I was impressed with the 3 new guest beers on. This does seem to be one of the better Wetherspoons in the county in that it does have a fair few of new beers on whenever I go in. Again pretty quiet on an early Friday evening in January. Service was better this time round and I actually got full half pints.

Friday afternoon and quite busy so that I had to sit upstairs. I was excited by both the Ringwood Porter and Wickwar Old Arnold being on. As my server was quite enthusiatic with the handpump, both beers came up short of being full pints with quite frothy heads. When I asked for both to be topped up, he did the Porter, but said the Old Arnold was "perfect." Clearly, Spoons training programme doesn't cover the weights and measures law of the UK. I left the bar with my 2 pints laughing. Still I enjoyed both beers. I shall speak with the bar manager next time I see him.

Friday late lunchtime and it wasn't exactly heaving. I got the corner snug at the rear on the non smoking side, so I sat in the big, high backed easy chair and let the woes of the week slip away from me. I also had a bottle of Thomas Hardy Ale. There are still around 20 of these in the cellar following the October beer festival, so ask for one as they are excellent and still at only £2.49 a bottle.

I was a bit disappointed that not all of the beers from the October light and dark festival were going to be on, but there was still enough new stuff for me to have a go at. Came here with Martin and sat upstairs staring at the blue sky and clouds painted on the ceiling (at least thats what I thought they were after my bottle of Thomas Hardy ale)

The very helpful bar manager offered to let me take some of the Thomas Hardy bottles home unopened for ageing, which was nice of him. Not a huge turnover since yesterday of the festival beers, a couple more had gone (including Greene King Orchard) whilst the Brains Dark still sits there. More new ones should be on this evening. So last night I had to content myself with a non festival bitter.

After the weekend, I thought that I would pop in to see if they had had a turnover of the festival beers as there are some I wanted to try. The manager was very helpful and gave me some idea of what would be on when. He said that it was going well and they had sold more than usual. Also that the Exmoor Beast at 6.6% would be one of the last ones to go on and he expected it to go within a matter of hours. Still a lovely converted church inside.

I came here for the October beer festival, see the link below. http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/offers/2006octbeerfestival/ This pub normally has the full range of festival beers and starts with the lower ABV ones and builds. It also seems to have a pretty decent throughput of beers, so they should be in decent condition. Relatively busy early Friday evening, but I was there before the real Friday night crowd arrived. Friendly staff looked after me well, even giving me a proper stemmed glass for the bottle of Thomas Hardy Ale 2005 which I had to finish my evening with.

Not too busy on a Monday early evening in this converted church.

Came in to watch the Italy vs Czech Republic game in the World Cup. Staff were pretty good in turning the game on and turning the volume up. Also had a bottle of Okocim Polish lager.

Just popped in before going home, just to see if there was anything more interesting than the Ashford one.