Pubs of Playhatch (& Loddon Brewery)

Looking at the map of Oxfordshire in the Good Beer Guide, Playhatch seemed to be a county outlier - probably really tricky to get to, I thought.
But on closer inspection it's just a couple of miles north-east of Reading.  So, setting off on foot through Caversham, this is where we headed on a Saturday afternoon with a view of visiting the Beer Guide pub and a brewery tap room.

Reaching Playhatch, the first pub that we came across had a fantastically welcoming sign for us vegetarians...

Butchery.

The Shoulder of Mutton (Playhatch, RG4 9QU - web)
The Shoulder of Mutton is a good, traditional-looking village pub with two rooms either side of a central bar and a conservatory added on the back.
You have to approach via the back door through a pleasant walled garden - the front doors are no longer in use due to the hazard of opening straight onto the road.  No good for repeat business, I guess, if your visitors get run-over on the way out.

The Shoulder of Mutton, Playhatch - one of Berkshire Life's top 10 pubs in the county.

Perhaps predictably, it's orientated more towards eating than drinking - all tables are set with cutlery, with a handful of folk tucking into their luncheons.  But that said, with just cutlery on the tables (as opposed to place mats and wine glasses), there would be nothing amiss with just calling in for a drink.  Even more so if the weather is good when you can sit out in the garden - wishing well and hedgehog plant decoration present and correct...

There were two beers on the bar: Ruddles 'County' and Loddon 'Summer Snowflake' - very Locale with the brewery being just up the road.  Sipping the fine Loddon beer, we succumbed to stopping here for lunch ourselves. 

Just over ½ mile on, sitting looking lonely at a road junction along the A4155 is the Good Beer Guide listed Flowing Spring.

Flowing Spring (Henley Road, Playhatch, RG4 9RB - web)
I do declare that I've found a bit of an Oxfordshire pub gem here in the south of the county.

In common with the Shoulder of Mutton, the front doors facing onto the road haven't been used in many a year. The entrance is around the back via the car park and a set of stairs leading to the sun-trap balcony.  Heading inside from here, the first room you encounter is a cosy bar, along the side of the building. 

Beers - and the pubs own branded glassware.

Just beyond the bar there is a small side-room with signage marking it as the 'Quirky Corner'...

Cluttered.

Weird shit you find in pubs - one of an
ongoing series

There are plenty of other quirky touches in the decor throughout the rest of the pub too.
Just wait until the cuckoo clocks go off.

There were 6 ales on hand-pump along the bar - a fine selection - and great to see them selling well on this Saturday afternoon.
Thumbs-up for a pub where folks come in looking for Guinness and the barman tells them "We don't have it, but we have something better..." directing them to the Binghams 'Macchiato Stout'.

There was a steady-flow of rambler-type folks making it to the Flowing Spring this afternoon.
I really enjoyed our time in here - a great pint of Flying Monk 'Jackdaw' and a great overall feel to the place.

There are a few generally recognised signifiers of great pubs: outdoor toilets; Bass lamps above the door; mosaic tiled flooring at the entrance...
But I don't reckon you can go wrong with a pub that has won a "most ferret friendly landlord and landlady" award! 

Ferret Award = Good Pub

We'd risked life and limb walking along the road to get to the Flowing Spring.  Not recommended.
So it was a pleasure to leave it on a much safer and nicer footpath.  Straight across the road from the pub there's a gap in the hedge leading through to a path which climbs a gentle hill on it's way to Dunsden Green.  Which is where the Loddon Brewery happens to be.

Loddon Brewery (Dunsden Green Farm, Church Lane, Dunsden, RG4 9QD - web)
Opened in the summer of 2018, Loddon have built a smart, light and airy taproom into their rural brewery.  It's open into the early evening from Tuesday to Saturday, with three cask ales available and several keg lines.

It's surprisingly busy on our visit, with several obviously local folk from the village calling in, a few walkers with dogs on the outside decking area and a couple of people calling in to buy bottles from the shop.

