We've considered The Old Plough the best pub in Braunston for a long time; the Admiral Nelson comes and goes (it's gone at the moment), the Wheatsheaf has an odd arrangement whereby you order and eat a Chinese "carry out" cooked on the premises, and the Mill House/Boat House is a chain pub whose reputation varies from half decent to mediocre (mediocre at the moment).
But the Plough has changed management recently, so we were curious to see how it was doing. The answer is it's still the best of the bunch, probably, but it's gone back a bit. When we turned up at half six, the door into the Lounge Bar was locked; enquiry in the Public revealed that they'd just forgotten to open it, and that set the tone for the evening, really – well meaning but amateurish.
They weren't bothering to serve from the bar in the Lounge, the barman going through into the Public to get your drink and to pay in your cash. You just had to take it on trust that the beer was what you ordered, and that the price was right. Our waiter did his best to serve us neatly, but the knife and fork wrapped in a napkin bundles were slightly damp, presumably because the dish in which he brought them hadn't been dried properly.
On the other hand, the food was well cooked, hot and served promptly. Prices remain very reasonable. As we were finishing, numbers of folk began coming in and settling down; I'm not saying that they were all at death's door, but we must have been the youngest couple in the room by about a decade. It seemed that there was to be a meeting of the local branch of the British Legion or similar.
I had gone and got a second round of drinks just before things started warming up (the barman asked me "Would you like to pay for those now?" I managed not to reply, "No, I'll back tomorrow if that's all right); we drank up quite quickly and made tracks back to the boat.
Today was another flying start, getting away at seven with Sheila steering whilst I breakfasted. We were all sorted well before we reached the Barby straight; the new marina is beginning to look like a marina, with some pontoons and quite a few boats in, but the services are still pretty minimal by all appearances.
Only the right hand side of Hillmorton was open, with work going on in the top lock on the towpath side. We followed a single hander down, and left him filling on the water point. The wind was very cold, and the day has had a raw feel to it, most unpleasant. I was glad when we got to Newbold at half eleven. There were a couple of spaces on the 14 day section of the moorings, and loads of room on the 48 hour bit, where you have to use pins.
We took a walk through the centre after lunch. All three pubs are trading at the moment; The Crown in the centre is a Pubmaster chain, and the Boat (sic) has a lot of ads for live music and the like. The Barley Mow looks a lot better than it did last time we were in there (it was surviving by providing hostel accommodation for navvies working on the West Coast Main Line), so we think we'll give it another chance tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment