The final flourish
to all these pub visits should really be an evening
in the White Horse, but, failing that, I will settle
for sitting in a nice little pub with quite nice beer
talking with a great friend about playing together
on the High School football team some twenty years
ago.
The pub itself
is what you would expect in an affluent neighborhood
like Horsell. Lots of velvet, some nice dark wood
chairs in the large dining area, a couple of Mercedes
parked in the lot. The first pint I had was moderate
(I'm being polite), so I had to have a second to give
them a chance. And besides, we were sitting on rather
nice couches, talking about old times, and feeling
relatively convivial. The pub deserved another pint.
And once Paul
started talking about our old 5-a-side football team
and how he applies lessons learned during those matches
to what he does today, well, we were well underway!
The effect is greater than the sum of the parts, and
in our soccer team's case, the parts were pretty much
a bunch of rejects from the supposedly better load
of players, the flashy kids. We beat them because
we were a team, played and practiced together, knew
each other's style, could pass without looking because
we knew they would be there. Just as I know Paul will
be there, as we all grow old.
We had actually
set out to find a different pub, possibly (from my
very poor memory) The Cricketers on Horsell Birch,
but this one served the purpose very well indeed.
This pub marked
the end of a particularly pub-intensive trip to England.
Fifty different pubs, fifty-four separate pub visits,
eighteen days. What did we learn?
We certainly established
that I like my beer. I like the variety, the art and
the craft of making beer, those moments of discovery,
the adventure of trying something completely new.
I especially like drinking English beer in an English
pub with my wife, who in turn enjoys her cider which,
while having considerably less variety, can be no
less challenging.
We discovered
the Perfect Pint, secure in the knowledge that on
some future trip we will discover, unexpectedly, an
even more Perfect Pint. We even took a stab at defining
just what a Perfect Pint is.
We confirmed that
pubs are a great starting point for exploring local
history, second only to the village church. Both establishments
have followed and sometimes led the march of time
as the village grew, and have given people points
of orientation for historical events.
We showed once
again what pure fun it is to explore a completely
different pub, to meet new people, to experience the
culture, local & national, that thrives in English
pubs. We successfully combined this exploration with
practical usage of the English pub (who can ever forget
the picture of steaming wet clothes in front of the
fire at Gunnerside, with two wet tired walkers drinking
good beer & cider, eating great food, and talking
to the friendly owners?)
We investigated
and showed that the village pub is under severe commercial
attack. The five hundred theme pubs are only going
to increase in strength, number and acceptance, and
the alarming figure of six lost pubs a week is not
going to abate in the near future, not when a pub
around the London ring can sell for £500,000
as a pub, or £1 million as a potential development.
We saw that shifting
demographics, with more women needing to network at
the executive level and recreate in a safe environment,
will only serve to increase the popularity of these
chains.
The Beer Orders
were indeed damaging, but in context maybe that action
was merely a contribution to all the forces working
against the Village Pub. The Beer Orders facilitated
the inexpensive purchase of unsupported pubs for conversion
into chains, but with the huge economic opportunity
offered by theme pubs, I feel that the large corporations
would have found a way to do it anyway, the Government
just made it a little easier.
Against this worrying
backdrop, we do not believe that the village pub is
doomed. Far from it. Historical longevity does not
guarantee future survival, but pubs have faced similar
adversity in the past, and adapted and found ways
to thrive. As early as the first millennium King Edgar
decreed that the plethora of ale-houses were to be
reduced to one for each village; the dissolution of
the monasteries was nearly catastrophic for the inns
as pilgrims stopped traveling the country, but the
pubs bounced back as government travelers took their
place; in 1549 Edward VI severely limited the number
of pubs, but pubs came back by establishing salaries
from Elizabeth I to provide accommodation and horses
upon demand; and as recently as the 1970s competition
from fast food joints and licensed restaurants was
matched and perhaps even beaten by the introduction
and revival of pub food and real ale.
Every time pubs
have faced a crisis over the past thousand years,
they have come back to prosper. Can they do it again?
Absolutely, but how?
Village pubs must
recognize their target audience, those punters who
see their village pub as more than a bar, but need
it as a meeting place and a focal point for the community,
and feel some emotional ownership. That needs to be
translated, if needs be, into financial ownership.
Some villages have bought their own pubs and breweries
in the same way that fans may buy a sports team. As
well as presenting themselves as a local, personal,
unique, indigenous pub, maybe the business needs to
branch out. I believe we will start to see small village
pubs selling stamps and groceries from a side room,
which would be no more jarring than the appearance
of dining tables next to the table skittles back in
the 70s and will come to be equally accepted.
Pubs are a national
treasure. Legislators and corporate planners underestimate
the draw a village pub holds on its regular clientele.
But the young executives who network over lunch as
some cavernous, echoing theme bar and live in a dormitory
village need to be given a reason to walk down to
their local in the evening, and the opportunity is
slipping by. Pubs have some commanding strengths and
some very vulnerable weaknesses.
There are eight
hundred theme pubs, but there are 59,200 real pubs,
and over the years we have visited more than two hundred
of them. Each one is appealing in its own way, has
its own unique character and generated a sense of
adventure each time. History, architecture, beer,
atmosphere, local people. Village pubs have all this
as a trump card over theme pubs and that combination
is what makes us want to continue our hunt for the
Peerless Pub and the Perfect Pint.
But here is where
the true strength of villages pub lies, and why the
village pub will survive: Repeat business from loyal,
unswerving, long-term customers who come to be with
friends and neighbors in familiar, friendly surroundings.
Would I swap all fifty visits to English pubs for
one evening in the White Horse in Welton with Bill,
Ted and Bill? Yes, I would, in a heartbeat.
"When
you have lost your inns,
drown your empty selves,
for you will have lost the last of England."
Hillaire Belloc
