Cats, Cider and Craft - Bristol Pub Explorations

On a gloriously sunny weekend we began our day by strolling the streets of Bristol and popping our heads into the museum.  Then headed down through Cabot Park with a plan to walk around the harbour with a few refreshment stops en-route.
But before we reached the waterside, we came across an old favourite...

Bag of Nails (141 St Georges Road, Bristol, BS1 5UW - web)
I'm not especially a cat fan, so I shouldn't really like the 'Cat Pub'.
But I do enjoy a quirky pub, and anywhere your beer is served over a sleeping cat in a box on the bar is a little bit quirky.

You also don't get pillars with 22 pub rules chalked onto it in your average Greene King dining pub.

Music is on vinyl from a record player in an alcove.  Nashville country from Margo Price whilst we visited (Rule#11 No interrupting a record once a side has begun).

But there's more to the Bag Of Nails than watching the cats roam around and examining all the odd decorations and artwork.
There was a cracking beer selection of five tempting cask ales, with Newcastle's Northern Alchemy 'Harambee Pasadia' being my choice.  A "hard ginger ale", the description of which I only read after selecting it - I kinda wished I'd just had the best bitter.

There were four good lookin' keg options too, nicely described on the beer blackboard as "cold, fizzy, expensive".

It was just a few minutes stroll across onto the harbour-side path, then along to the Grain Barge.

Grain Barge (Mardyke Wharf, Hotwell Road, Bristol, BS8 4RU - web)
Built in 1936, this barge transported barley and wheat across the Severn estuary between Bristol and Cardiff.  In 2007 it was converted into a floating pub and moored on the northern side of the harbour, opposite the SS Great Britain.

Unsurprisingly it was proving popular on a sunny lunchtime, particularly the outdoor seating on the upper deck. We grabbed one of the last available tables inside, watching the sail boats breeze by, whilst the bar got gradually busier and more chaotic.

The Grain Barge is run by Bristol Beer Factory, with three of their cask ales on offer, Fortitude, Notorious and Independence.  I had a pint of the the 'Notorious', a nice sensible-strength session pale, packing in plenty of hops and flavours for it's 3.8% ABV.  

We stayed here for a bite to eat from a menu of locally sourced & sustainable seafood and veggie options.  For me, a hand-made pie from Five Acre Farm, with mash and greens (wot, not mushy peas!).

We could have made quite the pub crawl of the harbour had we picked more stopping points.  The Pumphouse, The Cottage and the Ostrich were all en-route, but two of these required the patience to queue up to gain entry, with the waterside seating proving a huge draw. 

Here's the view from Underfall Yard, as we looped around the western end of the harbour...

And here's the next pub...not the best picture due to some dazzling sun from any other angle, but you do get a man in an Ajax shirt, which you don't see everywhere.

Orchard Inn (12 Hanover Place, Spike Island, Bristol, BS1 6XT - web)
For the beer drinker, three ales (Otter, Bewdley and Bristol Beer Factory) were being served straight from the barrel at the back of the bar.
But The Orchard was CAMRA's cider pub of the year in 2009 - which is recent enough, as time moves slowly in the world of scrumpy.
So I figured I had to switch to the cider, picking from the list below...

Oof..5.5% upward, there could be trouble ahead.
I rather randomly picked the Harry's 'Scrummage' from the mid-point on the list.  Tasty and super-easy to drink. 
Which makes a nice change - I normally manage to pick the really challenging ciders that taste like they've been strained through a farmer's underpants.

I really liked the Orchard - if there weren't so many other places I wanted to explore in Bristol I could have just settled here for the rest of the day, working through the list and getting increasingly tipsy.  It was a thoroughly comfortable back-to-basics pub.  Most customers had taken their drinks across the road into the sunny bit of the street, but it gradually began to fill up inside whilst we were there.

It's Bristol, so the post is required to contain some street art - in this case, quite a famous one...

Our next point of call, a little further along the redeveloped harbourside, was a Craft Beer Diversion...

Wild Beer at Wapping Wharf (6-8 Gaol Ferry Steps, Bristol, BS1 6WE - web)
Wild Beer started brewing in rural Somerset in 2012 with a passion to do something a bit different, including wild fermentation, dabbling with unusual yeasts and foraging ingredients.

The decision today was whether to stick with the familiar, but lovely, 'Millionaire Stout'; try one of the collaboration beers they'd concocted for the Six Nations; or go completely left-field.
Left-field sounds good - I went for 'Zintuki' a 7.3% blend of saison, sour beer and apple juice.

Odd...but strangely enjoyable

Because the weather was nice the outdoor tables were at a premium (the deckchairs weren't proving popular though).  This left more room inside, where we grabbed a good spot in front of the bar.  It's a typical modern place where fans of ventilation systems can study the exposed ductwork.  I personally liked the unusual mural at the end of the room.

Four very different venues on our route, all enjoyable, all making me realise I should journey out this way more often.

More from Bristol in the next post, when we head to the big modern brew pub by the river and stumble into the heavy metal bar.
Cheers!