The run to Faringdon Folly ended and I was floating but famished and nearly every place for snacks in town was already closed; everything seemed to point to kebab and chips.  The doner was tender and tasty but I’ve had better; the chips, however, ruled and the tomatoes and chilis were excellent.  And, as usual, [...]

I have frequently run the hills around the Folly (built by the eccentric Lord Berners, dubbed during its construction as “Lord Berners’ monstrous erection” by a local newsman).  It has been two years since the first time I tried to go to the Folly pub and it was worthy of the repeated effort (another example of failed Folly-ing [...]

So it has come to this…1000 posts in less than 3 years (975 days, to be precise). In that time we have come quite far together:  712 pub stops, 4025 miles running (1740 unique miles in the UK, at that), almost 96000 views of this blog  (averaging about 200/day the last few months after slow [...]

I had to drop off some books at the Faringdon Library and that left me with a half hour to kill before the next bus came along.  The Folly Inn was locked so The Wheatsheaf it had to be. I have read that it is not an especially friendly pub but it is hard to [...]

Exiting the Faringdon Budgens with my bottle of chianti for supper just as the bus passed by, I comforted myself with a pint of Cotswold Cider in the Portwell Angel, another basement bar next door to the Old Crown.  The pint was tart, astringent, and very, very good…this was the best cider I’ve had in [...]

An explosion in a lab at work late Friday led me to leave a little early for the bus.  As we entered Faringdon, I figured whattheheck? A nice pint is just what I need to erase the memory of the heavily bandaged colleague being loaded into the meat wagon.  The basement of the Old Crown [...]

The Duke of Wellington is so local that the customers recognise the shadows cast on the windowsills of other customers coming in.  A fire was being built as I entered and while I may or may not have been the youngest person in there it did have that distinct feeling of crazy old people ruling [...]

When I hit Faringdon last year for some runs, I was pleased to find so many good pubs.  I ran up to the Swan on one of these loops and found that it was still being prepared to open (I believe the carpet was just being laid and there were scaffolds and shit everywhere.  Now, [...]

The Volunteer is a great pub, one of the best I’ve hit since coming to the UK.  Teeming with punters when the others in the town were wastelands I was greeted by the attractive barmaid and promptly served, then accosted (after a fashion) by another customer who wanted to test her kid’s hearing: “who does [...]

Late afternoon, the bar at the Bell Hotel was dead.  Pity, really, as the staff were an amiable lot and they served me up a bowl of chips before I could get two sips of Bishop’s Tipple (a fine Wadworth ale, if ever there was one). The bar and lounge are pretty Victorian with dark [...]