Farnham Pub Explorations

Back at the end of July, our intrepid posse of pub researchers were en-route to Farnham by train, having completing part one of the day's itinerary in neighbouring Alton.

Farnham is home to around 40,000 folks (making it around twice the size of Alton).  It's situated within the Surrey Hills in countryside that offers lots of walking opportunities, so I'm feeling a little guilty now for doing nothing but traipsing around five pubs.

The first of these was on the main thoroughfare through the town centre, a street that would be charmingly picturesque if not for half of Surrey trying to drive down it on this afternoon.
We were on our way to the 2022 Fullers Pub of the Year...

The Queens Head (9 The Borough, Farnham, GU9 7NA)
The cask hand pumps take pride of place in their own section of the bar directly in front of the entrance.
Serving a trio of beers from the greater Fullers empire - Dark Star 'Hophead', Gales 'ESB', and 'London Pride'.  I went for the one of the three that I see least frequently, the 'HSB', which was on good form without being a beer you'd get overly excited about.

This was originally a timber-framed building which served as a coffee shop from around 1735 onwards.  It was given a 19th century modernisation with a red brick frontage and transformed to an inn.
Fullers seem to have done a good job of making this appeal to a wide range of customers.  It's comfortable to eat in without food dominating, has some snug spots to take your drinks to, and puts on regular live music (Dahlia's Comet and Beatroot appearing soon).  

My photography in the Queens Head was somewhat random.
I bring you my Queens Head gallery: her majesty's neck tattoos, barstool reading material, and tiffany lamps.

 

The local CAMRA folk in our group were discussing policies and governance.
Kentish Paul was being served a Club Ciabatta in the front room, because he's sensible.  We can't all forego food until the end of the day, then sit with Chinese takeaways in Retired Martin's hotel room.

You can get a full ciabatta review on Paul's blog.  In fact, what are you even doing here?  Paul provides all the pub background you need without any of my spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

I finished my half pint quickly and headed around the corner to get some lunch of my own.  After some nourishment I was found by one of our pub tour's stragglers who'd split from the rest of us and come to Farnham by bus.  Together we made our way through peaceful backstreets to the Hop Blossom pub.

The Hop Blossom (50 Long Garden Walk, Farnham, GU9 7HX)
This was built in 1864 and named after the hop fields which were once opposite this site.  No fields these days, but the outdoor seats by the flower tubs were a good spot to relax with a beer in this quiet location in the warm weather.

Inside, the pub is L-shaped with a bar counter straddling the corner, seating to either side and a bright conservatory added to the rear.
More Fullers fare on the handpumps, with the addition of a St Austell guest.

I ordered a half of the 'Anthem', St Austell's summery session beer, brewed with four English hops with some Cornish Gold malt thrown into the mix of grains.
The Hop Blossom was a pleasant little gem slightly off the beaten track, a wet-led town pub which is one of Farnham's two current 2025 Beer Guide entries.

There was little distance to cover between the pubs, our next destination being no more than a couple of minutes walk.
This was located on Castle Street, heavy on the parked cars, but saved from the traffic horrors of the main road and home to some lovely buildings.

The Nelson Arms (50-52 Castle Street, Farnham, GU9 7JQ)
This building was originally three 14th century cottages, parts of which became the Hand and Pen pub in the early 1600's.  It appears to have had a couple of name changes since, now named after Admiral Horatio Nelson who had a fondness for Farnham (or at least for a lady here).

Our beer choice came in the form of local Hogs Back 'T.E.A' or Timothy Taylor 'Landlord' or 'Golden Best'.
A lesser-seen Golden Best for me, right at the end of the barrel, although the landlord diligently came and replaced these with a new cask freshly tapped.

The internal beams are apparently original old bits of wood and are reputed to have come from a Tudor warship. One beam is said to once have Lord Nelson's eyeglass lodged into it, but someone half-inched that years ago.

A thoroughly pleasant pub with a bit of a shortage of mid-afternoon punters.

Right, onward, to a recent addition to Farnham's pubs that turned out to be a bit of an unexpected delight...

The Tellers Arms (75 Castle Street, Farnham, GU9 7LP)
This new Youngs pub opened in October 2024 after conversion from its former incarnation as Lloyds Bank.
The building dates back to the 1930's when it replaced an earlier bank with Tudor frontage which wasn't deemed to fit in with the surroundings.  Remarkably, it became a listed building just 19 years after being built.

It's a pretty impressive place...

The front is made up of a variety of seating options with lots of nooks and crannies.  A large U-shaped bar in the centre with eye-catching old bank clock cantilevered over it.  Beyond the bar the pub stretches on into a low-ceilinged parquet-floored lounge area, ideal for dining, sprawling on chesterfields, or hiding in the depths of some ginormous chairs.  

