King’s Crown...

My Winchester wander continued, past another vacant pub...

Pink pub...

...and Handy Villas....

Handy for something....

...to the Winnall Industrial Estate  and a visit to the Red Cat Brewing Co. where I did my CAMRA Brewery Liaison Officer bit, catching up with recent developments etc.  The day’s winter beer theme continued with a half of their award winning Mr M’s Porter, which was very good.

Top Winter Beer Award....

And that’s as good as it got today - I should have stayed there and sampled some more ’never boring' Red Cat beers, but a pub blogger's job just isn’t that easy, and there were other pubs to visit.

It was a nice sunny day and back in the centre of Winchester,  I looked for somewhere to eat my ‘homemade’ lunch.  Thinking the quadrangle area in front of the Cathedral would be a nice peaceful and aesthetic location, I was disappointed to find it had been turned into a building site as the contractors were in the process of dismantling the temporary Christmas ice skating rink. 

Finally I found a bench in Abbey Gardens, and within a few strides of the entrance to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage fine dining restaurant, I ate my (considerably cheaper) home-made sandwich, which I thought was nice.

Just outside Abbey Gardens, is the statue of King Alfred the Great - wielding his sword and shield but unable to hold back the hords of invading motorists around him on the main thoroughfare. When I did finally manage to cross the road, there in King Alfred’s shadow was the next pub, funnily enough also owned by a King, a Greene one...

The Crown and Anchor looked a welcoming sort of pub, and according to a 2015 article by the Daily Echo’s roving pub reporter, it’s a favourite watering hole for pensioners, who apparently ‘go wild’ for the food...

Sure enough the few customers in the pub did seem to be of pensionable age, though fortunately there were no signs of any of them going wild...

Pensioners - resisting the urge to go wild over their food...

...in fact the pub was very quiet, and you would have hardly believed the bustling centre of Winchester was outside.  the pub had a nice atmosphere with the old bar and bar shelving worthy of particular note...

...and the sun streaming in through the front bay windows...

...but less so the Greene King ‘house’ wallpaper...

Symbolic?...

At the bar  there were the regular Greene King family of cask beers, Speckled Hen and Abbott Ale but there was also Belhaven Old Smoke Stack Stout.  Perfect I thought...I’ve never tried that before and it will keep the winter beer theme going for the day...

Looking for all the world like a still from a Guinness advert...

Unfortunately the stout wasn’t ‘smoking'...it was more like dying embers, and was definitely on the turn, with that tell tale acetic ‘zing' all too evident, a pretty poor drink.

As I did my best with the below par half of stout, I listened to a couple of old blokes on the next table chatting away to the young barman (who’d been foolish enough to come near enough to them).  They were telling him tales of Liverpool such as how they actually play 'Ferry Cross the Mersey’ when you’re on the ferry across the Mersey, and other interesting stuff.  To his credit the barman was very polite and stuck with it for 5 minutes or so.

Accessories for wild diners...

Tales of Liverpool (almost) exhausted the two old blokes got up and left, and allowing a few minutes to make sure I didn’t get drawn in by any stray Liverpool anecdotes, I followed them out...

Beer Mat Moment

Greene King - Abbot Ale - A side

Greene King - Abbot Ale - B side

GHGTTP Awards 2018 (Reviewed from the Bottom of the Garden).

Apparently it is ‘de-riguer’ (which is French for something...) for pub bloggers to review the year's 'pub achievements' and hand out prestigious awards...

...ok, if you insist...

But first, as 2018 was my introduction to the high octane world of pub blogging, a quick recap....

It all started as I sat in the hermitage early in 2018, my compost heap was gently steaming in the first light of dawn,  and I was reading my Beer magazine, when my attention was grabbed by an article about a group of pub bloggers and their exploits in visiting Good Beer Guide pubs the width and breadth of the land.  This had apparently brought them fame in the pages of this respected journal....

...I looked at their blogs and was ‘affected’ (in a nice sort of way) by their wit, knowledge, sheer athleticism (not to mention the adulation of their followers), and thought...

...I can’t do that...

...but I can visit (relatively local) pubs and jabber on incoherently about them on a blog.

Deciding this was an acceptably close amatuer approximation to professional pub blogging, I decided to give it go...and Garden Hermit went to the pub...

WordPress kindly hosted my first 50-odd efforts for free, but then, data storage allowance almost used up, they wanted money.  Fortunately Google’s Blogger apparently didn’t, so I set up camp there and Garden Hermit Goes to the Pub 2 continued the incoherent jabbering.

So, having reached reached the end of my first year of pub blogging efforts, and with my blog ‘views’ and ‘comments’ have reached the dizzy heights of double figures (just), it’s time to mention a few top GHGTP 2018 Awards (rolls off the tongue doesn’t it) that everyone will be talking about...

In no particular order...

Best Estate Pub in a Hampshire Village - as rare as rocking horse droppings - The Roebuck, Marchwood was quite a discovery and with a cracking pint of Ringwood Old Thumper on cask and fish, chips and mushy peas for £3.75, this had to be a top example of the estate pub breed.  Can it be beaten (outside of Solihull)?...

