You can't Drink all Day if you don't Start Early!

Newbury Pub Explorations

On a sunny Saturday we set off into the depths of West Berkshire to visit a few of the pubs of Newbury.
Our journey took longer than usual due to the dreaded weekend rail replacement bus service beyond Theale.  Our bus driver did a 360° turn around a roundabout when we were almost at Newbury station, then drove us around the outskirts of town.  "Are you lost?" a passenger eventually asked, before directing us back to where we should be.

In all the excitement we forgot to check where the pubs were located and in which order we were going to visit them.  So we called into the Catherine Wheel for a strategy planning meeting.

The Catherine Wheel (35 Cheap Street, Newbury, RG14 2DB - web)
This was my favourite of the town's pubs when we made it here a few years ago on a wet wintery day.  It's downfall this time around was a lack of custom - just us and an old boy reading the paper, who took a reserved sign being put on his table for later in the afternoon as his cue to leave.
But the selection of ales was splendid, my Animal 'Ocelot' US-style brown ale being quite superb.

The folks behind the Catherine Wheel have opened a second venture a few doors down the road in the Market Place.  This focusses on craft beer and street food for hip young types like myself. 😏

Spare Wheel (17 Market Place, Newbury, RG14 5AA - web)
Mrs PropUptheBar was looking forward to this place, my attempts to build up the excitement of Wadworth 6X in the Lion having failed miserably.
So it was quite a let-down that her pick from the 17 draft beers was something that she didn't like...   "Is it supposed to taste like that?  Untappd says it should be sweet.  Should I take it back?"  I guess the keg beer could be off, but I'm no expert.

We ordered food in the Spare Wheel from a kitchen located somewhere beyond a hatch at the back of the bar, in which burgers, burritos and nachos were created.
Super nachos with my veggie chilli...

And two craft stouts, 'cos one at a time is never enough.

Lunch sorted, we decided we'd make a revisit to the town's micro pub. 

Cow and Cask (1 Inches Yard, Newbury, RG14 5DP).
This is one for the micro pub purists - a plain square room with just a couple of tables and the beers racked in one corner. No music, no TV screens, no nonsense.  And nowhere to hide, plunging us into a conversation with the landlord and three locals before we'd managed to sit down.
Topics included:
Pubs of Oxford and Newbury; Public transport; Brewing beer in your garage; Ancestral family members invading Lithuania.  Spot the odd one out.

Three beers were available straight from the barrel, my pick being a very drinkable Hop Kettle 'Super Session IPA' (White Horse 'Stable Genius' or Butts 'Barbus Barbus' being the other options).

 

We made the short stroll through town to the Lock, Stock and Barrel, which wins the prize for best location of the day, if not the award for cheapest pint...

Lock Stock and Barrel (104 Northbrook Street, Newbury, RG14 1AA - web)
Approached down an alleyway from the shopping street, this Fuller's inn doesn't look especially remarkable.  But head across to the locks on the Kennet & Avon canal and you can see its good weather appeal - outdoor seating lining the waterway, and rooftop terrace.

It's pretty modern and functional inside, with one long room divided into two.  It was the busiest place we encountered all day and we'd been well and truly beaten to the outdoor tables.  Then the folks with the small dogs beat us to the last seats inside, leaving us to perch on a table with no chairs, vertical drinking.

Being a Fuller's house, the hand pumps dispensed Pride, ESB and Seafarers.  But the usual Dark Star 'Hophead' had been switched to 'Nørdland', an interesting, fruity Nordic IPA with that kveik farmhouse yeast that I normally turn my nose up at. 

It was less than a 5-minute walk up the road to The Lion...

The Lion (39 West Street, Newbury, RG14 1BD - web)
Tucked away a little in the backstreets, this corner pub was rebuilt in the 1980's.  You couldn't really get away from the sport here, with rugby on a couple of TVs and a small screen offering the alternative of grand prix qualifying.

We grabbed stools at the bar where we could examine the beer samples in jam jars. 
Trouble is, when three of them look exactly the same it doesn't really help decision making.  

I didn't fancy a 6X and am boycotting anything with a rugby themed name ('Dirty Rucker'...oh behave).  So it was the Nottingham brewed 'Primate Best Bitter' from Blue Monkey for me.

Whilst in the area, I wanted to tick off the nearby Beer Guide entry 3-miles away in neighbouring Thatcham.  To get there we hopped aboard a dinky bus, whose £2.60 fare included an extended tour of Thatcham's housing estate.

We were heading to The Wheatsheaf, whose Google presence was a little bit odd.
The main Google picture does contain the pub sign, but has the Parish Hall behind it instead of the pub itself...

The second picture will be better, won't it? 
Nope...

????!

This is what The Wheatsheaf actually looks like...
(I uploaded it to Google to try and put the world to rights).

The Wheatsheaf (14 Chapel Street, Thatcham, RG18 4JP)
It's a simple down-to-earth boozer - an L-shaped room around a bar counter hand-built by the landlord.  There were a half dozen folks sat around the table in the window, passing comment on the full-time football scores coming in on the TV next to them, with a couple more customers utilising the pool table at the back of the room.
I had my eye on the leather armchair next to the heaving bookshelf, with Northern Soul seven inches stuck on the wall above...

The customers in the Cow & Cask had been trying to direct us into the backstreets of Thatcham, figuring we'd need to see Delphic Brewery's shiny brewing equipment in a double garage.  
Probably for the best we were far too late for that, but got to sample the local brew here.  The Delphic 'Wheatsheaf Best' is brewed especially for the pub and was the only cask on offer, with a second hand pump used on occasion.

Finishing our beers, we walked to the rail station to pick up the homebound replacement bus service.  But could we pass sensibly through Reading without being tempted to Phantom Brewing or any of the pubs near the station?  
No, of course we couldn't.