Price of drink!

[Beerpig]

We spent Christmas in London with the children and their partners in the course of which four of us went for a 'sharpener' in Southwark on Christmas Eve.
£27 for two pints of Guinness and two lagers.
Blimey! In my local in Teesside the round would be £12.50.
I don't know how the young manage to afford a good old fashioned 'sesh' without a bankers draft!

I'm sounding like the pensioner I have become!
Anyway, Happy Christmas everyone wherever you are!

[didds]

which pub / bar ?

[Lootman]

which pub / bar ?

Southwark has become trendy (i.e. expensive) since the Jubilee Line opened. There is even a Hoxton Hotel there, which is always a sign of an area becoming hip. It can be hard work finding an affordable old-school pub in some parts of London - they have all become fancy ass "bars" for craft beer, wine or cocktails, and/or gastropubs.

I recently met my son in nearby Bermondsey and even that area has become a destination, with a lot of bars under the railway arches. I pleaded with him to find a proper pub rather than all the poncey places. He delivered one but pints were still £5-£6 each, so that £27 isn't too bad for London.

Then the four of us went to dinner near London Bridge and the bill came to just under £500.

[Redmires]

Are there no Wetherspoons any more ?

[didds]

I pleaded with him to find a proper pub rather than all the poncey places. He delivered one but pints were still £5-£6 each,.

TBH under £6 is good for a pint in London. Its getting up to a fiver 80+ miles away round these parts especially if you want LARGUR...
Wadworth charge £6.20 a pint for their new beer "Folly Road" in pubs In Devizes, and they are only a mile from where its brewed in their new brewery (located in folly Road!")

Meanwhile I was here a few weeks ago, on the edge of Borough Market. You could probably hit southwark catrhedral with a cricket ball with a decent through.

http://www.theoldkingshead.uk.com/

£4 a pint at happy hour and from memory well under £6 normally (11am on a Sunday morning I seem to recall...)

And not far away, "The Rake" in Winchester walk.
https://www.utobeer.co.uk/tap-menu

A pint there for £5.20. And that's quite a trendy place really - and lots of choice for ~£6 a pint.

[Dicky99]

Beer pricing these days can surprise on the upside or downside anywhere.Back in the day it was cheap up north and pricey down south.

Last week I visited a pal in Mansfield while northbound and paid £13.50 for two pints of Neck Oil IPA in a run of the mill local pub. The following day I paid a surprisingly reasonable £8.20 for two pints of Ilkley Pale IPA at a stylish gastro pub in Addingham.
We stuck around for another two rounds in the latter but not the former.

[DrFfybes]

I've just got back from a Gig in Wolverhampton, KK's Steel Mill.

Beer/cider was £4.50/pint, soft drinks £4 a pint.

I was impressed.

[Mike4]

I pleaded with him to find a proper pub rather than all the poncey places. He delivered one but pints were still £5-£6 each,.

TBH under £6 is good for a pint in London. Its getting up to a fiver 80+ miles away round these parts especially if you want LARGUR...
Wadworth charge £6.20 a pint for their new beer "Folly Road" in pubs In Devizes, and they are only a mile from where its brewed in their new brewery (located in folly Road!")

Yep, I reckon it was going on five years ago I paid £5 for a pint of Bishop's Tipple in the Kings Head in All Cannings after bell ringing there, just up the road from Devizes.

'Folly Road' sounds intriguing, I've always liked Wadsworths ales but despite frequenting Wiltshire pubs, I rarely see their ales on sale. Butcombe Brewing Co seem to be getting the inside track locally on Wadworth. Their "Butcombe Orginal" session bitter is truly excellent if you can find it well cellared, which it needs. I can recommend it in The Ship, in Upavon.

[bungeejumper]

Butcombe Brewing Co seem to be getting the inside track locally on Wadworth. Their "Butcombe Orginal" session bitter is truly excellent if you can find it well cellared, which it needs. I can recommend it in The Ship, in Upavon.

LOL, there must be something wrong with me. Butcombes gives me indigestion, every time. Did so forty years ago, does so still. They do make quite a tasty IPA called Goram, though.

Have to admit that a fiver a pint comes as a bit of a shock out here in the sticks, though. I suppose they've just got to charge in line with their costs, but I do hope that the landlords are getting a fair piece of that for themselves?

