Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Colchester

  • GeoGuessr – Colchester (The Odd One Out)

    This is part of the GEOGUESSR 1 series of posts.

    We had an hour in Colchester whilst waiting to get the train from Colchester Town to Colchester railway station, so that was enough time to visit a pub in the Good Beer Guide. This one sounded excellent from the description and it’s now run by Colchester Brewery as their first pub.

    My first impressions were very positive, an extensive selection of real ales and some dark options were available. It felt old-fashioned, which pleased me enormously, and everything felt calm, welcoming and just as it should be. There were no gimmicks, disturbances or pointless distractions, all very lovely.

    Some of the beer selection and there wasn’t much need for me to hesitate as there was a porter available, the Old King Coel London Porter from Colchester Brewery.

    Here it is in its glory and I thought that it was better than the reviews on-line suggest it is (not that they’re at all bad, they just don’t rate it as exceptional). I thought it was delightful though, a rich roasted malty taste and very drinkable.

    I didn’t even try to work out why this was here, but despite it not really matching any of the decor, it still seemed to fit in.

    Above the bar. And I’m delighted that the Good Beer Guide brought me here and I’ve also found out that it has been in the book for over thirty years, the longest run of any pub in Essex. It’s all very well deserved, every town (and village) should have a pub like this. Friendly, welcoming, decent beer and calm surroundings. So very lovely.

  • GeoGuessr – Colchester Wetherspoons (Playhouse)

    This is part of the GEOGUESSR 1 series of posts.

    We had a little bit of spare time in Colchester and we realised that our train from there to Walton on the Naze went through Colchester Town railway station. I partly wanted to see if I could find Leon’s hat that went a bit missing a few years ago. But, then, we discovered that there was a JD Wetherspoons in Colchester that neither Nathan nor I had been to, so we thought that’d we’d go there and not worry about Leon’s hat. I was almost reminded of the huge branch that Dylan wanted to carry through the town.

    The Wetherspoon real ale festival was taking place, I went for half a pint of the Daleside IPA and Nathan went for the very lovely Mauldon’s Cherry Porter (one of my favourites, but I’m trying to go through the entire Wetherspoons beer options). Perfectly drinkable, all very good.

    We knew that we didn’t have long before the walk back to our train, so the slow service at the bar wasn’t ideal. There were a pair of customers in front of us who were keen to order their ‘breakfasses’ and two pints of beer, with the man thinking that they were hilarious for messing about with their order. The woman tried to engage with Nathan, telling him that she was 25 and had three kids, whilst I tried to studiously ignore her.

    Nice interior of the pub, which was the Playhouse theatre (hence the pub name) which opened in 1929. It wasn’t long before it was turned into a cinema, before becoming a bingo hall in the early 1980s. It became empty again before becoming a Wetherspoon pub, and it’s a sensitive and intriguing conversion.

    Every JD Wetherspoon has its own carpet design and this is one of the most imaginative that I’ve seen. The pub itself certainly had some challenging customers, not least the woman who was shouting angrily at a staff member as she didn’t like that her breakfast was cold. She made quite clear that the chef should be told about her anger. She seemed a nightmare, but fortunately not my problem to deal with.

    So, that’s another JD Wetherspoon outlet crossed off my list and it saved us spending over half an hour standing aimlessly in Colchester’s mainline railway station.