AN INSPECTOR CALLS
MANY of us will remember the row in the Nineties over the Newbury bypass, when Swampy (now living in a yurt with his children in Devon) led hundreds of protesters who’d chained themselves to trees in protest. The road was built, of course, and then the planners got to work, leaving a trail of miniroundabouts, one-way streets, shopping malls and municipal car parks that make it almost impossible to find the town centre.
We end up in a semi-pedestrian square and I ask a group of young men in tight T-shirts if they know where Market Place is. ‘You’re here!’ they cry. Not only that, we are pretty much right outside The Elephant At The Market, a new bar/restaurant/hotel occupying what used to be the Queen’s Head.
I run in and ask a waitress where we can park. She points round the corner, then rushes out into the rain to wait by the barrier giving us access to the hotel’s car park. We admire her enthusiasm, which is quickly trumped by a young man called Tom with a quiff three times as large as the one Cliff used to have in the Sixties.
He grabs our bags and walks us across the busy pub where a door leads upstairs to 14 newly revamped bedrooms. ‘How are you liking it so far?’ he says. ‘Fine’, I tell him. ‘Good answer’, he says. All rooms are named after characters in Babar The Elephant. Ours is stuffy even after we open both windows wide, possibly because the huge pizza oven is beneath us. ‘What do you think?’ asks Tom. ‘Comfortable,’ I tell him with little enthusiasm. ‘Good answer again,’ he says. There’s some industrial chic going on, but it doesn’t quite work. The factory-style lights are tinny, the free-standing mirror is plain cheap and six hooks above the bed from where cushions hang has a try-hard look to it. We don’t much care for the half-empty bottle of water on one of the bedside tables, presumably left by the last occupants. But we do like the bathroom, with tongue-andgroove panelling and smart retro tiles.
We like the simple menu downstairs, too. Tom has found us a reasonably quiet table (‘a nice ambient’, he calls it) and he really, really wants us to have a good time. We do our best, ordering a couple of filet steaks, which have an odd after-taste to them.
Tom is not so chirpy in the morning. Transpires that he went out on the town after service, but he does his best, asking us how we slept (‘well but a bit hot’) and what are plans are for the rest of the day (‘not a lot’).
Breakfast in a pub after a busy Friday night is not ideal. It needs a proper airing. And it’s not ideal that there is no plain yoghurt (despite it being advertised on the menu). We’re on a £115 bed-and-continental breakfast rate — which is not bad value. But this is a bar first, a restaurant second and a hotel a distant third. The Elephant At The Market
Market Place, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 5BD
Tel: 01635 231053, theelephantatthemarket.com
Doubles from £90