Essex Days Out

After a morning cycle rain around Tiptree in the dry (dry being a rare event in the August of 2010 in Essex), late afternoon suddenly brightened up, and offered blue skies, fluffy white clouds and a bit of sun. On the spur of the moment I swiftly put into operation a Cunning Plan that I had been hatching.  A plan involving real ale….

We’ve been members of CAMRA on and off for 25 years, go to the local beer festivals, and frequent (rather more rarely than we would like) a number of nearby pubs that are regulars in CAMRAs Good Beer Guide. But having downloading the iPap app for the Good Beer Guide recently, I have resolved to make a point of getting to all the listed pubs close to Colchester that I’ve yet to visit.

Interestingly a couple of these are pubs which I cycle past quite regularly, but which do not leap out as being likely pubs for real ale. I’ll be reporting on these in due course.

Today the target was The Snooty Fox in Great Bromley. Hop in the car, out on Clingoe Hill up the A133, through Elmstead Market, get to the crossroads at Frating and take a left.  The pub has clearly had work done on it fairly recently, with decking fore and aft, and a children’s playground at the rear.

In these days of gastro pubs, the pub itself and their food is a bit of a throwback – it’s nice to see horse brasses in an English country pub! Saturday at 4:00 in the afternoon isn’t the ideal place to get a feel for a pub’s atmosphere – we were the only two in there! The pub makes a point of making available local real ales, and also real cider. Sadly the real ale was a little limited – only one of the four pumps was on, but the Farmers IPA from Maldon was quite quaffable. There -was- a cider on, and several other beers of the non-real persuasion.

So in terms of a destination purely for real ale, not the greatest experience, but that means we’ll just have to try it another day! You can google/multimap the pub at  CO7 7JW

More articles like this: | frating, great bromley, real ale, the snooty fox