...not Solihull...

Pub with Best Customer Award -  without doubt goes to The Albion, Winchester.  Chas and his wonderful semi-fantasy gaming world, was a lovely man who could engage you effortlessly in conversation that you weren’t sure you wanted and couldn’t understand, and who kept the bar staff hiding behind the bar all day - or at least until he had to go.

...Chas (bar staff hiding)...

Best Themed Pub - The Titanic, Southampton, was a runaway winner with it’s doomed cruise liner memorabilia, and a very smartly dressed barman looking just like a steward from the ship.  Sadly though, the pint of Titanic Brewery Lifeboat also sank without trace.

...unsinkable...

Best Pub Atmosphere - was a tough one, though The Wonston Arms probably takes it (as well as a shed load of CAMRA awards), with a landlord who really cares for the community life of his pub, though on my visit it was probably helped along by CAMRA folk celebrating one of his awards.  A close second (without the help of CAMRA) was definitely the Salisbury Arms, Southampton, the locals providing a real buzz to the place on a typical Saturday lunchtime.

...award hotspot...

...great craic...

Best Beer in a Dining Pub - without doubt the Kings Head , Redlynch, probably the best cask Hopback Summer Lightning I’ve ever tasted (not that I’ve tasted that many)...

...diners and superb Summer Lightning inside...

Best Micropub - there are so many in Southampton and Hampshire, but it has to be The Peg and Parrot, Totton - a lovely little pub (an early version of the micro genre),  great atmosphere and most of all, a superb achievement in being one of the very few pubs in Hampshire to provide the hallowed Draught Bass...

...Hampshire Bass shrine...

and finally...
Best Brew Pub or Brewery Tap - I think this will have to be The Dancing Man, Southampton, a cleverly re-themed but preserved historic building, a great atmosphere and great beers.  Though not open to the public, on a private invitation visit with the South Hants CAMRA, Betteridges Brewery, Hurstbourne Tarrant also deserves a mention, in the beautiful old cooperage building, once linked to a historic brew pub in the village.

Dancing Man’s Wool House...

Beautiful Betteridges...

As for 2019 - will I ‘tick' (euphemism for a 27.5 minute visit and half a pint) every dining pub in Hampshire...?

...probably not - but never say never...

What a Goal (House)....

Another Winchester wander and straight off the train the first port of call is the old prison (11a Jewry Street Winchester) ....

Prepare to be incarcerated...

...not as a 'Norman Stanley Fletcher' you understand, as this is the Winchester Weatherspoons, The Old GoalHouse.

As you can see from the photo above it has an imposing facade which it practically shares with the church next door...

The building was the prison governors house,  part of the old prison which is thought to date back to the 1200s.  This Spoons is bedecked with information about historic Winchester and it's famous characters, including (but not limited to): King Alfred; Charles Peace, Diver Bill , Mary Tudor, Rick Stein and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall *
Read more on the Weatherspoons website.

*Ok the last two are more recent famous people two arrive in Winchester and don't yet feature in Weatherspoons Winchester historic hall of fame. 

It's great to be able to rely on Weatherspoons for that morning visit when most other public houses have not yet reached their lunchtime opening hour.  This Friday morning the GoalHouse had a modest number of customers dotted around the large premises, representing a wide range of society, young and old, respectable and not quite so respectable, workers with and without hi vis clothing, etc.

The variety at the hand pumps was less impressive on this occasion though, with what appeared to be a Greene King tap takeover, ably supported by Adnams and Molson Coors regulars.

Out of the 8 hand pumps there was two other beers on offer, Flack Manor’s Double Drop and Lamplight Porter from Longdog Brewery, so I had a half of that.  It was a good beer and though, at 11am,  it was no-where near lighting up time it was just right for a cold Tryanuary day.  90p well spent!

As I sat drinking my beer I soaked up the sights and sounds of the morning in Weatherpoons...

...the loud chatter of the two old soaks at the bar who were entertaining a female member of bar staff (though she probably was wishing she was somewhere else)....

....the clink of knives and forks on china from the tables where brunch (this is Winchester) was being consumed...

...the man and wife on the next table.  He with his two full pints of beer, doing the crossword, and she with a latte, engrossed in her phone...

Man lines up beers in anticipation of wife's latte refills....

...the young guys listening to stuff on their phones through headphones...

Life in Weatherspoons never stands still for long, and here customers were coming and going faster than the real prison service can receive and parole prisoners....

....the office workers finished their lattes and left to go back to the office, and the hi-vis men returned to their building work...

Hi vis men depart...

The man on the next table was still studying his crossword and was only half way down the first of his two pints.  His wife went to refill her latte....

One of the young guys with headphones was treated to a kiss by a female member of staff as she passed by with a jug of orange juice.  I assumed he was her boyfriend, unless Weatherspoons are trialling some new customer offers...

I finished my half and made my escape (no tunnel required)  into the mean gold paved streets of Winchester...

...not my latte...