Southampton Pub Crawl

Cast your mind back to November 2018: counting-down to Christmas, the Daily Express predicting terrible winter weather, and supping ales at the Oxford Beer Festival.

Volunteering for this probably provided me with the most exercise I got all year - those bar units don't get up to the first floor of the Town Hall by themselves y'know!
But volunteering was also great fun and now in March 2019 we were heading southbound on the A34 to visit Southampton on the Beer Festival Helpers Trip.

Arriving at midday we opted to make our way to Southampton's oldest area by the quayside with our eye on a brewpub as the first point of call.
Dancing Man (Town Quay, SO14 2AR - web)
Located close to the River Test, this building would once have sat right at the waters edge  prior to the land in front of it being reclaimed.  It has been a wool store, a jail for French prisoners-of-war and a maritime museum over the years.  

Dancing Man Brewery - Southampton

And what a great place to start our day.  Now housing the Dancing Man microbrewery, this is a characterful bar with a fantastic range of beers on offer - from best bitter to grapefruit IPA to milk stout and most points inbetween
Too early in the day for a 9% 'Super Liquid' double IPA? Yep, probably.
With lots of quirky decorations throughout the two floors it's a comfortable and popular place and somewhere I'll certainly make it back to when next in the city.

Upstairs bar and dining at the Dancing Man.

Next up we called into the Heritage Pub-listed Red Lion on the High Street - which I've covered here on a separate post.

It's a magnificent old building with historical tales attached to it, although not the best venue of the day that we encountered for beer choice. 

From one of the cities oldest pubs to one of it's newest: two doors along the High Street we visited

Crammed Inn (48 High Street, SO14 2NS)
This small bar opened in October 2018 and is located in what was once Oceans Gift Shop.
Leather sofas take up the front section, with high stools and tables to the rear, with an interesting selection of art and maps adorning the walls.

The 'Loxhill Biscuit' brewed by The Crafty Brewing Company of Dunsford, Surrey, was a lovely beer, with Belgian Biscuit malt giving it a toasty, nutty flavour.
Also on offer was a second Crafty Brewing ale, plus a bitter by Flowerpots Brewery.

A short walk back down to the quay took us to the
Platform Tavern (Town Quay, SO14 2NY - web)
This was built in 1873 with the name being derived from a quay opposite the pub which was known as the Platform.

The Platform Tavern, Southampton.  Lilac.

It has a Titanic connection with a plaque at the door stating that Mr James McGrady, whose body was the last to be pulled from the wreck, lodged here, with the pub being his last address.  Back in 1912 you would have been able peer out the window and see the ill-fated vessel when it docked nearby at Dock Berth 44.

This afternoon the pub is much quieter than I guess it would have been back in the shipping heydays.  Dancing man logo's appear throughout, left over from it's time as the original site of the brewpub, prior to them relocating a short distance to the wool store.
On this visit we had a choice of 6 beers, the pick of which were a Steam Town 4.2% session ale called 'Reefer' and Dark Revolution's  'Velveteen Stout'. 
We settled down at the Platform Tavern to grab a plate of food, with a tasty chilli providing some sustenance for the rest of the day ahead.
 
Next up, we backtracked on ourselves to visit another historical pub, in this case dating back to the 15th century.
Duke of Wellington (36 Bugle Street, SO14 2AH)
This is a stand-out building, with a timbered frontage.  It's been a pub since 1494 when the building was purchased by brewer Rowland Johnson.  It's also been called the Shipwrights Arms, prior to becoming the Duke of Wellington in 1815 in celebration of Wellington's victory at the Battle of Waterloo.

The pub was busy this afternoon, mostly with diners sipping G&T's and complementing the fish and chips.  The beers here come from Wadworth of Devizes, with six hand pumps in operation, covering their core range.  It's a characterful, historical pub, but I wanted more unusual local ales that I couldn't easily get back in Oxford. 
For that, we walked a little way eastwards into what our tourist map told us was the Maritime Quarter.