Ales on the bar were Young's Original, Hogsback 'T.E.A', and Surrey Hills 'Shere Drop'.  Gotta be the Shere Drop when in Surrey - an enjoyable beer, but the priciest of the day.
We stuck to propping up the high table in front of the bar, a table which continued the banking theme... 

A truly impressive pub conversion, which must have set back Youngs quite a few more pennies that make up that table top. Good luck to 'em - I hope it does well.

Talking of impressive pub conversions, onward to our final destination...

The Borough Beer House (6 Town Hall Buildings, Farnham, GU9 7ND)
Opened in 2023, this is the recipient of CAMRA's Pub Design Award in 2025 for conversion to pub use.  We were doing well in Farnham for award winners and Grade II listed buildings.
The Bailiff's Hall dates back to 1674 and is full of character...

The six cask handpumps served five beers on this occasion, a mild, a bitter, and three pales.  I opted for the murky Nightjar 5.1% 'Dua NEIPA', £5.20 a pint.
With all seats occupied downstairs most of us gravitated to the larger upstairs room.

Beyond the cask there was a superb offering of proper cider and 18 keg lines, all displayed on neat clipboards...

With third-of-a-pints on offer I indulged in a Vault City pear, chocolate and vanilla sour and a marvellous Yonder 'Mini Battenburg'.
Plenty more interesting beers in the Borough Beer House whose consumption would have made successful navigation of all those changes on the journey home challenging.

Just don't make any unnecessary stops in pubs on the way.
Doh!

The Old Ford (Lynchford Road, Ash Vale, GU12 5QA)
Well, it was right next to North Camp station and it was ten minutes until the next train to Reading.
The Old Ford is a Victorian pub that was built at the same time and in the same style as the station.  The outdoor seating behind the picket fence was proving popular, less folk within the crisply white and airy interior.

And you're possibly not allowed to leave Surrey without partaking in a Hogs Back TEA.

A lovely day out taking in a good selection of Alton and Farnham pubs.
Big thanks to Mick for putting the itinerary together, guiding the group around the route, and not diverting us into a wild-card shisha bar at any point.

Woking Pub Explorations

The chances of a scruffy pub ticker coming from Oxford for a pint in the Railway Club are a million to one they said.
But still they come!

This post finds me travelling to Woking, the original setting of War of the Worlds.  So when I arrived I made a beeline to get a picture of the fantastic Tripod statue on Church Street before those clouds could build up and spoil the blue sky background.

HG Wells wrote War of the Worlds whilst living in Woking in the mid 1890's.  I wonder what he'd have thought of Jeff Wayne's musical version, or Spielberg moving the action to New York...or of the local Wetherspoon's being named in his honour?

The Herbert Wells (51-57 Chertsey Road, Woking, GU21 5AJ)
The building that this pub is located in was previously a branch of Woolworth's, prior to opening as Spoons in 1995.  It's a big place, the bar and much of the seating in one rectangular room, with a quieter separate room to the left side.

This is a longstanding beer guide entry, serving up the regular JDW range alongside local Surrey Hills 'Gilt Complex' and 'Shere Drop'.

 

I ordered the 'Guilt Complex', a golden, hoppy, summery ale.  And yet another Mangalorian Cauliflower curry - an enjoyable quiet lunchtime pint with the food making for a sensible start to the day.

The Herbert Wells provided some competition for Dunstable's Gary Cooper for my Best Statue in a Spoons award...

It's quite appropriate that the pub has a statue within it, as Woking is full of them.

 

I believe this is the most statues I've encountered in a town since Skopje.

I won't include all of the pictures I took of urban art in Woking...although they're possibly better pictures than the one I took of the Railway Athletic Club.

Woking Railway Athletic Club (Goldsworth Road, Woking, GU21 6JT)
That's not the entrance in the picture above, although a pic of the main door along the side of the building wouldn't have been much more fetching.
It was also very much a 'ring buzzer for entry' kind of place.  Just don't advertise yourself as a complete weirdo by blurting out "I'm here for a beer guide tick" when the nice lady behind the bar asks how she can help.

There were two cask ales on: Church End 'What the Foxes Hat' or VOG 'Hotel Barrifornia'.
I opted for the Yakima hopped 'Hotel Barrifornia', very reasonable at £3.20 a pint, Eagles lyrics proving popular on the Untappd reviews.

The club consisted of one long room, pool table to one end with a solo player (good way to retain a winning streak), and a handful of blokes dotted around on the cushioned benches along the wall.
The regulars at the next table involved me in their conversation, ending on an ominous warning that "everything shrinks and shrivels in old age".  I can't remember the context.

With the centre of town seeming to offer slim pub pickings, I decided to make the short walk northbound to Horsell - once a village in its own right, now swallowed up into greater Woking.
I found my way around the dual carriageway which was in my way, then across the Basingstoke canal.
Aha, more statues... this time cricketers adorning both sides of the pedestrian bridge...

