Read
the reviews of 40 more Bolt Hole hotels
The hotel: the village pub that chooses to call itself the Village Pub
can only be run by wonderful, postmodern ironists or morons. I went to find
out which.
The idea is that it’s the little satellite of Cotswolds-trendy Barnsley House,
100 yards up the road. So you can stay for as little as £95 per night, but
still nip up the road for some top-notch touch-up in the spa at the hotel
(where rooms start at nearly £300 a night).
When we arrived at 5pm, the lights were out and there was definitely nobody at
home. I peered through the window and saw the restaurant’s bookings diary
without our names in for that evening. So, on first approach, things were
tending towards the “managed by morons” theory.
Back up the road at the hotel, it turned out that the pub doesn’t open its
doors until 6pm, but somebody would come down and let us in.
When they did, I was relieved to see that the Village Pub has full postmodern
attitude. There are nooks, there are crannies and the bar has low-slung
beams and rustic benches to sit at; but, on closer inspection, the beams are
artful and dusted, the benches bespoke-designed to fit snugly into the
nooks.
The rooms: the Village Pub has seven rooms. And lashings more irony.
There’s wallpaper, but not the Anaglypta of the unenlightened and unironic
English B&B. Oh, no – this is deeply coloured, with curlicues and blobs.
My room, No 6, had yards of damask swaggering off a (mini) four-poster bed
and, instead of whistling windows, double glazing, to keep out the wind and
rain of a British summer. There was also one of those little black portable
televisions now found only in granny care homes and dull B&Bs. Not at
all ironic.
The bathroom was manorial in attitude, if not in size: a claw-footed bath with
a trompe-l’oeil marble effect and a farmhouse-style spindle-backed chair, on
which your spouse can sit and read out extracts from the property section of
old Country Life magazines while you soak.
The food: irony depends on your knowing that I know that you know that
I know. If you know what I mean. The pioneer village gastropubs got it
right, with self-aware combinations of traditional foods, wittily updated.
Now it seems you know before you walk into a country pub that there’ll be
some tired sausages lying on mash, a chunk of beer-battered (it’s a pub,
geddit?) cod and pudding soaked in nostalgia.
Bob Parker’s menu for the Village Pub menu is intelligent and different. And
the cooking is good. When we were there, there was a soup combining onion
and cider, and a crisp-skinned, succulent fillet of bream with shallot,
fennel and some sprightly blood orange. A rice pudding was saved from
indolent nostalgia by the addition of pineapple. And it was good to see that
deep-fried squid with sweet chilli sauce has done so well for itself in
London, it’s decided to move to the country.
What to do? The Village Pub is set among the green, rolling smells of
Gloucestershire, and you’re in the middle of some of England’s finest
walking country. So why not go out and skip through the fields, kick the
heads off some old daffodils, run away from cows that may be bulls after
all, because they’ve got horns, and splash through muddy puddles up to your
middles?
Afterwards, the pub’s mother ship, Barnsley House, has one of those modernist,
minimalist spas with lots of square-cut paving butting up to glass and steel
and old hand-hewn stones. There are subterranean massage rooms; and, after
your massage, you can float soothingly in the outdoor hydrotherapy pool,
heated to 36C, while looking up at the bright-blue/gunmetal-grey skies until
eight at night.
Tetbury is about 20 minutes away by car. This is one of the best places to
look for antiques, and the Prince of Wales, perhaps our future King of
Unironic Premodernism, has just opened a shop there too. Although he
probably won’t be working behind the counter. Noooo.
The Village Pub is in Barnsley, near Cirencester, Gloucestershire; 01285
740421, www.thevillagepub.co.uk
I can't stand slow service, so does that mean I have to eat every meal in McDonalds?
Ah, but now I think about it, I also can't stand poor service. Does Gavin have any advice for me? Burger King perhaps?
Mark, London,
We are lucky enough to live in Cirencester and regularly visit the Village Pub, there is a modest choice of very good real ale and while the service can be slow occasionally the food is worth the wait. If you're in a hurry for your food - go to McDonalds
Gavin Barnett, Cirencester, United Kingdom
i regularly get from barnsley to tetbury in twenty minutes
chefs name is bob parkinson by the way !!
tim , cirencester, glos
aren't the comments afterwards sometimes so much more enlightening?
Julia, Nottingham,
I used to go the proper "village pub" before it was taken over some years ago - and how much better it was; unpretentious food at reasonable prices, with proper beer on tap. I also recall going after it changed hands and being laughed at by a couple of townies when we said we preferred the old pub
Nick, Cirencester, Glos
we had one of the worst meals ever at the village pub this weekend - the food is good (expect London prices) but the service is the worst I have ever come across. dirty tables, waits of up to 2 hours between arrival and main course, wholly unapologetic management...
Ann, London,
It's a shame, or rather a sign of the times that even though this is a pub, you couldn't see fit to mention anything about beer.
Paul Kilgour, Copenhagen, Denmark
Getting from Barnsley to Tetbury in 20 minutes would be an 'interesting' experience.
Brian Rudge, Lechlade, Gloucestershire