption?

The town centre is the site of the most hefty roadworks I've come across since Antwerp last month....

Wokingham roadworks.   It's not blurred.  The camera is on a Siren Craft Barley Wine setting....

Our final pub of the evening was the Good Beer Guide listed Crispin (45 Denmark Street, Wokingham, RG40 2AY).  This is one of the oldest inns in town, named after St Crispin, patron saint of cobblers (and that's something I do write a lot of....)

As we'd started at 1pm, I think I can be forgiven for not actually remembering much about the Crispin.  Except that I liked it and was surprised that this wasn't CAMRAs local pub of the year (the Queens Head is on a good run of winning that particular accolade). 
And it had two front doors. 
And a decent selection of ales from which I picked a Rebellion 'Relativity'. 
And that I finally succumbed and got hooked on the end of the last rugby match of the day on TV.

Wantage Beer Festival 2018

A Friday evening trip out to West Oxfordshire to visit the 8th installment of the Wantage beer festival.

This festival is held in a modern venue, The Beacon, which puts on activities such as 'body control pilates' and 'Egyptian dance classes', so it's probably a bit of a different crowd this weekend who are attracted by 28 real ales.

On a small scale, the festival always has a friendly and welcoming atmosphere.

And it's always a nice touch being served by a man in a fez....

Fez

With the smaller CAMRA festivals I do approach with a scepticism that there will be one too many 4% golden ales on the list.  But here, it's a relatively adventurous selection, taking in US IPAs, a coffee pale ale, a forest fruit porter and a port mild.  All the kinda stuff I like.
As last year, White Horse CAMRA have focused on a number of local beers, but many of these are things that I don't often find in central Oxford pubs: Bellingers, OxBrew, Church Hanbrewery. But someone has also been gathering ales from Northumberland thus ensuring no-one should be grumbling that they've "had 'em all before".

A man with a guitar and a less than captivated audience

With the main room where the bar is being full, we settled in the cafe area, taking advantage of the pasties on sale, while working our way through the most interesting beers on offer.  The Flash House 'Forest Fruit Porter' was very tasty and reminiscent of the much lauded Titanic Plum Porter.  But I reckon it's Wild Weather's 'End of the Level Boss', a double IPA, that is the winner for me this evening - fearsomely easy to drink for its hefty 9.2% strength.

Drinking up, we decided to head 5 minutes down the road to the Royal Oak (Newbury Street, OX12 8DF).

The Royal Oak, Wantage

This is a classic corner pub which has won a multitude of awards and clocked up 25 years of inclusions in the Good Beer Guide.
The long-standing owners have the privilege of having two West Berkshire Brewery beers named after them - 'Dr Hexter's Healer' and 'Dr Hexter's Wedding Ale'.  Both were originally brewed specially for the pub and have since become widely available. 
Heading through the main door there is a choice of two rooms.  To the left is a public bar with table football and darts whilst to the right is the busier and more comfortable Saloon, which we gravitated towards.  There are no distracting TVs and games machines here, just a big display of pump clips and hop bines attached to the iron-work above the bar.  The  walls are adorned with awards and pictures of maritime 'Royal Oak' namesakes.

Ales are chalked up on a blackboard at the side of the bar and are fetched from the cellar, straight from the cask.   I opt for a tasty pale from Totally Brewed, then can't resist the 10% 'Belgian Trippel' by Fisher's from High Wycombe.  Which acts as a lovely nightcap before catching the bus home.