With apologies that it has been a while since Julian (the older and arguably wiser one) and I have been on one of our study tours, busily visiting every pub in a town. It’s not something we do for public esteem, it’s just as a public service. Julian grew up in this area after the war and so had something of a local knowledge of many of the pubs that we visited, although sadly he was able to point out numerous places that are no longer open.
We got the train into Oulton Broad North and I pondered whether I’d been to that Greggs before, I’m not sure if I have. We went into everywhere that was open and defined itself as being a pub or something similar, including the Flying Dutchman into proceedings even though it was a little bit of a walk away.
Everywhere other than the Flying Dutchman had real ale, although the only one that offered a real ale from outside of East Anglia was at Broadview. It was Broadview that surprised and delighted me, it has been there for longer than I realised and it had the widest selection of real ales of the day. The Waveney was the cheapest venue of the day for drinks, it’s a Craft Union pub and I’d say that was the friendliest welcome.
Anyway, my little reviews of each venue are below and, as ever, all credit to the owners and managers for keeping these pubs going. These are challenging times for pubs and they all provide a marvellous service to the local area by being open and allowing people to have a place to visit to get drink, food, meet friends and to just feel part of the community.
The pubs we visited were:
Sadly this one has gone: