In search of time lost in the pub

Belonging, beer and the secret language of the forest

With the release of my latest book, A Pub For All Seasons, I’ve already been asked what in my view makes for the perfect pub? It’s an obvious question, given the subtitle of my book is A Yearlong Journey in Search of the Perfect British Local. It’s also a question that I have met with before but which I did not think too deeply about apart from easy, quick fire answers but for once I would like to try and articulate my thoughts on what makes the perfect pub. So here goes. 

Given the theme of my book, the easiest and quickest answer is a pub that changes throughout the year and adapts to the roll call of the seasons. That was easy, wasn’t it. There is plenty more though. Beer is important, not necessarily the best in the world, but palatable and enjoyable. So a good beer choice, not a tickers’ delight but something that makes me want to stay and drink several pints. It can be either cask, keg or members of the family of lager. Strong beer for me, not mind-numbingly strong, but 5% upwards, something that has heft and weight on the palate and makes you relax and gets you to merge into your environment and become part of the fixtures and fittings perhaps. 

That then brings me to surroundings, the feel of the pub. I need to be comfortable and suited to the right environment and mood. I don’t mean massive armchairs into which you sink like a polar bear on a melting icecap, no something a bit less opulent, booths are good because they give you privacy but then stools at the bar have their place as does standing there chatting, vertical drinking. It could be the quietness and the calmness of a mid afternoon pub with very few people in, or I could be content with voices and jokes and stories and corny accolades for those who made it through the week being told and confidences being whispered and stories exaggerated as more people drift in. 

Then there is the sensibility of the pub. I am a great believer in the use of wood in a pub, welcoming wooden walls and floors that make you feel safe, that speak the secret language of the forest, the tranquility and silence of ancient woodland. So why is wood important? For me it is about comfort, and about how I like a certain sense of antiquity even if the joiners only sorted it out last week. Perhaps it’s the case that wood gets worn and weathered and I like what looks like the patina of age. I think of a pub I visit frequently in Exeter with the worn wooden floors and a wooden bar that looks as if it was put in when Noah came out of the ark.

What else? Maybe it is the ineffable sense of belonging that both the beer and the surroundings produce within me, so I think of my local in Exeter, the Topsham Tap, and how one Friday evening I didn’t want to leave because there were so many people coming and going that they gave the place a buzz and a liveliness that electrified me. So you could say it is the mood of the place that is important. You can either be energised or calmed and collected by this mood, another important aspect about a pub. 

Food? That is not really important to me as I don’t tend to eat out.

There is more. A sense of a pub’s history perhaps? A feeling that generations have come and gone through its doors, sat where I now sit, drank their beers, told their tales and then shuffled off this mortal coil. Maybe it’s the pub as a palimpsest (a word I overuse), as a place that has seen many things but reset itself time after time, like a manuscript that has layer after layer of words on its surface and below its surface. Other things I like in a pub are a sense of life, perhaps photos of the locals enjoying themselves, some of them going back decades, which shows you how the pub is rooted in its own community as you can see at the Duke of York in Iddelsleigh. So that is another thing to applaud, a sense of community, which a pub has and makes you feel part of it even if you have only been there for an hour or so. Dogs most definitely, a friendly licensee and staff, a genuine welcome and surroundings that encourage exploration.  

Then there is authenticity, even though it doesn’t just have to be found within a pub that has been there for a couple of centuries. This leads onto an interesting interior, whether of architectural interest or cluttered with intriguing objects, which also attracts an inveterate pub-goer like myself. I am thinking of somewhere like the Beacon Hotel in Sedgley, with its snug and serving booth, or the Albion in Conwy, which is like a time capsule. For clutter I am thinking of the Hook Norton’s Peyton Arms, Stoke Lyne. There is an immense amount of stuff hanging on the walls and shelves and dangling from the ceiling. Something catches the eye everywhere you look. Another personal favourite is brewery and beer memorabilia, something that makes me get up out of my chair and stand there reading or admiring a bit of brewing history, which then that leads me to history. It is not requisite that pubs be historical, but there is joy in drinking your beer in the middle of an historic establishment. Somewhere like the Bridge Inn at Topsham or out in the garden at the Castle above the battlefield of Edgehill.

Another thought strikes me. What also makes a good pub is its ability to create memories, a nostalgia that you didn’t know you had until it crept up on you and made you feel sad but were also thrilled by the memories that it has created. Sometimes memories are all we have as the passage of time is marked by the steady tramp of boots on the asphalt of remembrance, closing time in other words. 

A Pub For All Seasons is published by Headline.