a local pub for local people

One of the purposes of all the pub-related stuff a few posts ago was to drop in a reference to our finally having checked out one of our local pubs, a rather shameful four weeks or so (we've been busy!) after moving into the new house. But by the time I'd dug up a few amusing links for the Scottish stuff I'd forgotten about it, so here it is.

Strictly speaking the nearest pub to the house is the Cross Hands which is literally just across the road - not the most welcoming-looking place, though, I have to say. I'm sure we'll get round to dropping in one day, but it does have the look of the sort of place where the bar and tabletops are covered in formica, just to make it easier for the tattooed barmaid to wipe the blood off them at the end of the evening. Don't judge a book by its cover, though, and it may well be perfectly lovely. Just down the road towards the M4 is the Man Of Gwent, which looks like a pretty generic Harvester/Toby/Brewsters pub-in-a-box chicken-in-a-basket sort of place, despite the dire reviews in that link.

Anyway, being refined and sensitive types prone to clutching our pearls and swooning at the sight of blokes in vests drinking Carling we thought we'd start our local pub odyssey by avoiding all those coarse plebeian places and head for the more genteel and rural surroundings of the Greyhound in Christchurch (photo courtesy of Google Street View, which makes it sound like I've asked their permission, which of course I haven't).

The eastern end of Newport where we now live is hemmed in quite tightly by the M4 to the north and the new-ish A48 ring road to the south and east. What this means is that if you walk north-ish and head over the M4 you're in quite rural surroundings less than a mile after leaving the house, which is nice (Google Maps reckons the Greyhound is 1.2 miles from the house, though the first bit is up quite a steep hill so it seems further; all helps to work up a thirst, though). So by the time you get to Christchurch it's all quite countrified and villagey-feeling, and the Greyhound has a correspondingly nice village-pub feel to it - local, but not too local, if you follow me. It also has quite a nice rear garden and pretty good London Pride, so I deem that to be a success. We'll be back.