Unfortunately not enough, judging by the rate at which rural pubs are closing around these parts. It's been a tough couple of decades. Drink-driving rules, smoking bans, disappearing fruit machines and tighter rules on food have all been very laudable - but then covid came along and many people simply lost the regular pub habit. I certainly did, and these days I meet up with an old mate only about every two months or so. Must try harder.

BJ

[didds]

'Folly Road' sounds intriguing, I've always liked Wadsworths ales but despite frequenting Wiltshire pubs, I rarely see their ales on sale. Butcombe Brewing Co seem to be getting the inside track locally on Wadworth. Their "Butcombe Orginal" session bitter is truly excellent if you can find it well cellared, which it needs. I can recommend it in The Ship, in Upavon.

Waddies own their own stable of tenented and managed pubs an clubs but on the whole dont seem - locally - to sell to the trade ... Butcombe have had quite a drive in recent years to pick up pubs other breweries are selling off, and I concur their beers are easier and easier to find around here - and also agree with the view of their ale

Folly Road is a.n. other craft ale - i perceive that its their own take on "neck Oil" with possibly to a view of replacing it in their own pubs. Its quite reasonable if frankly unspectacular - especially given here in D-Town there are excellent non wadworth pubs available.

didds (GBG coordinator for Devizes CAMRA )

[didds]

Have to admit that a fiver a pint comes as a bit of a shock out here in the sticks, though. I suppose they've just got to charge in line with their costs, but I do hope that the landlords are getting a fair piece of that for themselves?

if they are teneted probably not any more than a free house does - which often can buy the same ale cheaper and sell it at much the same price. Generalising there of course.

Unfortunately not enough, judging by the rate at which rural pubs are closing around these parts. It's been a tough couple of decades. Drink-driving rules, smoking bans, disappearing fruit machines and tighter rules on food have all been very laudable - but then covid came along and many people simply lost the regular pub habit. I certainly did, and these days I meet up with an old mate only about every two months or so. Must try harder.
BJ

you've hit many nails on the head there. Dont forget the impact of dirt cheap supermarket alcohol either; 12 x 330 ml cans of Punk IPA, 5% or so, for £14, versus £5+ a pint for similar strength in a pub . Of course the pub "sells" so much much more than sitting on the sofa, alone, in your underpants watching some repeat of a 1980s sitcom on Dave but ...


And of course the cost of living issues leading to less disposable income. Village pubs are dieing out because pure and simple there is just not enough footfall. Eating out (see CoL etc above) is all well and good but lets face it, villagers aren't going to eat in their local pub two times a week. Twice a month would be pushing it I perceive. And most pub menus have mirror images, so the next village over isn't going to travel for the same menu as in its own village pub. My own village has lost its village pub finsally in the alst year - after what frankly seemed like decades of struggling.

[tjh290633]

Interesting. Our village has 3 pubs and a wine bar, plus a few restaurants and takeaways.

We tend to circulate around 3 or 4 of the pubs outside the village, all of which have distinctly different menus, but one is a Vintage Inn, with their universal menu. Wetherspoons is good for curry night, not as good as the local Tandoori but a lot cheaper, of course. We also patronise the local chippy once a week.

So typically 3 meals out each week. All of the pubs are well attended, certainly at lunchtime. All have Harvey's beer bar one, which offers a couple of the smaller local breweries ales each week, rotating through those available.

Is our area radically different?

TJH

[Mike4]

Interesting. Our village has 3 pubs and a wine bar, plus a few restaurants and takeaways.

That makes it sound more like a town rather than a village to me. Is there a defined crossover at which a village becomes a town?

My own village is down to one pub (having had two for years) and a post office/general store. There are people here who say they can remember a time when there were seven pubs!

[kempiejon]

2 pubs, Indian restaurant also does takeaway, no wine bar, a co-op, Onestop and fuel station, lots of deliveroo/just eat etc bikes seen around the area.
The restaurant used to be a pub. The nearest pub, which I pass regularly lunch and evening, it's usual to walk in and find it fairly sparsely populated. The food area is only busy for Sunday lunches where booking is useful - though you can usually find a table in the bar and take your meal there. It has a beer garden which is busy summer evenings. The Indian takeaway isn't on those chain delivery companies, no internet ordering so you phone in the order - I guess sit down is the focus of business

I remember when minimum wage was introduced, we paid the student part-time staff £3.20 per hour and they could buy a pint for £1.60.

[tjh290633]

Interesting. Our village has 3 pubs and a wine bar, plus a few restaurants and takeaways.

