Uxbridge, Harrow and Ruislip Pub Explorations

A post from the north-west corner of London, taking in canal-side pubs, Fullers 'London Pride', a prestigious private school, and more Wetherspoon's that anyone really need to be subjected to.

I've sat on the Oxford Tube countless times as it pulls off the A40 at Hillingdon to pick up and set down a handful of passengers.
Why do they get off there?  I figured I'd hop off and see what I could see.

Discovery one: Hillingdon covers a big area and its current GBG listed pub is a heck of a long way from Hillingdon station and the Oxford Tube bus stop.  I stopped half way down Long Lane (clue in the name there) to check I was actually going the right way.  Thirty minutes after alighting the bus, I finally found myself at pub number one.
Where I vowed to get the blog post written quickly enough to give you chance to pop the date in the diary for the Simply Red tribute band...

The Red Lion is located in Hillingdon Village which would be quite nice were it not for the 4-lanes of Uxbridge Road running straight through the middle.  There's the Church of St John the Baptist, another inn called The Vine, lots of green space, and a run of shops which includes The Village Fish & Chips (who I can confirm do great chips).

Red Lion Hotel (Royal Lane, Hillingdon, UB8 3QP)
The Red Lion is a Grade-II listed building dating back to the 16th century when it would have been timber framed.  It got a Georgian re-fronting in 1800; became a Fullers pub in 1905; and was massively expanded in 2003 to include 45 bedrooms in a motel-style block to the side.
The first couple of rooms surrounding the bar have a good historic feel to them with wooden beams and pillars and big fireplaces.

So, what do you get in the historic Red Lion?
You get Lenny Kravitz on the stereo, those dreadful chunky oversized bar stools, a really pleasing old uneven low ceiling, and  two hand pump dedicated to London Pride. 

It was understandably very quiet pre-noon, just a couple of folks tucked away in corners and a thoroughly bored-looking member of staff at the bar.
Well, at least I gave him something to do, pulling my pint and taking £5.90 off me.
The 'Golden Times' is a collaboration with St Austell and seems like the Cornish brewer giving tips on how to concoct 'Proper Job'. A little less crisp and hoppy, but thoroughly enjoyable.

I had a fairly long walk ahead of me to reach Uxbridge's nearest Good Beer Guide pub.
Up the road - along a short path by the River Pinn - skirting along the top of Brunel University - through suburban streets to the Grand Union Canal.
Just up the canal towpath by the Rockingham Road bridge was the General Eliott.  The side of the pub that looks out onto the Grand Union is a winner (top pic) - the roadside entrance not so picturesque... 

The General Eliott (1 St Johns Road, Uxbridge, UB8 2UR)
Ironically, this is named after a teetotaller, the General George Augustus Eliott being best known for defending Gibraltar during the siege of 1779 to 1783.  I guess his military exploits may have still been fresh in the mind when the pub was established in 1820.  The General has lent his name to half-a-dozen pubs throughout the country, including a local one to me: South Hinksey's lost pub within the Oxford ring-road.

So, what do you get in a canal-side pub named after a teetotal General?
You get Wham's 'Freedom', Loose Women on the telly, Jӓgar Bomb beer mats, and 'London Pride' in a Cruzcampo glass.

Other cask options were available, but the Pride has been craftily positioned at eye-level deterring attention from Landlord or Side Pocket.

The beer was on 'acceptable' form, using the new categorisation on CAMRA's scoring system.
I elected to sit inside which was the preserve of the elder custom, whilst the hi-vis, students and youngsters opted for the waterside seating.

Returning my glass to the bar, I departed the General Elliot and made the short walk up to the busy centre of Uxbridge.  There are enough pubs here to warrant spending the rest of the afternoon in Boris Johnson's old constituency.  Although how satisfying that would be, I'm not so sure.
Instead it was straight to Spoons... 