I think I got a bit impatient ambling along the Horsell road.
As soon as I rounded a corner and saw a pub I snapped a picture and strode right in.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the right pub - the Good Beer Guide regular - which was 50 meters further along the road.

The Red Lion (123 High Street, Horsell, GU21 4SS)
Okay, so it wasn't the pub I'd intended to be in, but they did have the local beer on offer at the bar.

This looked to be predominantly a dining pub, with seating on a couple of levels in an L-shaped room, all very bright, neat and tidy.  A few tables left of polite folk finishing lunch; smartly attired staff who call you 'sir'.
I was glad I'd put on a decent top on rather than my Bob Vylan t-shirt.

The Thurstons 'Horsell Gold' was a decent, well-kept pint.
But it was the original home of that brewery and the GBG entry that I'd made this walk for.

The Crown (104 High Street, Horsell, GU21 4ST)
With no disrespect to the Red Lion, this was more like it.  Two rooms either side of the pub, with a bar counter straddling both.  Of course I got it wrong and picked the empty one, then found the route round the back to find a table amongst the afternoon punters.

The Crown was the local CAMRA branch Pub of the Year winner in 2022 and 2023.  Definitely a real ale drinkers pub, with five hand pumps serving up beers from Thurstons, Church End, Triple fff, and Surrey Hills.  Just look at the neat and tidy tasting note blackboards.

Bonus points for proper beer towels - a rarity these days, now that most places have those bobbly bit rubber things on the bar.
I stuck with Thurstons brewery, ordering a pint of the American pale ale.  Thurstons was originally brewed in the back of the Crown, before moving to a separate site a couple of minutes down the road.
A great pint, enjoyed in comfortable surroundings, the folks around me doing the crossword in the papers, chatting, and sharing a bit of banter with the landlord.

I made my way back the same way to the town centre, checked the train times, and figured I could squeeze in a quick half before the next Guildford-bound service.

The Sovereigns (Guildford Road, Woking, GU22 7QQ)
I opted for the nearest pub to the station, close enough to have originally been called the Railway Hotel.  A name which I prefer - no idea where they got 'sovereigns' from.

We're in the world of Ember Inns here.  A sprawling place with multiple areas, modern decor,  sport on TVs, big pub grub menu, and three real ales to pick from.
And pretty much no late afternoon custom...

I still enjoyed my Rudgate 'Ruby Mild'.  It's my own fault visiting at quieter times, but at least I get the pick of the tables.
Here's the view through the window from my seat, Woking erecting its own fancy modern buildings next to the station.

Heck, there were a lot of traffic lights to wait for and building sites to navigate for such a short distance between the pub and platform.  I drank up quickly and made my way for the next south-bound departure.
Three trains and one bus made for a lengthy journey home, but I felt it had been worth it to wander around a town I don't know at all well, enjoy a couple of good pints, and see all those statues.

Staines and Egham Pub Crawl

A bit more Surrey, in which we indulge in the homebrew at Thames Side Brewery, discover that magnificent University buildings exist beyond Oxford, and gatecrash a baby shower.

As per usual...we started in Spoons.
A Spoons with a long frontage, minimal hanging basket effort, and a man getting comfortable in the hands behind your head pose in the window.

The George (2-8 High Street, Staines, TW18 4EE)
It's a relatively modern building, constructed in the '90's to replace a market which burnt down.  Prior to that you'd have found Tesco in this location, and - much further back - an old inn called The George, from which this took the name.

Alongside the 'Spoons regular beers there was Frome 'Funky Monkey', Maxim 'Double Maxim', and a Coach House 'Blueberry Best Bitter' available when we visited.

We ordered two of the above by the app, saving ourselves from standing in a Wetherspoon's queue, two identical pints arriving shortly after.
"Which is which?" we asked.
"Dunno, I just pick them up from the end of the counter and deliver them".

Hmm..that's a downfall of ordering by the app, isn't it?
Although, to be fair, there have been occasions where two beers have been poured right in front of me at the bar and I've still managed to forget which is which.

It looks like I didn't take any pictures inside The George.  I made up for that when we arrived at the Thames Side Brewery, a short walk away.

Thames Side Brewery (1 Hale Street, Staines, TW18 4UW)
This brewery was set up by a chap called Andy Hayward in 2015, moving a couple of times before settling here.
You'll find the brewing kit down one side, a stage at the end of the room, and various rescued furniture throughout a large open space.  It had a bit of a social club feel to it, albeit without the punters early on a Saturday afternoon for us to socialise with.

Nice jukebox and stylish seating in the front corner near the door..

