Festive pubbing in Shaldon and Dawlish

Twas the last Friday before Christmas when we made a few stops along the south Devon coast from Shaldon to Exeter.

Traveling along one of the most scenic bits of railway in the country, we hopped off at Teignmouth station, then set off on foot to Shaldon.
It's 28-minutes walk from Teignmouth to Shaldon, not the 15-minutes I'd fraudulently promised
Mrs PropUptheBar. 
"There's more stuff in the way than I thought", I said by way of an excuse.
"Yes.  The sea."

You're almost touching distance from the most westerly point of Teignmouth, from where you can catch a ferry on a fair-weather day.  We - of course - went on a day with wickedly high winds curtailing ferries.

So, across the road bridge we headed, then through the charming narrow streets of the fishing village as we made our way to the Ferry Boat Inn...

Ferry Boat Inn (The Strand, Shaldon, TQ14 0DL)
A handwritten sign warned 'Drinks Only' which explained why there were only half a dozen in - I suspect the weekday lunchtime trade in Shaldon in winter-time are mostly looking for a bite to eat.
Come in the warmer months of the year and you can accompany your Doom Bar with food from the Garden Grill - the riverside seating is superb, but not in gale force winds. 

From a choice of three cask ales, I picked the local Teignmouth Brewery 'Deck Hand' a reasonable and well-kept 4.5% golden ale.
The best seat by the fire had been taken, so we sat at the end of the bar, 'Last Christmas' part of wall-to-wall seasonal music.

 

It turns out we needed food ourselves, which led to us investigating the eating options in the village.   We ended up in the London Inn, which had a place in the beer-guide in '20 and '21, Shaldon enjoying revolving entries over the past few years. 

The London Inn (The Green, Shaldon, TQ14 0DN)
There's a dining room to the left and bar to the right, although pretty much the whole bar was taken up by folks eating, so not really a place to settle for a lunchtime drinking session.
The cask choice was St Austell 'Tribute' or Otter, the 'Otter Bitter' badged as a house beer. Not a bad pint - doing a good job of washing down a hefty portion of winter veg pie and mash. 
Hefty price tag too, but not as much as the Tomahawk Steak...

Leaving the pub, there was no let-up in the windy weather, hence still no ferry and a trek back to the station. We caught the next train one stop to the coastal town of Dawlish.

During Oxford Beer Festival, I told one of the CAMRA folks that I'd been attempting to tick off all the beer guide pubs in Devon.
"Don't bother with Dawlish," he replied, kinda missing the point of 'complete'.

But I figured he may have a point and that these were unlikely to be pubs offering exotic craft beers for Mrs PropUptheBar.
I knew she'd be happy as long as we she saw the black swans...

The first of the two current GBG ticks involved a short walk along Dawlish Water, through a park and some narrow lanes, beyond the tourists and the fudge shops to the older part of town. 

The Swan Inn (94 Old Town Street, Dawlish, EX7 9AT)
The Swan proved to be a cracking basic locals pub with two rooms, although the lights were off in the back room which we didn't get a chance to see.
The front room had bench seating on two sides, fireplace facing the bar, a grand total of three tables, pub quiz at 7, darts board in a corner.

A handful of cheery locals sat at one table, one of them with his cans of Coors lined up.  I couldn't help pondering if he'd brought these with him or if they kept a 4-pack in the fridge for the fella because he rates canned Coors above the keg lagers available??

The Teignmouth 'Portside' suited me fine, the other cask option being more St Austell 'Tribute'.

"Mind the steps", the locals warned us as we left, suggesting the immediate downward drop beyond the door has caught out one or two visitors.  More to the point, watch out for the van racing along the road with no pavement at the bottom of the steps.  One more stride into the road and I'd never be completing all those Devon beer guide pubs.

Heading back towards the seafront, our second pub faced the ducks on the water, the bowling club, and green parkland.

The Brunswick Arms (9-10 Brunswick Place, Dawlish, EX7 9PB)
This is a Heavitree House, which in my limited experience means a proper boozer with fizzy pints being knocked back at a rate of knots, although whatpub claims it to be 'family orientated'.
Not on our visit, as we had to squeeze through the folks in the front part of the pub - spirits high as we'd crept past acceptable knocking-off time on the last working weekday before Christmas.
Reminding us of the time of year, we entered to Chris Rea's festive hit, pleasingly at a low volume that was barely audible over the chatter. 

Cask hand pumps were relegated to the quieter back section of the bar - 'Doom Bar', 'Jail Ale', Otter 'Bitter', Hanlon's 'Yellow Hammer' - all of which I shunned for the cask 6% Sandford's Orchard cider.  

 

Heading out into the dusk, we made our way to the next train back to Exeter.
I've explored to the pubs of Exeter pretty extensively, but opening hours have always led to the Exeter Brewery Tap eluding me.  I just happened to have timed it just right this time...

Exeter Brewery Tap (Unit 1, Cowley Bridge Road, Exeter, EX4 4NX)
The brewery is located in a red-brick building adjacent to the train lines, five minutes walk from St David's station, the final approach through a dark gravel car park with the challenge of avoiding the big puddles in the potholes.
With limited opening, and signs pointing you down a corridor past the brewing kit, I figured this may be a brewery tap of the basic variety.  But the bar turned out to be a fairly big room with bench seating, old pics and breweriana on the wall and quite a pub-like feel to it. 

Someone's got carried away with the Christmas outfit..

The four cask beers available were 'Avocet', 'Ferryman', 'Fall's Over' and 'Lighterman', so nothing unusual with all these being easily found in this part of the world.  But you get to drink it a few meters away from where it's created and I couldn't deny I had a superb pint of 'Falls Over'.