The Good Yarn (132 High Street, Uxbridge, UB8 1JX)
This is currently the second of Uxbridge's two Beer Guide entries having made the grade for the past couple of years.
A narrow frontage on the High Street suggests this is going to be one of the smaller JDW's, although it stretches back a fair way to provide a good number of tables.  The building was previously Pearson's menswear shop before becoming a relatively early Wetherspoon's in 1994.

Guest cask ales on offer came from Sambrook's, Twickenham, Rebellion, and Oakham, priced at the very reasonable £2.30 a pint.
I picked the 'JHB', the golden, hoppy ale being Oakham's very first brew and a former Champion Beer of Britain.

On good form - it went down well.
I settled in the raised rear section of the pub, where the tables were squeezed in a little too close together and the clientele were a diverse bunch.
The most unusual feature was the colourful skylights, which I just about manged to photograph over the heads of the neighbouring folks without looking too suspicious.

Making the decision to explore further beyond Uxbridge, I drank up and wandered back up the High Street to one of the capital's more striking tube stations.

Next destination: Rayners Lane.

This is an area that was still rural at the beginning of the 20th century.  Development began in the 1930's as a 'Garden Village', shortly before a station on the existing Metropolitan Railway was added.  So, no ancient inns here in a bit of London where you'll do better for international cuisine than cask ale.  Truman's contributed the great-looking Rayner's pub in 1937, but it's currently sitting closed and unloved.
Wetherspoon's has little in the way of competition for anyone hopping off the tube at Rayners Lane station and looking for a pint.

The Village Inn (402-408 Rayners Lane, Rayners Lane, HA5 5DY)
This opened in 1993, converted from former shops.
It's the rear section, down a short set of stairs from the bar, that is the best looking bit.
Lots of booths, lots of uniformity, lots of table clutter.

Cask on my visit came in the form of Windsor 'Kohinoor', Sambrook's 'Volley', Twickenham 'Naked Ladies', and Exeter 'Prince of Darkness'.  The latter for me - a beer that I enjoyed a fair few times during Devon explorations but haven't seen for some time.  In all honesty, not in the best condition here.

I decided to head off on foot from Rayners Lane and walk the mile-and-a-half to the very pleasant streets of Harrow-on-the-Hill, built around the 11th century St Mary's Church and still retaining a village-feel within the cosmos of Greater London.  'Affluent' says Wiki.

My destination was a pub which is on the National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors...

The Castle (30 West Street, Harrow, HA1 3EF)
It's believed there has been a pub on this site since 1706, although the current building dates back to 1901.  It's not been changed a great deal since then, securing its heritage listing, with the doorway and the grand wooden partition within providing the wow factor.
The entrance features the name of the pub in ironwork over the door and in the superb mosaic flooring... 

A decent number of customers were sat in the first room and at the bar, where Fuller's beers flanked the Mad Squirrel and Siren guests.

Pint of London Pride, please.
Taken to the big sofa in front of a fireplace.

The Pride was - as I believe they say - drinking well.
The Doors 'Light my Fire' played at a sensible volume from the speakers.
Whilst I took in that marvelous wooden divider with stained glass-windowed top half and three-foot high service door to stoop through.

A lovely pub.
Moving on, the route towards the tube station took me uphill and past the buildings of Harrow School, with their strict 'no entrance to the public' signs. 

Safe to say the Harrow Wetherspoon's doesn't quite live up to the school buildings when it comes to architectural charm.
I'm also going to hedge my bets that none of the sweary tipsy-looking blokes in the Moon on the Hill were masters from the school.

The Moon on the Hill (373-375 Station Road, Harrow, HA1 2AW)
This is another long-standing Spoons, having opened in 1991.  The building spent most of its life as Wheatland's furniture shop prior to becoming a pub.

It consists a pretty small single-room with seating on two-levels in an L-shape around the bar.  And it was busy - I think I took the last unoccupied small table, the place a hubbub of conversation.

Cask options beyond regular Wetherspoon's beers were local: Redemption 'Big Chief' and a Portobello duo of  'APA' or 'Market Porter'.
It's been a while since I had a 'Big Chief', the Tottenham brewery's chewy 5.5% IPA, served here in decent condition.
Certainly a lively Spoons.  The big group on high stools behind me held court on Colombian referees, petrol prices and Trev's holiday in Tenerife.  Very loudly.

