The second photo is another sign encountered on my travels, in this case displayed outside the Dolphin in the back streets of Dartmouth, South Devon. I suspect it may be rather tongue-in-cheek.
Saturday night can get quite lively in the Barbican area of Plymouth. In one pub a group of young women came in, obviously on a girls’ night out, and one of them distributed stick-on false beards and moustaches for them to wear. One of them, in a white mini-dress, decided that the best place for the beard was on the front in the manner of a merkin. Stay classy, ladies!
Did you go in the Dolphin on the Barbican ?
ReplyDeleteAny stand out pubs- I'm down that way next month.
Yes, I did go in the Dolphin - still an excellent pub with a remarkable mix of clientele between tourists and local pissheads. One of the Beryl Cook pictures on the wall was very reminiscent of the scene I saw. Beer was good too.
ReplyDeletePlymouth is not really pub capital of Britain, but the Queen's Arms on the Barbican is a nice little pub of much more genteel mien than the Dolphin, and the next-door Spoons isn't bad either.
God, the Admiral Boscarn looks grim
ReplyDeleteThe nearby Bullers Arms in Looe doesn't look much better.
ReplyDeleteIs merkin lady the new Mrs Mudge?
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I've always been curious about how much SKY charge. pubs. So they need to sell around 48 pints - 16 viewers at 3 pints each. But that's every day - not just matchdays.
ReplyDeleteClassic monopolistic price discrimination strategy. Rather than setting a standard price as any decent company would, they investigate to see how much they can squeeze out of every pub and then charge them exactly that and not a penny less.
ReplyDeleteSky charge according to rateable value apparently, so a pub like the Admiral Boscarn, grim but seemingly huge, would pay a hell of a lot. There's a pub near me which is tiny and thus has a low rateable value and manages to afford Sky. It gets rammed on matchdays as it's one of the few in the area which has Sky but isn't too busy the rest of the time.
ReplyDeleteI drink in the Dolphin in Dartmouth on my annual visit there - nice pub,always a good local farm cider available.Decent crowd too.Used to be a shithole but the present management cleaned it up ages ago.
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested in your take on any other pubs in the town you visited - I quite like some of them but there's an odd vibe around the local pubs which I can't quite put my finger on.
I was only there as a daytripper. Dartmouth is a rather odd town in that most of the pubs are tucked away off the main tourist streets and some at least seem to be real shitholes, especially the Market House. I didn't actually go in the Dolphin, just saw the sign.
ReplyDeleteHad a sandwich in the Windjammer, which was OK, and later a pint in the Cherub, which was pretty good and not really the poncey tourist trap it appears, although one fellow customer was a complete Real Ale Twat.
Then had a cruise on the PS Kingswear Castle - the last coal-fired paddle-steamer in the UK - which was wonderful :-)
There's not a bad real ale pub across the river in Kingswear, the Ship Inn, approached by that unusual car ferry system they have in Dartmouth.
ReplyDeleteBut strangely, when I visited during the height of the summer season this year, I discovered it was closed in the afternoon.
They obviously know their business but it struck me as rather strange,especially as the only other pub in the village was rammed.