Uxbridge, Harrow and Ruislip Pub Explorations

A post from the north-west corner of London, taking in canal-side pubs, Fullers 'London Pride', a prestigious private school, and more Wetherspoon's that anyone really need to be subjected to.

I've sat on the Oxford Tube countless times as it pulls off the A40 at Hillingdon to pick up and set down a handful of passengers.
Why do they get off there?  I figured I'd hop off and see what I could see.

Discovery one: Hillingdon covers a big area and its current GBG listed pub is a heck of a long way from Hillingdon station and the Oxford Tube bus stop.  I stopped half way down Long Lane (clue in the name there) to check I was actually going the right way.  Thirty minutes after alighting the bus, I finally found myself at pub number one.
Where I vowed to get the blog post written quickly enough to give you chance to pop the date in the diary for the Simply Red tribute band...

The Red Lion is located in Hillingdon Village which would be quite nice were it not for the 4-lanes of Uxbridge Road running straight through the middle.  There's the Church of St John the Baptist, another inn called The Vine, lots of green space, and a run of shops which includes The Village Fish & Chips (who I can confirm do great chips).

Red Lion Hotel (Royal Lane, Hillingdon, UB8 3QP)
The Red Lion is a Grade-II listed building dating back to the 16th century when it would have been timber framed.  It got a Georgian re-fronting in 1800; became a Fullers pub in 1905; and was massively expanded in 2003 to include 45 bedrooms in a motel-style block to the side.
The first couple of rooms surrounding the bar have a good historic feel to them with wooden beams and pillars and big fireplaces.

So, what do you get in the historic Red Lion?
You get Lenny Kravitz on the stereo, those dreadful chunky oversized bar stools, a really pleasing old uneven low ceiling, and  two hand pump dedicated to London Pride. 

It was understandably very quiet pre-noon, just a couple of folks tucked away in corners and a thoroughly bored-looking member of staff at the bar.
Well, at least I gave him something to do, pulling my pint and taking £5.90 off me.
The 'Golden Times' is a collaboration with St Austell and seems like the Cornish brewer giving tips on how to concoct 'Proper Job'. A little less crisp and hoppy, but thoroughly enjoyable.

I had a fairly long walk ahead of me to reach Uxbridge's nearest Good Beer Guide pub.
Up the road - along a short path by the River Pinn - skirting along the top of Brunel University - through suburban streets to the Grand Union Canal.
Just up the canal towpath by the Rockingham Road bridge was the General Eliott.  The side of the pub that looks out onto the Grand Union is a winner (top pic) - the roadside entrance not so picturesque... 

The General Eliott (1 St Johns Road, Uxbridge, UB8 2UR)
Ironically, this is named after a teetotaller, the General George Augustus Eliott being best known for defending Gibraltar during the siege of 1779 to 1783.  I guess his military exploits may have still been fresh in the mind when the pub was established in 1820.  The General has lent his name to half-a-dozen pubs throughout the country, including a local one to me: South Hinksey's lost pub within the Oxford ring-road.

So, what do you get in a canal-side pub named after a teetotal General?
You get Wham's 'Freedom', Loose Women on the telly, Jӓgar Bomb beer mats, and 'London Pride' in a Cruzcampo glass.

Other cask options were available, but the Pride has been craftily positioned at eye-level deterring attention from Landlord or Side Pocket.

The beer was on 'acceptable' form, using the new categorisation on CAMRA's scoring system.
I elected to sit inside which was the preserve of the elder custom, whilst the hi-vis, students and youngsters opted for the waterside seating.

Returning my glass to the bar, I departed the General Elliot and made the short walk up to the busy centre of Uxbridge.  There are enough pubs here to warrant spending the rest of the afternoon in Boris Johnson's old constituency.  Although how satisfying that would be, I'm not so sure.
Instead it was straight to Spoons... 

The Good Yarn (132 High Street, Uxbridge, UB8 1JX)
This is currently the second of Uxbridge's two Beer Guide entries having made the grade for the past couple of years.
A narrow frontage on the High Street suggests this is going to be one of the smaller JDW's, although it stretches back a fair way to provide a good number of tables.  The building was previously Pearson's menswear shop before becoming a relatively early Wetherspoon's in 1994.

Guest cask ales on offer came from Sambrook's, Twickenham, Rebellion, and Oakham, priced at the very reasonable £2.30 a pint.
I picked the 'JHB', the golden, hoppy ale being Oakham's very first brew and a former Champion Beer of Britain.