It took a visit to the Imperial (very busy, far too many Christmas jumpers) to get the Exeter Brewery Christmas beer (the Santa's Sack at the top of the post).

Then as luck would have it, we just missed our bus, which meant that Mrs PropUptheBar had no choice but to partake in some craft beer in the Cuckoo Taproom to end the evening.
A good nightcap for a good day out on the south coast. 

Exe Ale Explorations

In which I head down the western side of the Exe estuary, onward to Dawlish, before ending up on the brewpub beer and craft murk in Exeter.
All in a good day's pub ticking.

I headed out of Exeter late morning on the 2B bus, alighting at Cockwood harbour.

It's a picturesque spot.  The railway line westward from Exeter runs across the bank at the side of the harbour, with small boats able to sail through a bridge under the tracks at high tide.
Cockwood may only be small, but it does have two pubs, both of which appear in the 2022 Good Beer Guide.

Best visit both of them then - first up the Ship Inn...

The Ship Inn (Church Road, Cockwood, EX6 8NU - web)
Both the village pubs are renowned for their food, so I figured I'd be the odd one out popping in for a pint.
Indeed most of the tables in this small(ish) pub were booked, but I did manage to get a nice seat by the bar.  We're in peak Devon tourist vicinity here, although the couple sat at the next table were pub locals, as shown by the chef popping out to chat to them, telling them that West Ham would beat Spurs in the Carabao Cup that evening. (He was wrong).

Four beers on the bar - St Austell 'Proper Job' and 'Tribute', a Dartmoor 'Jail Ale', and - my pick - the Black Tor 'Raven'.
Beer-guide quality ale in a nice, relaxed, country-pub atmosphere where I was quite content.

It's not far to amble from one pub to another - I was in the Anchor a minute after leaving the Ship.

The Anchor Inn (Cockwood Harbour, EX6 8RA - web)
This is the picture-postcard pub, looking glorious with it's black and white frontage facing the harbour.  Once a seaman's mission, The Anchor is a 450-year old inn.
It's all wooden beams and nautical decorations inside, with lots of the seating being in snug booths with high-backed bench seating.  That curtails being nosey as to what fellow visitors are up to, so I just sat in my own booth drinking my Exeter 'Avocet Ale' and reading the local CAMRA magazine.

I won't look back at this and wonder what time of year I was here!

I timed my departure from the Anchor to tie in with the bus, but unfortunately the bus didn't time its arrival to tie in with me.
Fifty minutes I stood at that bus stop.
"I'd wait a bit longer" the nice old lady in a bobble hat waiting alongside me suggested when I decided to give up.  And of course she was right.  It came just as a turned the corner, necessitating an unimpressive dash back, a tut and an 'I told you to wait a bit a longer'.

That delayed bus scuppered my plans to explore Dawlish a little more thoroughly.
Just time for one pub, another beer guide tick, the White Hart Inn.

The White Hart (6 Albert Street, Dawlish, EX7 9JY - web)
This was a great little basic drinks-only boozer.  An unfussy front bar and open-plan design leading to another seating area at the rear.
There was just the one cask ale on the bar -Teignworthy 'Gun Dog', which did the job, although it's not my favourite beer.

There was a lot of jovial banter between the regulars on the front tables and the staff at the bar.  Much of it 18-certificate.
Selective ear-wigging snippet: "he brought me a lovely bunch of flowers and was on his best behaviour, but three pints later he was asking if there was any chance of a shag".
Probably best I hadn't brought my mum.

I really liked the White Hart - a proper pub if ever there was one.

But please can the toilet doors (along with the recent swivel chair seating found in Axminster) be put into the dark closet marked 'things you shouldn't see in pubs'...

Sober as a judge or six pints worse for wear,
there's no way of tackling these doors gracefully

That enormous clock in the bar proved handy to make sure I drank up in good time to make my exit from Dawlish. 

Pub life in the White Hart.

Just long enough to have a quick look down at the seafront, where the JCB's are in a constant battle with the elements to keep the train line running.

Mappiman has recently blogged about a Devon trip - all enjoyable reading and enough to deter me from Air B&B's forever.  It was through reading those posts that I learnt that the Turks Head in Exeter had now re-opened as a pub, making me keen to pay it a visit.

The Turks Head (57A High Street, Exeter, EX4 3DJ)
Located next to the historic guildhall, the pub dates back over 700 years and is one of the oldest in these parts.  As befits an historic inn, there's a tale that Dickens used to drink here and that the Fat Boy from the Pickwick Papers was based on an employee at the pub.

It closed in 2005 and became an Italian restaurant which in turn shut in 2018.  This year it reopened as a pub, featuring a ground floor room, plus two rooms, a second bar and a rooftop outdoor space upstairs.

Their own beers come from the microbrewery behind glass screens beyond the bar...

I picked the very drinkable Turks Head 'Witches Brew Stout'.
And watched the constant comings and goings, with lots of raucous folk and Christmas jumpers.  The Turks Head was bucking the Dec'21 trend of quiet pubs and doing a good trade.

And to finish, with Mrs PropUptheBar having arrived in Devon and demanding craft beer to recover from her train journey...
Little Drop of Poison (154-155 Fore Street, Exeter, EX4 3AT)

I'd hoped to visit here earlier in the year, but at the time WhatPub was showing this craft bar as being permanently closed.  I'm glad it's not - it's a great place.

 

Some odd and intriguing beery concoctions brought the evening to a close, after a varied and interesting day out in Devon.

Next up:Newton Abbot