Unfortunately, they don't serve pies there. Otherwise we would have had this Pie Club meeting in The Crown.
Nevertheless, a well refreshed Joe, Si & Steve still managed to get to the bus stop by noon to meet up with Trev and Nick, just as they were boarding the No. 8 bus to Botley. This bus goes all around the place, seemingly visiting every little hamlet for miles around, but eventually we arrived in Botley, and headed straight for The Bugle Inn.
We were welcomed by the landlord, and noticed immediately that there was a fine selection of ales available: the excellent Bowman's Wallops Wood 4%, the always popular Sharp's Doombar 4% , and (maybe a bit strong for lunch time) Gale's HSB 4.8%.
We settled down for our first pint, some having Wallops Wood, and others having Doombar, and surveyed our surroundings. The landlord had taken us to a table in the dining area of the pub, where there were no other customers, so we had the place to ourselves, although there were several drinkers in the other bar that we could hear. There was no garden to sit in. We had our second pint then decided it was time to order some food. As there was only one pie on the menu it didn't take us long to decide what to order. 2 of us opted to have chips instead of new potatoes. We didn't have to wait long for the food.
The pies had the correct short-crust pastry, a Steak & Mushroom filling, pre-applied gravy, and a selection of freshly-cooked vegetables: Cauliflower, carrots, and red cabbage. Some of us (perhaps those who were hungriest) thought they were OK - nothing special but OK - but others were quite put off by the smell, and one of our members was actually unable to finish eating his pie*.
We'd also noticed some strange smells coming from the loos (or were they coming from the kitchens?). To be fair, this pub has a Lebanese chef, and a full menu of Lebanese food available (but no Lebanese pies, which might have been interesting). Maybe that accounted for some of the strange smells.
There was a tempting selection of puddings available, but by now we'd had enough, so we decided to skip the puddings:
As we left the pub, someone suggested walking just around the corner to The Brewery Bar to see if we could get some puddings there. This is not a bad looking pub, with a good food menu (including some pies) and a fine selection of ales:
It was a lovely sunny day so we sat outside in the garden and had a pint while we considered the pudding menu. In the end we didn't bother with the puddings, and after a couple of pints we caught the bus back to Bishops Waltham. We quite liked the look of the Brewery Bar, and decided that it was probably worth a proper Pie Club assessment later in the year.
As we got off the bus in Bishops Waltham, someone happened to notice that the Crown Inn was open, and right next door to the bus stop. This pub has only very recently re-opened after a very expensive refit, so we decided to check it out and have a quick one in garden at the front, in the sun. As we were sitting there enjoying our pints, we got chatting with a young couple sitting at the next table who turned out to be JK and Lucy, presenters of Heart South Coast Breakfast Show.
Lucy got quite friendly with one of the Pie Club members, but Pieman feels honour-bound to reveal no more, and certainly won't publish any photos! The Pie Club got a mention on their show the next morning.
Scores for The Bugle, Botley (max. 5 in each category, 25 overall):
- Pastry 3.3
- Filling 3.6
- Beer 3.6
- Ambience 2.7
- Value 3.4
- Overall 16.6
* On checking the Pie Club constitution, Pieman was surprised to see that there is nothing in the rules about penalties for leaving a pie half uneaten. Pieman would have thought that the offending member would at least have to buy a round.
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