Falmouth Pub Crawl

In which we set out to visit the seven current Good Beer Guide pubs of Falmouth, with Heritage, hills, Bass and Cornish pasties on the agenda.

First up, the handy early opener, situated next to a harbour which even the grey skies weren't going to stop looking picturesque.

‘front (Custom House Quay, Falmouth, TR11 3JT)

This was one of the late great Alan Winfield's top 5 pubs.  So I was raising my first glass of Atlantic stout to Alan, even though he'd be frowning at my list of 7 pubs for the day and wondering where the other 17 on the crawl were.

'front is located in a single cellar-style room, attention from the entrance distracted somewhat by the dominant Fish & Chip shop signage.  Under the vaulted ceiling was a long bar, tables along one side of the room, a comfy sofa corner and a space for live music with instruments hung from the wall.
Real ale ruled, with a long run of hand pumps dispensing a range of different styles from boring brown bitters to pale ales and sea salt stouts.

The background music veered the right way for me here, moving from TLC to a second airing in two days of No Doubt, then to Hendrix and some cracking 60's psych guitar.

Draining our the glasses at 'front, it was time to tackle our first hill of the day.
Quay Hill led us to the Oddfellows Arms...

Oddfellow’s Arms (Quay Hill, Famouth, TR11 3HA)

They may have opened at noon, but I don't think the landlady expected anyone to be ambitiously climbing the hill and visiting the pub right on the dot of opening.  She was sat at a table to the side with the newspaper laid out and the volume of the music cranked up.
"I'll turn that down", she said as she came to serve us.  No don't - it was as good as pub soundtracks get, featuring Martha & the Muffins, The Beat, and Elvis Costello.

This was a tiny place, with a basic trad front bar and a room to the back dominated by a pool table.  
Beers on the bar were a Padstow Brewing Co 'May Day' (which I would usually have chosen, except I couldn't abide with the seasonal discrepancy), and two from Sharp's: 'Atlantic and 'Special'.

I picked the Special, without realising it's the same thing as 'Sea Fury'.  Doh.

Traditionally I deduct a ½ point  on my imaginary pub-scoring system for anywhere that has one of those 'beer, helping ugly people to have sex since 1862' signs.
Cripes, how many points do I have to take off the Oddfellows after a trip to the WC?...

Okay.
Let's do the classic.

Seven Stars (The Moor, Falmouth, TR11 3QA)
This Victorian pub has been run by the same family since 1868, with local clergyman Rev Barrington Bennetts serving behind the counter for fifty years until his death in 2011.  I wonder if he poured my beers when I first visited, fresh-faced and oblivious to just how good the pub was 20-or-so years ago.

It's fantastically unspoilt.  Stepping into the bar is like stepping through a time warp as long as you don't pay attention to how much you're being charged for the beer.  A narrow room, with the counter taking up the whole of one side, bench seating by the windows and a couple of tables by the fireplace at the end.

There was a superb beer selection listed on a small blackboard propped on the bar next to the boxed cider.  Two stouts and a mild: Sharp's 'Nut your average', Padstow 'Pilot', and Treen 'Cloud Cuckoo' mild. 
But...y'know...Bass...

As it was still early doors, mid-week, there was just the old boy and his dog at the far end of the room, with a couple more locals making their way in while we there.  
The chap behind the bar overheard our conversation as we planned what order to tackle the rest of the pubs in (yes, this stuff is planned!).  He was most enthusiastic about the Seaview Inn, telling us they had Penzance 'Potion No.9' on - the best beer in Cornwall, he claimed.

Leaving the Seven Stars we called into the award-winning Cornish pasty shop...

 

Three of the seven pubs down, the next one was a bit of an oddity, as you'll see from the two non-conventional pub pictures below...

 

Beerwolf Books (3-4 Bells Court, Falmouth, TR11 3AZ)
This was previously the Falmouth Working Men's Club, hidden up an alleyway from busy Market Street.  It was opened in it's current bookshop/beer bar incarnation at the end of 2012.

Heading up the stairs we were confronted by table tennis action to one side of the open-plan room, the bar to the other side, and a section in the corner containing the bookshelves.

I'm not entirely sure I liked it, but it was the busiest place we visited all day and seemed to have found a winning formula.  There were family groups, people trying to play table tennis with babes in arms, young hipster coffee drinkers, and surf dude types with pints of beer.

With several cask ales from Penzance Brewery I picked the ‘Crows-an-Wra’, a crisp golden ale, whilst Mrs PropUptheBeer made a bolder choice, opting for the Weird Beard 'Ryeclops Rising' 8.5% imperial stout.  

Our next destination was a climb up the hill again to the Seaview Inn.
Only to discover we hadn't checked the opening times properly and it was a late-afternoon opener.
We marched up to the top of the hill, then we marched back down again...to the Moth & Moon, close to the bus stops, Spoons and the Seven Stars.

Moth & The Moon (31 Killigrew Street, Falmouth, TR11 3PW)
This proved to be a modernised terrace pub which was probably much more rough 'n' ready when it used to be the Mason’s Arms.
There's still a feel of the cocktail bar that it first reinvented itself as when the name changed. 
The blackboard next to the bar advertises £9 espresso martini's, the lighting was dim, night lights were on the tables, and the soundtrack was easy-listening jazz.  Not really the kind of place I could warm to, despite the Atlantic 'Winter Red' being in good condition.
The micro first floor outdoor smokers table was an unusual feature though...

Right, let's try the Seaview Inn again...
Trust the one pub that we had to go back and forth to a couple of times to be furthest up the hill.  This is Jacobs Ladder, which we became quite familiar with...

And this is the Seaview Inn, still not open when we made it back for the second time...

Seaview Inn (Wodehouse Terrace, Falmouth, TR11 3EP - web)
We could see the landlord sitting inside doing his crossword and obviously determined not to unbolt the door a minute early.  A group of four lads and a solitary dog walker joined us to loiter outside the pub - all of whom got served before me, as was completely expected.

On the earlier recommendation of the landlord from the Seven Stars, I ordered the Penzance ‘Potion No.9' and decided it was nice enough, but probably not the best beer in Cornwall.

The Seaview Inn is a sizable place, all open plan allowing you to do a whole circle, round the back past a servery, into a section with a pool table and back to the front of the bar where you started.  Pretty much every table had a sign on saying who it was reserved for later, suggesting that this is somewhere which gets busy of an evening.

 

We just had the one pub left, although it did involve navigating those steps once more and trudging uphill again to reach the Boathouse.
It may have been dusk on a grey day, but I could still appreciate the great views up here across the water...

The Boathouse (Trevethan Hill, Falmouth, TR11 2AG - web)
I really liked this multi-roomed two-level pub.
Plenty of outdoor terrace seating on the ground floor, whilst the bar itself is up a flight of stairs.  Separate rooms lead off this, with large windows making the most of the elevated location and wonderful vista.

There seemed to be a hefty amount of table reservations for later in the evening, at which point I'd probably grumble about the place, but with a side room to ourselves and a gorgeous pint of Treen’s ‘Sunbeam’, this was a fine end to the Falmouth pub crawl.