On good form - it went down well.
I settled in the raised rear section of the pub, where the tables were squeezed in a little too close together and the clientele were a diverse bunch.
The most unusual feature was the colourful skylights, which I just about manged to photograph over the heads of the neighbouring folks without looking too suspicious.

Making the decision to explore further beyond Uxbridge, I drank up and wandered back up the High Street to one of the capital's more striking tube stations.

Next destination: Rayners Lane.

This is an area that was still rural at the beginning of the 20th century.  Development began in the 1930's as a 'Garden Village', shortly before a station on the existing Metropolitan Railway was added.  So, no ancient inns here in a bit of London where you'll do better for international cuisine than cask ale.  Truman's contributed the great-looking Rayner's pub in 1937, but it's currently sitting closed and unloved.
Wetherspoon's has little in the way of competition for anyone hopping off the tube at Rayners Lane station and looking for a pint.

The Village Inn (402-408 Rayners Lane, Rayners Lane, HA5 5DY)
This opened in 1993, converted from former shops.
It's the rear section, down a short set of stairs from the bar, that is the best looking bit.
Lots of booths, lots of uniformity, lots of table clutter.

Cask on my visit came in the form of Windsor 'Kohinoor', Sambrook's 'Volley', Twickenham 'Naked Ladies', and Exeter 'Prince of Darkness'.  The latter for me - a beer that I enjoyed a fair few times during Devon explorations but haven't seen for some time.  In all honesty, not in the best condition here.

I decided to head off on foot from Rayners Lane and walk the mile-and-a-half to the very pleasant streets of Harrow-on-the-Hill, built around the 11th century St Mary's Church and still retaining a village-feel within the cosmos of Greater London.  'Affluent' says Wiki.

My destination was a pub which is on the National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors...

The Castle (30 West Street, Harrow, HA1 3EF)
It's believed there has been a pub on this site since 1706, although the current building dates back to 1901.  It's not been changed a great deal since then, securing its heritage listing, with the doorway and the grand wooden partition within providing the wow factor.
The entrance features the name of the pub in ironwork over the door and in the superb mosaic flooring... 

A decent number of customers were sat in the first room and at the bar, where Fuller's beers flanked the Mad Squirrel and Siren guests.

Pint of London Pride, please.
Taken to the big sofa in front of a fireplace.

The Pride was - as I believe they say - drinking well.
The Doors 'Light my Fire' played at a sensible volume from the speakers.
Whilst I took in that marvelous wooden divider with stained glass-windowed top half and three-foot high service door to stoop through.

A lovely pub.
Moving on, the route towards the tube station took me uphill and past the buildings of Harrow School, with their strict 'no entrance to the public' signs. 

Safe to say the Harrow Wetherspoon's doesn't quite live up to the school buildings when it comes to architectural charm.
I'm also going to hedge my bets that none of the sweary tipsy-looking blokes in the Moon on the Hill were masters from the school.

The Moon on the Hill (373-375 Station Road, Harrow, HA1 2AW)
This is another long-standing Spoons, having opened in 1991.  The building spent most of its life as Wheatland's furniture shop prior to becoming a pub.

It consists a pretty small single-room with seating on two-levels in an L-shape around the bar.  And it was busy - I think I took the last unoccupied small table, the place a hubbub of conversation.

Cask options beyond regular Wetherspoon's beers were local: Redemption 'Big Chief' and a Portobello duo of  'APA' or 'Market Porter'.
It's been a while since I had a 'Big Chief', the Tottenham brewery's chewy 5.5% IPA, served here in decent condition.
Certainly a lively Spoons.  The big group on high stools behind me held court on Colombian referees, petrol prices and Trev's holiday in Tenerife.  Very loudly.

Leaving Harrow,  I caught the Metropolitan Line a couple of stops back westward to Ruislip.
Up through the bustling shopping street, I was heading toward what turned out to be my favourite pub of the day...

The Hop & Vine (18 High Street, Ruislip, HA4 7AN)
You don't get a vast number of micropubs in Greater London but from my experience the ones there are tend to be pretty darn good.
The Hop & Vine opened at the end of 2016 in premises that were previously a café.  It's of the regular level seating / music / craft beer type, as opposed to the high stools / talk-to-each-other / three cask ales and that's yer lot variety of micro.
In fact, the beer list had me gorping ay it, struggling to chose, whilst the staff waiting patiently.

The beer ticker could happily sit here for several hours and skip all those silly Wetherspoon pubs that I keep on insisting on visiting.
Just the one for me: Fownd 'Labyrinth of Lost Souls'.  Yep, all that careful studying of the beer list and I end up picking entirely based on the best name.  Only to discover the labyrinth is something video-game-orientated rather than the prog metal album reference that I hoped it would be.
A superb beer in excellent condition.

