Pub Odyssey 32

Tuesday 16 August:  THE FIVE HORSESHOES, LITTLE BERKHAMPSTED (Chris Haden, Mike Horsman, Elvis Pile)

COMMENT:  A barebones turnout with Malcolm in America, Steve in Ireland, Andrew in Austria, Roger and David away at foreign venues unknown to me; the baby boomers booming you might say.  The low turnout was a pity because the Five Horseshoes was a good location;  a lovely old rambling building (grade II listed, late 16th or early 17th century, extended and remodelled in the 19th century) with good cheap food, good beer and friendly helpful rapid service. Probably CAMRA would have turned its nose up at the Five Horseshoes because it is a chain pub belonging to the Chef and Brewer organisation.  This, in my view, is just beer snobbery; if the beer is OK, the surroundings attractive and the food good and reasonably priced, who cares?  But in a way I do see what CAMRA means.  By complete coincidence a few days later Anne and I, walking the Thames Path, happened on a very nice pub called the Kings Arms at Sandford Lock near to Oxford. We stopped and ate there and had nice competitively priced food, I had good beer, the pub was in (you guessed it) a lovely rambling old building.  Chef and Brewer again!  The same menu exactly, the same offers exactly, even the same literary quotes on the menus. The only thing that was different was the staff, just as friendly and attentive, but mercifully not the same people.  Otherwise you might have got the impression that when my back was turned they had hastily dismantled the Five Horseshoes and rapidly put it up again on the Thames waiting for me to arrive.  So pubcos do imply a certain lack of diversity.  But if its good quality, why worry?    

So I enjoyed the Five Horseshoes.  The only downer was those buggers Haden and Pile tooting me from behind as they cruised in their car up Robins Nest Hill to Little Berkhamsted while I laboured up on my bike. Experiences like that set the mark of suffering on a man.