We didn't have to talk to each other here, because we could watch 'A Place in the Sun' on the TV and there was an ample supply of SE Berks 'Mad Cow' CAMRA magazines to read.

The beers don't have far to travel to the bar from the brewery in the 300-year old barn next door.  And they're in as good a form as you'd expect - I had a lovely 'Citra Quad', followed by this New England IPA...

Billy Bragg wasn't looking for it, but here it is.

Back at the village green, we hopped on the 800 bus to take us back to Reading.
And a swift visit to the Nags Head, perchance?

Sunshine and Ale in Maidenhead

Maidenhead comes in for some stick, not least from one of my favourite pub bloggers.
So with the added incentive of the annual beer festival, I made my way there to see if it was getting an unfair press.

This was forecast to be the hottest July day on record.  Maybe too hot, but everywhere looks better with the sun shining, doesn't it?  And down by the River Thames things were looking quite promising...

What were the town's detractors talking about?  

Ah, yes, here's a view down the High Street.

To be fair, there's a massive building project between the train station and the High Street and one day, when they finish it, Maidenhead may be the envy of the Thames Valley.

The Honey Pot - not on your average, mild-mannered Maidenhead pub crawl.

Just the two pubs from the Good Beer Guide to visit today.  
What with the political merriment throughout the week I couldn't bring myself to include the GBG-listed Conservative Club on my itinerary.  
Instead, the first stop, 5-minutes walk from the River Thames in a residential area was the Grenfell Arms.

Grenfell Arms (22 Oldfield Road, Maidenhead, SL6 1TW - web)

Lots of modern pub touches here: stylish art print in the fireplace, a mammoth amount of cushions, gin cocktail list and Untappd beer menu on the TV.
On the bar were two Greene King beers alongside two from the local New Wharf Brewing Co. New Wharf's 'Natives' was an excellent traditional English IPA, which went down a treat.

Attempts to weedkiller the foot of the bar not welcomed.

With the temperature rising up into the 30°s it would have been handy if the two pubs were close together - perhaps separated by a leafy, shaded walk along the Thames. But no. They're over a mile apart at opposite ends of the town and I arrived at the Craufurd Arms hot & bothered and sweating buckets. Nice.

Craufurd Arms, Maidenhead

The Craufurd Arms (15 Gringer Hill, Maidenhead, SL6 7LY - web)

Enjoying a fine Rebellion Brewery ale
at the Craufurd Arms

I instinctively want to spell 'Craufurd' differently, but the name comes from the one-time Craufurd College for boys which the pub would have been next to back in the 1800's.

Under threat of closure in 2017, it was saved by the local community who now run it. 
And run it well - they've received the Slough, Windsor and Maidenhead CAMRA Pub-of-the-Year Award in both 2018 and 2019.

It looks much larger from the outside than in, where there was just one single open-plan, light and airy room.  Cricket on TV.  And a respectable number of punters for a weekday afternoon, away from the town centre.

"Clothes on at the bar please!" admonished the bar lady to a regular customer who came in without his shirt on.
Not to me.
Even on a stonkingly hot day like this, Maidenhead doesn't deserve the sight of me walking around topless.

Beer festival aficionado's brave the hot weather at Maidenhead. 

I made my way back through town, under the railway tracks and up Shoppenhangers Road (good name!) to Desborough College where the Beer Fest was taking place.

You had to be completely bonkers to come out to a beer festival on such a sweltering July afternoon.

There were several summery brews on offer...New Wharf's 'Raspberry Ripple', a mango pale from First Chop Brewing Arm and 'Batch 22', an intriguing iced tea pale on nitro-keg, brewed by Bone Machine Brew Co (Pixies fans?).

My favourite of the lot was 'Citra Bergamot Saison', brewed by Two By Two from Tyne and Wear.  Absolutely superb.

With a lot of top-ups of the water bottle, I cooled down a bit and made it through into the evening.

As for Maidenhead...well it's not that bad is it?
I reckon the 'spoons, Maiden's Head and Off the Tap would have all been worth a visit had I not been headed to the beer fest.
Everywhere looks okay when the sun's shining.