Set on top of the beer mats advertising the local DIY store.

The music was obscure pop/rock, the pub dogs were ace, the locals a friendly bunch.

A great pub visit.
All that was left for me to do was to end the afternoon's explorations in one last Spoons: JJ Moon's a 15-minute walk away on the doorstep of Ruislip Manor station.

The busiest venue of the day, where I supped  a Twickenham 'Orange Zeus' whilst checking where the Oxford Tube picks up in Hillingdon for the journey home.

West Midlands Explorer - Sutton Coldfield to Birmingham

A pub crawl through a part of the West Midlands that I'm not at all familiar with, starting in Sutton Coldfield, then making my way on foot via a handful of pub visits to Erdington.
There will be some marvelous ornate tiling (above), a pint of Strongbow, an empty brewpub, an old cinema...
...and a fair few of these...

The day started with the best JDW breakfast I've had in a long time, at the Bole Bridge in Tamworth.  Where I began to formulate a plan for the day based on £2 fare-cap bus journeys to take me in stages back to Birmingham. 

First up, bus number 110 from Tamworth, hopping off after 45-minutes in Sutton Coldfield.

Far too early, as it turned out.
Which led to a second 'Spoons before I'd even reached midday.

Bottle of Sack (2 Birmingham Road, Sutton Coldfield, B72 1QG)
One of the odder JDW names, I thought.  It actually comes from a line in Shakespeare's Henry IV: ‘Fill me a bottle of sack: our soldiers shall march through; we’ll to Sutton Co’fil’ tonight'.
I'd wrongly assumed that Sutton Coldfield was more modern that Shakespeare.  And I had no idea what sack was.  A sherry-like drink, apparently.  Quaffed by the Tudor gentry, whilst the common folk drank dark ale.  I'll stick to our modern version of dark ale, thanks.

Black Hole Brewery beer had provided the nightcap the previous evening, and the first beer of the day today.  The 'No Escape' was a moreish porter with chocolate and damson flavours.  Great stuff.
Other cask options at the Bottle of Sack were Black Hole 'Cosmic', Abbot 'Reserve', Oakham 'JHB', or Oakham 'Citra'.
Loads of early-doors drinkers in the Bottle of Sack, spread out over the ground floor areas and a first floor with balcony where you can watch the proceedings at the bar with a birds-eye view..

The clock had ticked past 12, meaning the local Good Beer Guide entry would be open.  Just over 5-minutes trek around the back of the shopping centre took me to the Station pub...

The Station (44 Station Street, Sutton Coldfield, B73 6AT)
This was predictably quiet, just one couple managing to arrive before me.  Which probably explains why my beer was of very dubious quality.  The Birmingham Brewery 'Brummie Pale' proved worryingly difficult to pour and was unsurprisingly at the lower end of average on the quality scale.
Which is frustrating at a hefty £5.55 a pint.

Should have gone for the Holdens, or perhaps the Doom Bar with handy tasting notes.

It's probably not fair to judge the Station based on a quiet weekday visit shortly after opening time.  It looked to be quite an interesting, sprawling, ale-house-kinda place, that I may have enjoyed had there been a crowd and a bit of life to it.  But I didn't really enjoy it, sat reading the day's news, listening to Wilco in the background, and scowling at my dubious pricey beer.

Leaving the Station, I back-tracked on myself, whizzed past the smokers outside 'spoons, and decided I may as well pop my head into the Brewhouse and Kitchen a couple of buildings further along the street.

Brewhouse and Kitchen (8 Birmingham Road, Sutton Coldfield, B72 1QD)
Same problem as the Station - this was a big place with barely anyone in it.  I don't time my visits very well for peak excitement.
There were two cask ales available on the bar, a bitter and extra pale ale, along with several B&K keg options.  

I went for the earthy and twiggy 'Xtra Pale' which appeared to be brewed at the Lichfield Brewhouse & Kitchen rather than on the shiny kit that I was sitting in front of.

Making my leisurely way through the town centre earlier I'd called into the bookstore and glanced at a paperback titled '111 Places in Birmingham that you shouldn't miss'.
Sutton Coldfield Park was one of the 111; the other in the local vicinity being the old Odeon...

This eye-catching Art Deco cinema was opened by Odeon in 1936, originally with just the one screen with a whopping 1,600 capacity.  It became the Empire in 2006 and operated for the next 14-years until Covid came along and wreaked havoc.  I do love the architecture of trad cinemas and am pleased to see that there is some hope this will reopen soon.

