It’s not changed a great deal: smartened up inside, new outdoor seating in covered booths, but otherwise, it’s the same pleasant local with decent beer.
Tag Archives: Morecambe
The Little Bare
Bare Village, Morecambe:
The first totally new PubBlog entry for around eight months, and a cracking micropub.
This was actually open last time we visited Morecambe, but we didn’t know about it 🙁 , so we thought we’d better remedy that error.
Great beer, a really pleasant proprietor, and a nice atmosphere. The owner stated he’d tried to make if feel a bit less like a bar in a shop, and he’d hit the mark on that. Nice, under-cover outside space too. A really good example of how to do a micropub well.
Revisits: The Dog and Partridge
My usual criteria for a revisit post is if something has changed appreciably, but that’s not the case here: it’s still a Greene King pub, it still serves decent, inexpensive food, and the staff are pleasant. The cask is in decent nick, which is nice, but it’s Greene King, which is less so, but it was my first pint of cask ale since November, so I’ll take that. There was decent lager for when I grew tired of GK.
The York Hotel
Morecambe:
On the edge of town, right next to the railway, this is, again, technically a hotel, but doesn’t serve food, just providing rooms. Outside, it’s a fair-sized stone hotel building, inside, it’s a traditional pub, quite big, and recently refurbished in a pubco kind of way. Friendly staff, good beer, and bargain-priced stay if you don’t mind having to eat out and a 5min walk to town.
The Morecambe Hotel
Morecambe:
Some discussion over if this was a pub or not, and we decided it just scraped it: It *is* a hotel, and even the pub bit feels a bit restauranty, but there *is* a drinking area at the front, which is more can be said for some so-called pubs. It’s very, very gastropub inside- modern, stripped floors etc, but evidently a lot of money has been spent inside and out. Great beer, staff pleasant enough, but we felt a bit pounced-on by the staff all clustered around the bar when we walked in. I think they’re more expecting diners.
The Chieftan
Morecambe:
A backstreet pub, deceptively large, recently refurbished and traditional. Friendly barman, and exceptionally cheap beer in good condition (if memory serves me correctly, £3.15 for a pint and a half of decent ale), which allowing for inflation and beer duty, surely beats even this from 2008.
The Tivoli Bar
Morecambe:
Seafront Sam Smith’s pub, a local’s pub. No ale, but Sam Smith’s lager at the usual low, low price, a friendly landlord, and seafront outside seating.
The Kings Arms
Morecambe:
Big seafront pub- a huge space downstairs, open plan, and almost as large in the sports bar upstairs. Not my perfect kind of pub, but it does the family feedbag thing quite well (though we didn’t eat) downstairs, and keeps the loud TVs and shouting upstairs, which seems good to me. Staff friendly, beer not bad at all (and well priced), and there’s a good amount of seafront outside seating, which suited us on a sunny day.
The Eric Bartholomew
Morecambe:
Morecambe’s spoons. I don’t think we caught it at a good time, mid afternoon on a sunny bank holiday, but this was the grimmest pub of our holiday. It got off to a bad start with only dark ales on offer- in summer, compounded it by the usual spoons trick of making the toilets a considerable hike, added to it again by not allowing us to take our drinks outside (so why provide fucking tables?), and finished it off with the typical food detritus, sticky table, and noisy children combo that can affect a Wetherspoons all too often. We left, quickly, for the seafront pubs and a pint in relative peace.
The Hest Bank Inn
Hest Bank, near Morecambe:
We had a walk up here, for beer in the sunshine in the beer garden. It’s a very attractive canalside pub, with slightly posh pub food (very good, and not pretentious) and great beer in good condition. The aforementioned beer garden was lovely too: in fact, this was a very nice pub indeed. They’ve kept the balance between pub and restaurant, with a proper bar with no dining tables in one area.