Leaving Harrow,  I caught the Metropolitan Line a couple of stops back westward to Ruislip.
Up through the bustling shopping street, I was heading toward what turned out to be my favourite pub of the day...

The Hop & Vine (18 High Street, Ruislip, HA4 7AN)
You don't get a vast number of micropubs in Greater London but from my experience the ones there are tend to be pretty darn good.
The Hop & Vine opened at the end of 2016 in premises that were previously a café.  It's of the regular level seating / music / craft beer type, as opposed to the high stools / talk-to-each-other / three cask ales and that's yer lot variety of micro.
In fact, the beer list had me gorping ay it, struggling to chose, whilst the staff waiting patiently.

The beer ticker could happily sit here for several hours and skip all those silly Wetherspoon pubs that I keep on insisting on visiting.
Just the one for me: Fownd 'Labyrinth of Lost Souls'.  Yep, all that careful studying of the beer list and I end up picking entirely based on the best name.  Only to discover the labyrinth is something video-game-orientated rather than the prog metal album reference that I hoped it would be.
A superb beer in excellent condition.

Set on top of the beer mats advertising the local DIY store.

The music was obscure pop/rock, the pub dogs were ace, the locals a friendly bunch.

A great pub visit.
All that was left for me to do was to end the afternoon's explorations in one last Spoons: JJ Moon's a 15-minute walk away on the doorstep of Ruislip Manor station.

The busiest venue of the day, where I supped  a Twickenham 'Orange Zeus' whilst checking where the Oxford Tube picks up in Hillingdon for the journey home.

Ludlow Best

Actually, the best of Ludlow was two posts back, but as I haven't included the brewery tap or Black Country Ales pub, I figured I could squeeze in one more Shropshire blog post.

If only as an excuse for a little bit more timber-framed glory...

And one of the more unusual places to find Union Berlin stickering...

Normally we would have made a beeline for the brewery not long after arriving in town.  But Mrs PropUptheBar diligently checked opening times before letting me make a wasted journey after 6pm on a Wednesday evening.

Ludlow Brewing Co. (Station Drive, Ludlow, SY8 2PQ)
Ludlow Brewing Company was founded by Gary and Alison Walters in 2006, a 10-barrel plant set up in an old maltings on Corve Street.  Prior to this, you had to go back in history to 1933 for the last commercial beer production in the town when the Ludlow & Craven Arms Brewery was still in existence.  Fair to say the 21st century operation has done rather well. increasing in size and moving into the old rail transit depot in 2011, which enabled them to incorporate a taproom.
A good-sized space, the shiny brewing equipment stands proud in the rear left corner, with a bar to the right.

We'd had no difficulty sourcing the Ludlow beers during our short break - they'd been readily available in all towns and villages we'd visited.  But you get the full cask range in the brewery: 'Best', 'Blonde', 'Gold', 'Black Knight', 'Stairway' and 'Red Dawn'.
I picked the 'Black Knight' - a hybrid stout/porter apparently, not that I really know the difference between stouts and porters anyway.  

 

A lovely dark beer, served in the great condition you'd hope for with the brewing kit a few meters from the hand pump.
There were also a couple of keg beers available from craft offshoot Derailed ('Jam Dunk IPA' or 'Nebula' on this occasion).  Of the two, I only tried the 'Nebula' pale ale, rushing it a bit as they were calling last orders on Friday evening.

Leaving the brewery, we headed through the small industrial estate leading to the lower end of Corve Street.  A 10-minute walk from the centre, this quiet residential area is where you'll find Ludlow's Black Country Ales pub (number 36 of the current 55 on my tick-list).  

The Unicorn (66 Corve Street, Ludlow, SY8 1DU)
A bit more black & white timber frame frontage on a pub that dates back to the early seventeenth century.
The entrance is via a coaching inn style passageway to the side, with a door through to the bar and pleasant outdoor seating to the back.
Black Country Ales added this to their portfolio in May 2025 as they continue to expand beyond the Black Country and make completing their annual ale trail that bit trickier.