Caskaway (47 Oxford Street, SO14 3DP - web)
These 'tasting rooms' are at the hipster end of the mirco-pub spectrum. A large beer-board advertised 14 'craft' keg offerings covering Milkshake IPAs, 8% Saison's and Breakfast Stouts, and plenty more besides.  Alongside the craft there were three ales served on gravity, as well as a good range of ciders.  We stayed here, amongst the nautical decorations, for a couple of beers from the extensive range.

So, six stops completed around the old town and we were hot-footing it a mile-and-a-half northwards to make it to another drinking area: the Bevios Valley.

Disappointing lack of forest from Forest View. 

Time starts to go a bit haywire at this point in the day.
At the first couple of pubs I look at the clock and seem to have all the time in the world...no problem to make it everywhere I want to get to.  Then, somewhere around 3:30pm time seems to suddenly speed up. A conscious countdown to the coach pick-up begins and we're re-evaluating our route and trying to decide how many more of the pubs we can make it to in the day.
The first we were determined to visit is a respected Good Beer Guide regular...

The Guide Dog (38 Earls Road, SO14 6SF)
This is a superb backstreet boozer, situated along quiet terraced streets.  This afternoon it's attracted a number other folk from the Helpers Trip who've found their way here through various different routes.  For me, that's one of the joys of the trip - continually bumping into folks you know in the recommended pubs.
"Oh no, not you again", they say. 
In a jovial way, not really meaning it.
Probably.

Back-street classic - The Guide Dog, Southampton

The Guide Dog has a sizable range of cask ales on offer, with several choices from Flowerpots and other local breweries to choose from.  I selected a 3.8% pale ale, 'Stoke' brewed by Steam Town Brew Co, and we sat in the relaxed ambience of the pub admiring the Southampton FC memorabilia on the walls.

Just up the hill, 5-minutes on, we next found ourselves in the
Bookshop Alehouse (21 Postwood Road, SO17 2ES)
You'll probably be able to guess what this used to be prior to becoming a micro-pub... 

Indeed, they even have a run of bookshelves along one wall with books for sale.  It gives Mrs PropUptheBar the chance to immerse herself in 'Roundabouts of Great Britain'.  
A welcome break from having to listen to me all day long, no doubt.
There was a warm welcome to be had in the Bookshop Alehouse, with an enthusiastic barman talking us through the beers available.  Lots of good options here with Red Cat, Eight Arch and Wild Weather ales but I plumped for Dark Revolution's 'Orbital', a 3.2% ABV pale ale hopped with citra, mosaic and equinox.  For such a sensible strength beer it was packed full of flavour and thoroughly enjoyable.

Books and Beer

The clock is ticking fast, the halves are being downed quicker and the pub visits getting shorter... How many more can we get to, we ponder, as we race down the hill to
The Rockstone (63 Onslow Road, SO14 0JL)
Speedy visits (and beer, allegedly) reduce my memory of places and my recollections of the Rockstone are a little vague...
A u-shaped pub room around a brick-fronted bar; 
lots of 'reserved' tables; a fine choice of ales; 
Tony Goulding making a noisy entrance... 

The Rockstone, looking splendid in the early evening. 

Time eventually got the better of us and we had to skip the London Brew House.  We poked our head in and received a report on the beers (too cold, apparently), but didn't have the time to try these ourselves.  A little further on was
Belgian & Blues (184 Above Bar Street, SO14 7DW - web)
This being the closest bar on our map to where the bus was picking up it was a logical last stop and no surprise to find a number of familiar faces in here.
This was a cool basement beer bar, with lots of little nooks and crannies and a superb selection of beer on offer: local brews, craft delights and, as the name suggests, Belgian beers.
I offset the sensibility of the earlier 3.2% ale by picking 'After the Storm', an 8.3% stout by Left Handed Giant.  Well, it was the last one of the day.

This had been a great day out.  Southampton had proved to be an interesting destination where we'd been to a variety of venues from traditional pubs to modern bars, micro's and a brewpub.
It just remains for me to say a big THANK YOU again to the folks who put the time and effort into arranging this trip as a treat for the beer fest volunteers.
Cheers!