That makes it sound more like a town rather than a village to me. Is there a defined crossover at which a village becomes a town?

My own village is down to one pub (having had two for years) and a post office/general store. There are people here who say they can remember a time when there were seven pubs!

It has almost doubled in size since we .moved here 45 years ago, as has the adjacent village. Back in days of yore, towns had markets. Villages tended to be more agricultural. Ours has had a good number of pubs, one has closed while we have been around. The agricultural merchants moved outside a few years ago, and their site is now housing, plus an alternative therapy place in their old showroom.

The town where I grew up had about 4,000 inhabitants, but was surrounded by a string of villages, known as the Lane Ends, joined by a semicircular road, about a mile from the Town centre. One of my RAF postings was to Kirton-in-Lindsey in Lincolnshire which had a market place, but lacked the surrounding villages. The population was a mere 3,000.

So size is not a determinant. What is? Is it the size of the parish church? Presence or absence of a bank branch? Not today! Rural surroundings? Maybe it is just history.

TJH

[bungeejumper]

My own village is down to one pub (having had two for years) and a post office/general store. There are people here who say they can remember a time when there were seven pubs!

Our village (1200 people) has only one pub left, although it's been well run and is doing well. But compare with 1901, when its 1,050 residents had eleven pubs to choose from!

Of course, it was safer to drink beer than water in those days, so that was what nearly everybody did. (Women included, although they mostly drank from a jug at home.) The nightly pub habit had the added advantage of keeping the birth rate down.

BJ

[jaizan]

Our village (1200 people) has only one pub left, although it's been well run and is doing well. But compare with 1901, when its 1,050 residents had eleven pubs to choose from!

Back in 1901, I guess the village pub did not have to contend with:
1 Excessive business rates
2 High taxes on beer & spirits
3 Minimum wages
etc

I think it's getting to the point where the tax burden on pubs should be reduced, whilst we still have them.

[didds]

Interesting. Our village has 3 pubs and a wine bar, plus a few restaurants and takeaways.

We tend to circulate around 3 or 4 of the pubs outside the village, all of which have distinctly different menus, but one is a Vintage Inn, with their universal menu. Wetherspoons is good for curry night, not as good as the local Tandoori but a lot cheaper, of course. We also patronise the local chippy once a week.

So typically 3 meals out each week. All of the pubs are well attended, certainly at lunchtime. All have Harvey's beer bar one, which offers a couple of the smaller local breweries ales each week, rotating through those available.

Is our area radically different?

TJH

well, assuming "we" is two of you that's a minimum of £60 a week to eat out (and I'm being quite conservative here). I'd suggest that many/most people haven't got that budget.

As for whether that's unusual - for a village, Id say so yes basded on my own local area. As a former sub-branch of CAMRA, now promoted to full branch (for what that's worth!) our area/patch consists of twenty town pubs and clubs (ie clubs generally "open" to the public as a sign in, most nights of the week). There's also the Wadworth visitor centre but that's only open in the evenings on friday and saturday and thgat is due for closure some time sooner rather than later following the brewery move out of the town centre.

The surrounding villages in our area have between them 17 pubs - all but three of them are Wadworth tied, and two of them are really restaurants with decent ale (and are open to drinkers that aren't eating); the third non tied pub is really set up for family dining. All of these non restaurant village pubs serve hot food though I perceive the menus aren't dissimilar. Some villages have lost their pubs completely, some for some while now.
This is moving into the territory of social geography but some of these non pub villages may not even register as villagers in perception as they have no village centre - no pub, hall, church etc), jut clumps of houses surrounded by fields. Unless an isolated phone box counts!

FWIW the Devizes "community population" is allegedly ~33K, 19% of which are below legal drinking age.

[didds]

I think it's getting to the point where the tax burden on pubs should be reduced, whilst we still have them.

CAMRA agrees.

https://camra.org.uk/press_release/exte ... hancellor/
https://camra.org.uk/take-action/budget/

[Mike4]

This is moving into the territory of social geography but some of these non pub villages may not even register as villagers in perception as they have no village centre - no pub, hall, church etc), jut clumps of houses surrounded by fields. Unless an isolated phone box counts!

I'd call that a hamlet rather than a village.

"A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village.[1][2] This is often simply an informal description of a smaller settlement or possibly a subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_(place)

Some definitions suggest a hamlet is a village too small to have its own church.