Heading into the front bar with its characterful wood panelling and beams, we found seven cask ales and three ciders available.  The regular 'Pig on the Wall', 'BFG' and 'Fireside' were joined by beers from Silhill, Hobsons, Evan Evans and Oakham.
I took a Silhill 'Bullion' through to the large rear room - a space which is much more recognisably BCA than the front bar, thanks to the wide expanse of familiar fabrics, beige wallpaper and a TV screen listing the beers.

Notices in the gents warned me to mind my language...

Talking of rules and regulations, the next place we were heading to has a few.

Dog Hangs Well (14 Corve Street, Ludlow, SY8 1DA)
The first challenge that the Dog Hangs Well presents is finding it.  There's no pub sign and nothing making it immediately obvious that this three-storey Georgian town-house is your destination.  Mrs PropUptheBar looked at me in alarm when I tried the purple door with the right street number on it, thinking I was about to bowl into some unsuspecting family's front room.
"Next one," said a kindly lady passing-by..."look for the light."

Aha.  This is lit at the times that the pub is open - which isn't for a great deal of hours or days of the week.
Once inside, a corridor takes you into a lobby with three rooms leading off it.  We followed the sounds of much chatter to the back room where we found the bar counter.
Rule one was cash only. 
A choice of Hobsons, Gun, or the 360° Brewery. for cask ales on this occasion,  Procuring a Hobson's 'Champion Mild' (on middling form) I took this through to the quieter quirky front rooms.
Rule two was no mobile phones, which I guess make my pictures below contraband...

A bit of arty mild smut in the snug over the piano, there.
Alongside a chaise lounge, church pews and partitions made from old doors.
The place has been set up in this historic building by the folks who were originally behind the Blood Bay.  The latter has relaxed the rules (by getting a card machine and being chilled about taking pictures, plus not batting an eye when some tourists checked maps on phones to find the restaurant they were headed to).  No such relaxation at the Dog Hangs Well, where I glanced at my screen whilst waiting for the solitary WC and got reprimanded like a naughty school boy.

The odd name was chosen as an amalgamation of the macabre practice of hanging poacher's captured dogs in the Royal woods surrounding Ludlow and the popular Gate Hangs Well pub name.

A bit of further exploration of Ludlow took me south of the town walls to the bridge over the River Teme.  Best poke my head into the pub on the far side.

The Charlton Arms (Ludford Bridge, Ludlow, SY8 1PJ)
Originally known as the Red Lion, this old coaching inn was renamed in honour of the Charlton family who owned the nearby Ludlford House and estate.  It's now very foody, with Michelin logos and AA rosettes on their website.  Rooms facing the water were set up for dining and was packed full when I visited.  But head left of the bar and there are casual areas where it's fine to loiter with a beer.
Cask available was Hobson's 'Best', Wye Valley 'HPA' and Ludlow 'Gold'.  I stuck local with the Gold, in good condition, taken through to a room showing the football.  The local lads were both friendly and very drunk.  All Aston Villa fans, Ludlow appearing to be an outlier in their catchment zone.

Back in the centre of the town, The Church is a recent Beer Guide entry and somewhere I figured I should check out.

The Church Inn (The Buttercross, Ludlow, SY8 1AW)
This is one of those places which dates back to the 14th century, yet is thoroughly 21st century with immaculate paintwork, big bright windows, and a smart modern feel to the busy rooms within.  
It's much changed with a one-time central servery being moved to a small section to one side.  That's where I ended up, out of the way of those finishing their evening meals.  
Note the old 17th century church bell on display at the side of the bar...

A Ludlow 'Best' here was my last pint in the town, with a pop soundtrack and ITV quiz show on TV rather than football.

It has taken me an age to reach Ludlow and I'm glad that I did.  Super castle, a decent set of pubs, and good quality cask ale all round.
I'll be waffling on about London in the next couple of posts - no timber-framed buildings on show.