And a hefty choice of beers available at the bar.  There were the Thames Side regular cask offerings, plus several 'White Label' series brews.
I'm a sucker for pump clips depicting slabs of vinyl and anything that claims to be limited edition.  Hence ordered two of these: the Deep Purple orientated 'Black Night', a tasty 4.3% stout, and - long beer name alert - 'You're never too old to rock & roll if you're too young to die".

 

The latter was a hefty 6.3% old ale, of the pond water murk variety...

I don't think I'd have wanted more than a half of it.  I would have been quite happy trying the other beers on offer, but needed to pace myself if we were going to make it to the rest of the pubs on today's list.
Despite it being quiet, I really did like the Brewery - good music and lovely staff in a taproom with a lot of character.

Before moving to the current site, Thames Side Brewery used to concoct their beers in a modern building on the riverside.  That site is now run as an independent craft bar, so we figured we'd pop our heads in and have a look.

If it's good enough for Gene Simmons, it's good enough for us. 

 

Last Hop (Unit 2, Thames Edge Court, Clarence Road, Staines, TW18 4SU)
As with our previous destination, this was a wide open space without enough people in it.  There was a stage for live entertainment, and a stack of those Tank beer things to one side.  It's smaller than the Thames Side Brewery, but has the bonus of the riverside location.

There were two cask ales on offer: Windsor & Eton 'Koh-i-noor' and Titanic 'Plum Porter'.
Both familiar, so I tried to order the strong Windsor & Eton keg stuff, only to be disappointed the Belgian Diablo and Storm had both run out, despite still showing on the electronic screen.
So I ended up with a local Stardust 'Innuendo' 6.5% hazy NE IPA.  Then drank it too fast when we checked the train times and realised how long it was going to take to walk to the station.

We moved on from Staines for the next part of our day out.
A quick march down to the station, then onto the South Western train for a 5-minute hop to Egham.  I did come here many years ago for the beer festival at the Services Club, beloved by the tickers but - other than that - this town is a mystery to me.

We walked along the busy A38 towards our pub, then got distracted by the Royal Holloway University of London.   This distracted us from our mission, as we diverted into the grounds, attracted by the impressive architecture on a grand scale.

And there I was thinking we had a monopoly on University buildings back home in Oxford.

Our destination was in quieter side streets, just beyond the bounds of the University campus.
And it had an absolutely top-notch pub sign...

The Happy Man (12 Harvest Road, Englefield Green, TW20 0QS)

This dates back to Victorian times when two residential properties were converted into the pub, original custom coming from the workers building the Royal Holloway College, who would have worked up quite a thirst judging by the size and intricacy of the parts we'd seen.

The pub has mostly retained the original layout, consisting of several snug interlinked spaces, the bar itself straddling the two front rooms.

Here's the cask choice on our visit...

Beers from London, Devon, Hampshire, and wherever Laines concoct their ales (they've become quite prolific and it can't all come from that Brighton brewpub).
I picked the Bowman 'Wallops Wood', predictably misreading it and asking for 'Wally's' Wood.  A decent chestnut coloured, malty bitter, enjoyed in a cracking proper pub.

We had a half-mile walk around residential Englefield Green streets to the next Beer Guide pub on our list.

The Beehive (34 Middle Hill, Englefield Green, TW20 0JQ)
The alarm bells began to ring when we saw the 'Fully Booked' A-board.  Then, as we squeezed through the crowds under the awnings to the side of the pub, it dawned on me that everyone was much more smartly dressed than I was (not difficult) and I spotted the flower displays and a large table of presents.  Baby shower.  Bugger.

I almost gave up, but popped my head back in through the side door and asked if we were okay to grab a pint and take it out to the front tables away from the event.  One check by the staff later and we were sat under the umbrella out front with a pricey pint of Pride.

WhatPub tells us the "Cosy well kept open-plan Fuller's local has a light and airy feel."
I'll have to take their word for that, having only seen it briefly in a state of chaos.
Not really a great pint, either, so a bit of a fail all round, our visit to the Beehive.

We walked from there back into the centre of Egham, with one last destination...

The Red Lion (53 High Street, Egham, TW20 9EW)
The Red Lion was packed to the rafters inside too, but with a much more pubby crowd.
There is a reference to a Red Lion on the High Street dating back to 1641 and an even older date-stone amongst some of the red bricks.  It would have once been a coaching inn on the London-Penzance road.

It has had a fair few refurbishments inside since the coaching inn days, becoming a smart and shiny open-plan place, football on the TV screens, lots of Madri and Old Mout cider being knocked back by a crowd of all ages.

I finished the day on the Courage 'Directors', which we used to think was the bees-knees when we drank it in the Withington Ale House as students in the 90's.

And with that, we were back on the train for the trek back through Reading and homeward-bound, several new Surrey Good Beer Guide pub ticks under my belt.