Sadly the next 15 minutes trudging through residential streets was rather on the dull side.
I was pleased to arrive at my destination in Boldmere...

The Bishop Vesey (63 Boldmere Road, Boldmere, B73 5XA)
A second JD Wetherspoon of the day (third if we're counting breakfast and coffee in Tamworth).  This one is named after John Vesey, a 16th century bishop and benefactor of Sutton Coldfield.
It also proudly advertises 15 years appearing in the Good Beer Guide, with a decent selection of cask - two from Enville, one from Burton Bridge, and one from Oakham.
But the staff member who served me didn't seem to be too fussed about serving a good pint of the 'Enville Ale'.  I think there's gonna be a bit of a head on that...

Dumped in front of me, the staff member had already departed the bar - job done.
I waited for someone else to come along.  They looked quite miffed that I may want a top-up.

Service aside, I was quite impressed by this Spoons - doing a good trade for early week lunchtime, interesting posters and history throughout, two floors of seating.

And a Roof Terrace, where I felt I should sit, this being a lesser-seen pub feature.  Here's the view of Boldmere Road from the terrace, enabling you to keep your eye on the barbers, vape lounge, and retail units for rent from Burley Brownes estate agents...

Dark clouds approaching, I quickly realised it was cold and finished the rest of my beer inside.

It was a very easy journey to my next pub - turn left out of 'Spoons and keep walking down the same road until reaching the Boldmere Tap, another 2024 Beer Guide entry.

Boldmere Tap (363 Boldmere Road, Boldmere, B73 5HE)
Ah, Joules.  Love 'em or hate 'em.  With the usual mix of bare board floors, wood paneling, vintage signs, and ale house clutter, they do seem to be trying to recreate many of the pubs I used to drink in in the nineties.
Joules Pale, Slumbering Monk, and Target Golden Ale were all available on this visit.  I opted for the Target, sipping a half pint under a bicycle in the quiet side room, UB40, the Proclaimers and Bonnie Tyler providing the soundtrack.

Right...let's do some pub heritage.
By way of the lollypop ladies...

I was really impressed that they came out to stop the traffic just for me.  No-one's assisted me crossing the road for many a year.  I felt slightly guilty when I realised I needn't have crossed that bit of road after all, but never mind.

Just a few strides from that junction is the Red Lion.  What a clock tower...

The Red Lion (105 Station Road, Erdington, B23 6UG)
Okay, so the broken windows, faded England flags, and dubious characters coming out the door to smoke as I went in, were less promising.
But, wow!  That bar counter...

And, erm, function room seating.
There were a reasonable number of punters settled in the Red Lion, mostly on the more comfy cushioned bench that ran under the windows.
My favourite pub soundtrack of the day by a long shot: Sweet Child of Mine, Summer of 69, Mr Brightside, Sex on Fire - all at quite a hefty volume.

And on the bar? Fosters, Guinness, John Smith Smooth, Carling and the Strongbow which I ended up with.  Extra points for the branded glass.

I carried on from the Red Lion to the bustling heart of Erdington - shopping precincts, busy main roads, and another JD Wetherspoon.
Arriving just as the rain that had been threatening all day started to fall.

The Charlie Hall (49 Barnabus Road, Erdington, B23 6SH)
'Spoons number 4 of the day was situated in an old bingo hall and named after local actor Charlie Hall who was a regular in Laurel & Hardy films.
This is one sprawling long room with the bar at a midway point and some elaborate wooden booth seating near the back.
Another sizable crowd of daytime drinkers.

After enjoying a great value Milestone 'Pacific Islander' pale ale, I figured it was about time to bring my explorations to a close.  After all, I still needed to be on-the-ball to navigate New Street Station and catch the right train back to Oxford.
Handily, there is frequent bus service from the nearest stop to the Charlie Hall, with the bus I hopped aboard taking a fast route into the city centre.

I'd neglected to eat all day though, so planned to call into the Bundobust for some sustenance.

Bundobust Birmingham (38 Bennets Hill, Birmingham, B2 5SN)
I never did get to see this building in its short spell as the Pint Shop.
But I'm happy to see it housing another branch of the marvelous Bundobust chain.  The beer board advertised 18 beer lines, 6 of their own, and Sureshot featuring heavily amongst the guests.  A great choice, although my cask option - Thornbridge 'Galaxy/Simcoe' wasn't in peak condition.  Never mind, it was the food I was looking forward to...

Right: well-fed, time to catch that train.
I'm sure all will be okay, just as long as I don't stupidly divert to Brewdog and order something sour, strong, and garishly coloured.

Doh!