The Bakers Arms, Droxford, 29th June 2017

We had previously visited The Bakers Arms in November 2013 so we thought it was time to visit this award winning pub again. The Bakers Arms has won Hampshire Food Pub of the year awards and also awards for it's Sunday roasts so with this impressive record we were eagerly looking forward to the pies.
Four of our group had decided to take advantage of the lovely summer weather to attempt the 8 mile round walk from Bishops Waltham with four others making their own way to the pub.
We arrived at the pub spot on opening time and the first pint of Bowman's Swift One went down very nicely, thank you!

The other beers on offer were Bowman's Wallops Wood, 4% and Ringwood Old Thumper, 5.1%.

We had really been spoilt as there were 4 pies on offer to choose from, Pulled Pork and Chorizo, Ham Hock, Leek and Mustard, Chicken and Wild Mushroom and Steak and Kidney. As you can imagine with such a fine choice this was going to take some time for us to make our choices so we had another beer to help us on our way! Amazingly, when we had finally made our decisions we had managed to cover all 4 pies across the 8 of us!
The pies were all individual pies and came with a choice of mashed potatoes or chunky chips with a selection of vegetables.

All pies had shortcrust pastry with a slightly flaky pastry top and were stuffed full with succulent fillings and everyone agreed that they were indeed excellent pies. Surprisingly, some of us still had room for puddings, but maybe that was the walkers stocking up for the return walk to Bishops Waltham!

There was a good selection of puddings including Treacle Tart, Crème Brullee and Apple and Pear Crumble.
After taking part in a photo-shoot for the pubs new website the walkers, joined by Michael, looking dressed for the part in his work suit(!), headed off on the return leg of the walk, stopping for refreshments at the Hampshire Bowman.

Scores (max of 5 in each category, 25 overall):

• Pastry        4.65
• Filling        4.815
• Beer           4.55
• Ambience  4.7
• Value         4.66   
• Overall      23.375

Thank you to Caroline and everyone at The Bakers Arms for an excellent lunch and congratulations on an excellent score which nudges The Bakers Arms into the lead in the race to be 2017 Pie Club Pub of the Year.