As CAMRA paddles round in circles whilst battling dodgy craft, I thought I’d continue my search for defining pub perfection. We set off on a stroll from the main part of East Bergholt, deep in ‘Constable Country’.
Our friends tell us we are doing a short stroll to a pub (with no food) called Dickie’s; but that’s not what it’s really called. There’s another one to add to my pub perfection list. Surely pubs known by an alternative name are always good?
We amble out of the village (the protest signs against major expansion insist that East Bergholt is a village not a town) and across the fields to arrive at the Royal Oak with a sign including the usual Charles II in the tree. So why isn’t it called Charlie’s?
The local lads are out the back playing petanque before the pub opens. We try the front door just before opening time and the landlady opens up with a friendly greeting and insists we leave our walking boots on. Inside it’s a Greene King pub that’s thankfully missed the corporate makeover. Quarry tiles on the floor and mock wooden panelling that reminds me of my grandad’s pub in the 1960s and the simplicity of the Duke of York at Elton in the Peak District.
We enjoy a pint of Nethergate’s Growler – tasting like tradition in a glass, but I suspect if I was in a blindfold even the GK IPA would have tasted fine. We admire the mish-mash of stuff in the snug including the photo of Sgt Bilko and his mates drinking beer. We convince ourselves it was taken in the pub but the landlady admits its just something her husband put on the wall – “he’s like that”, she says. Nowt wrong with a touch of idiosyncrasy.
The ‘lads’ come in for a well-deserved pint acknowledging us on their way through the bar and asking after our walk. (Back to East Bergholt along the Donkey Track since you ask.) We wander back past the well-fed horses and we’re happy that the world is good and populated with folk with a smile on their faces.
Laminate feed a speciality
That was my most worthwhile pint for a while. So there’s more to add to the pub perfection list.
- Pubs that aren’t called by their sign name
- Landlords for whom the pub is part of their personality
- Where everyone gets a welcome
PS As for the name, Dickey is East Anglian dialect for donkey and the pub is thought to have been called the Kicking Donkey beer house in earlier times.
thewickingman 