Pubs to Visit #1

An inaugural post on the subject of "Pubs you should visit if you don't know about them already".

As I manoeuvred my way through London coming back to Bristol yesterday I was musing on navigation in the capital.

I always used to find hacking my way through London's streets a right royal pain in the bum.  Either you had a copy of an AtoZ map and looked like a tourist, or you printed out a couple of pages of map from Google before your journey...and looked like a tourist.

Now we have smart phones with mapping apps to guide us...and...yeah, you look like a tourist.

The first time I didn't feel like a tourist in London was on a day when I was off to meet S and a bunch of friends for an evening of beer and food and catch-up.

S & one pal were in Brighton for football, I was in Eastbourne, other folk were coming from Portsmouth and near-Guildford.
We thought the best option was to meet in a central pub that we all knew - The Harp.

It's close to Charing Cross station but it's not immediately obvious unless you know where it is.  I had my phone so I knew I could track my way.  But there was a lovely feeling as I emerged from the station and walked to the pub.  I knew where I was going.

Not only that, I knew exactly what to expect when I arrived, and I knew how to behave. 

The Harp is a lovely place, with top beer and efficient staff...but my, does it get busy.

The trick is to hold your nerve.

The place feels entirely shoulder to shoulder when you arrive but you do get served quickly and there is always a little corner you can stand in whilst you scope out a place to sit.

And so it was, I barely had time to squeeze my way to the bar and look at hand pumps before someone was cheerily asking me what I wanted.  Usually, expecting S imminently, I would have bought beer for him too...but there was no where to put it so I got me a pint and scuttled off to a corner.

It wasn't long before a group of chaps were leaving a table so I caught their eye and played the "dead men's shoes" game.  They passed the table onto me with a smile.

So there I was, perched, waiting for the guys and another chaps sidled up nervously and asked if he could rest his pint on "my" table. 

That's the thing, when you know a place, and don't feel like a stranger to it other people seem to notice it too.

Anyhow - this is all by way of telling you to visit the Harp - and not be put off by the number of people in there.  It's a pub that works well.