23/10/23 - (Half of) The Good Beer Guide Pubs of Falmouth

 Too many pubs, too little time

Firing up the Good Beer Guide App shows the highest concentration of South Westerly dots in the nautical town of Falmouth.

If I only had time

Seven to be precise and unusually for the no man's land of pub ticking windows - Monday lunchtime - six of them are open.

With my drinking partners a Guide Dog in Training and a taxi driver whose primary concern is for the aforementioned life-changer, I need to pick my negotiated three carefully.  

Have I chosen wisely?

Beerwolf Books - on paper sounds like I have died and gone to heaven. Is it a book shop? Is it a bar?  Is it a pinball machine arcade?  Well actually, all three.

Mappiman's Drinking Team for a Monday

Steep stairs lead to a long bar stocked with Cornish brews (and others), comfy seating and surprisingly less books than you would expect.  

Does it work as a pub?  Well, if I ran it, I think I would be shouting at the loiterers hanging around all day "a drink on the go at all times".  This, combined with a bring your own food policy, made me think it must be being run as a charity, rather than a profit centre.

I bet if I looked hard enough, I would have found charging points

Unique experience and after taking a time to make the right selection, I enjoyed my Penzance Brewery Hoptimystic.

Finding one of the seven that actually did food proved harder than expected. A cafe on the pier lured us in with the promise of their world famous crab sandwiches. We get the dog settled, only to find they have run out of crab. I think better of telling them to dangle a hook with a bit of bacon on it out the window. The second choice of a bacon and cranberry toastie was fine.  With Mrs M and the dog settled, I was allowed to explore the next pub as a free man.

The bible blurb says that Seven Stars is not to be missed.  An interior of national importance, a bottle and jug serving hatch and the promise of Bass meant that I agreed.

Seven Stars - a Free House

It also has its own Wikipedia page and unsubstantiated internet rumours suggest that its been owned by the same family for the last 150 years.

I do think I can pick them.

A small bar at the front had every seat taken by mainly old boys wiling away a Monday afternoon. After service - Bass, gravity fed - I retreated to the rear bar to sit on my lonesome. I felt like one of the uncool kids, unaccepted into the main gang, laughing and taking the pee out of one regular, whose birthday was being celebrated in the best possible way.  

Let me spend a Monday afternoon in a pub on my 67th please.

The back room provided ample opportunity to further explore upstairs, to admire a cabinet full of red wine with price labels, consider the least ornate bass mirror ever found and to see if the barman would crack a smile, lest join in with the front room banter.

Gravity Bass in front of the least ornate Bass Mirror found

I keep my claret in the sideboard here

A fortunate downpour kept me here for two but it did come at the expense of additional brownie points that could have upped the ticking to four. The rest of the gang picked up from the crabless cafe.

I needed to choose wisely for my final tick and the Chain Locker seemed promising. One of Falmouth's oldest buildings. Packed full of maritime memorabilia. Open fires. Ghosts. There is usually a ghost.

Unusual beers too - with St Austell Red Sky at Night red ale, never previously encountered.

Nautical memorabilia mainly nailed to the ceiling

'Red sky at night...light of shorter wavelengths is being dissipated by water vapour and atmospheric dust. Red sky in the morning...same.'

A short lived, celebratory pat on my own back at my great choices was ended on looking at the harsh digital display on the contactless machine.

£8.55 for a pint and a half of diet coke.

At least Dick Turpin kissed me first.

Ambulance on permanent standby for shocked pub tickers.