Old Red Lion, Tetsworth

One new Oxfordshire tick in the Good Beer Guide for me, on a short Saturday afternoon trip.  We headed down Oxfordshire's bumpiest stretch of road (possibly) - the A40 to Tetsworth.
The 700-or-so residents of this village, 12 miles south-east of Oxford, have a choice of a few places to drink...
There's the sports and social club - no real ale, but proudly advertising their Sky and BT Sports.
And there's the Swan, an Elizabethan coaching inn, now a bar, restaurant and antiques centre.

The Swan in the background & the type of car that I imagine antique enthusiasts drive.

I was going to visit the Swan, but the patrons in the garden included gentle-folk taking afternoon tea and chaps in tweed jackets sipping wine and smoking cigars.
I decided to give it a miss.  They probably wouldn't even have let me in.

My much preferred option, on the main road through the village was
The Old Red Lion (40 High Street, Tetsworth, OX9 7AS - web)

The Old Red Lion, Tetsworth, Oxfordshire

Job available for good all-rounder.

As you walk through the door there's an odd partition and door dividing the bar into two sections and creating two drinking areas.  I thought it would be better as one single room, but WhatPub tells me it's been put in place to create a pet-free area for allergy sufferers.  

The partition serves the chap who comes in after me well.  Not avoiding pesky pet hairs, but in order to pretend not to see me on the other side and claim he was there first when the bar lady arrives back behind the counter.

The choice of two ales is 'Old Speckled Hen' or XT 'Four'.  My XT was the last one from the barrel, still drinkable but a little past peak condition.  

The pub is unusual in that it also houses the Village Store, just to the rear of the right hand room, complete with revolving greetings card rack outside the door.
They also offer food, with a range of £5 breakfast options, a cafe menu and specials board.
And bed & breakfast.  Pub diversification.

The Village Store, at the rear of the pub.

I'd once have taken it for granted that any reasonably sized village would have a shop and a pub, but these days they're a rarity.  The Old Red Lion serves as a community asset by multi-tasking as cafe, store and pub, which can only be a good thing.

Just a one-pub micro-post.  Usual pub-crawl craziness will surely resume shortly.