Salisbury Pub Crawl

Every year, just before Christmas, ED CAMRA have the tradition of going to Salisbury for a festive pub crawl. I say festive, we didn't wear hats or wish each other a festive noel, so I suppose really it is just an excuse for another pub crawl! (as if we need one, ED!). Salisbury is a fantastic place for a pub tour, most of the pubs are spread out allowing you to walk off some of the beer between stops (well that was the plan anyway!), and the range of beers and styles of pub is just wonderful.

So we arrived on the X3 bus and stepped off into the bustle of the High Street and proceeded to wind our way through the city towards our first stop The Village Freehouse. This is arguably one of the best pubs in Salisbury for real ale with most of the beers chosen by the people who drink it; the customers! On offer today was a beer from a nearby brewery, ‘3 Castles’ near Pewsey; at 4.3% it seemed a good place to start and it turned out to be a wise choice. There was bags of flavour and left your taste buds wanting more; three pints later we managed to force ourselves to leave.

Next stop was Deacons, a friendly traditional drinker’s pub where Hopback GFB, Summer Lightening and Sharp’s Doom Bar were on offer and in good form. At this point our merry group splintered as some of the men folk were dragged off shopping (Language, ED!!); luckily some of us managed to avoid this fate and strode off in the direction of our next port of call. After wandering around the city we managed to find our next pub The Winchester Gate (at no time were we lost, we are men we do not get lost!). On pump there we found Deuchars XPA, a welcome surprise. This busy local was a bit too busy on this occasion so we decided to our next but by no means our last hostelry: The Wyndham Arms.

The Wyndham was the birthplace of Hopback, now located out in Downton, this is a cracking pub and no visit to Salisbury would be complete without a few beers in this local CAMRA pub of 2006. We were spoilt for choice with Hopback GFB, Crop Circle, Spring Zing, Red Ember and Summer Lightning, and Mighty White, a beer from another local brewery brewed in support of Salisbury Football team. Our group reformed here and thirsty shoppers slaked their thirst before pushing onto our final destination The Rai D’or.

The Rai D’or is an historic freehouse dating back to 1292 when it was the heart of the medieval red light district. It is a lovely pub which now also serves excellent Thai food. The beer was superb with Rye Smile from Downton and Vale from Three Castles brewery that we had enjoyed at the beginning of the day. Thankfully Wilts & Dorset have been good enough to put a bus stop outside (PHEW!) so we stepped out of the pub and onto the bus for home: the end of a very pleasant day! If you are thinking of following our crawl, all the pubs can be found in the 2007 Good Beer Guide but I would recommend taking a map! Salisbury apparently is famous for other things as well as good ale, its got some sort of big church and some crumbly buildings, and shops if you like that sort of thing, but I recommend having a pint or two first.

Cheers, Dan Griffiths