PINT TO PINT
The Old Thatch, Stratford-on-avon
Yes, The Old Thatch is old. Dates back to the 1470s. And, yes, The Old Thatch is thatched, on one side of the roof. Behind the bar is a photo of it being stitched up sometime in the Eighties when, coincidentally, another Thatcher was hogging the headlines.
Just beyond the bar, the obligatory bust of the Bard is scrutinised by two figures in stained glass that seem to glow in the dark wood surrounding them. One is Horatio Nelson. The other looks like Shakespeare but turns out to be Sir Walter Raleigh.
I suspect that the man who introduced the potato to this sceptred isle would have been impressed by the chips with my “home-made pie of the day”. They’ve stayed crisp even when flooded with gravy.
As for the pie, it’s packed with chunks of chicken and flavoursome mushrooms. My wife, meanwhile, has bequeathed me a tiny slice of her equally flavoursome sirloin steak – compensation for sticking to soda water and driving us home.
I’ve just seen off a pint of Oliver’s Island, a deliciously citrusy ale named after a landmark on the Thames considerably closer to the brewery than the Thatch. Time for a London Pride, methinks. You can have any draught beer you like here, as long as it’s from Fuller’s.
The Italian lady on the next table, however, is nurturing a pint of Guinness. “I live in Ireland,” she confides between taking photos with her phone. How typical of a classic English pub it must seem, from the flagstone floor to the low beams via a roaring fire flanked by horse brasses.
Although a more spacious dining area had beckoned beyond the Bard’s bust, we’ve wedged ourselves into a window seat overlooking the market place and clock tower with a drinking water fountain dating from 1879.
Ten years later a local vicar apparently proclaimed that “we shall do better to drink of it than any of the public houses which abound in this town”. Some 130 years later, the water that has gushed from that fountain would amount to a tide. But given the choice, I’d much prefer the Pride.