The Fox, Carlton, Bedfordshire

Every now and then I like to choose a good book, dust off the old camera, and use what little remains of our rural public transport to search out new pubs in far-flung places. Anyone that does similar will know it can take a fair bit of forward planning to get to where you want to be at more or less the time you'd like to be there on these jaunts, and no matter how much research you've done beforehand, there's always going to be an element of hit-or-miss about the day. The main danger being that your destination pub won't be open at the advertised time, or even worse, not open at all! Rural villages are already littered with long-closed locals, and sadly they're still closing at a truly alarming rate.

Perhaps just as bad from my perspective is when the pub in question 'is' open, but just doesn't match the rose-tinted vision of pubby-perfection I've held in my mind on that long bus journey. I'm generally travelling with knowledge of a pubs gaming interest of course, but I'm also looking for good locals pubs, and ideally a nice pint too. Town centre chain bars and the 'pub-as-restaurant' model don't particularly interest me, and neither do pubs that are attractive and traditional on the outside, but bland, stripped-out, and entirely lacking in charm and character within. In common with the pub games that this blog is mainly concerned with, what I'm hoping to find is a pub that's not entirely lost its connection with the traditions and history of the community it serves.

So, one train and two meandering bus rides into the heart of Bedforshire later, I found myself more than a little disappointed with my initial pub choice. Sometimes it's hard to put your finger on why a pub just doesn't 'do-it' for you, but this otherwise perfectly serviceable, and outwardly attractive village local (which shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) 'really' didn't do-it for me. A bit bland and gentrified within, polite but thoroughly unengaging locals and landlord, just a little bit dull if I'm honest. Perhaps it was me, but despite the presence of a very fine old skittles table in the corner that I know gets regular use in a local league, I was struggling to see a good photo opportunity, and just couldn't think how I was going to make the place seem anything like interesting, because it just wasn't to my eyes! Underwhelming then, though clearly not to the handful of locals in at the time, and of course I'm genuinely pleased that the community hasn't lost its single remaining boozer in the way that so many villages already have. Perhaps it was me...

Cutting my planned two hour lunchtime pint(s) short, I did a quick recce on the internet (thank heavens for rural 3G) and caught my third bus of the day to the two-pub village of Carlton. This was more like it! A swift half in the snug of the thoroughly modernised, but actually very pleasant Royal Oak, before strolling the length of the village for my second stab at a destination pub worth travelling for, and hopefully worth writing about.

I knew very little about The Fox before visiting that day, other than it has a good reputation for beer (entirely justified I'd say), is open all day every day (rare and very welcome, particularly for a village pub), and that it plays host to the local game of Table Skittles, or 'Hood Skittles' as it's often known round these parts. I certainly wasn't aware of how chocolate-box pretty the pub is, a legacy of its former life as a farmhouse. In fact it's a bit of a thatched beauty, nestled between the village high street and the road to nearby Turvey, and with a cottage garden at the front that looks exactly the place to be on a warm summer afternoon. You really couldn't ask for a more attractive and welcoming sight after spending the best part of two hours travelling.

After many years as a Charles Wells Brewery house, The Fox is now free of tie and in the safe hands of licensee Alison Brown who bought the pub in 2014. There's a good overview of the pubs history on the Bedfordshire Community Archive webpages which suggests it was a rather small, dark and pokey place originally, trading none-too successfully it seems as a simple village alehouse. The pub today has clearly lost much of its original multi-room layout, but nevertheless it now comfortably straddles the divide between modern open-plan convenience with a strong food offering, and a pub that retains plenty of genuine character and essential 'pubbiness'. I took a strong liking to The Fox immediately I walked through the door, and was made very welcome by Alison who was busy keeping the Saturday afternoon drinkers served at the bar.

One thing I've noticed from visiting some of the more traditional pubs in the county, is that Bedfordshire pubs are generally rugby pubs, perhaps even more so than neighbouring Leicestershire and Northants. Sadly I couldn't stick around for the whole game, but it was good to see a small but enthusiastic crowd in for the weekend Six Nations matches, a pub tradition I've been enjoying since its earlier Five Nations days, but which seems to me to be on the wane as a traditional afternoon session these days.

The northern half of Bedfordshire is also very much Skittles country, the version known more widely as Northamptonshire Table Skittles being the game of choice. The skittles table is sensibly located in a separate games room to the rear of the pub (it's a noisy business), and shares throwing space with the Dartboard. Tuesdays are match days in a league that would also be entirely new to me that day. That's because the Ouse Valley Skittles League, in common with many similar pub games leagues around the country, doesn't seem to advertise its existence very widely.

12 teams make up the Winter competition, which runs from October through to March with a finals night in April. I'm not entirely sure if there's an equivalent Summer league. There are currently 10 venues for the game in the Ouse Valley league, a mix of pubs and social clubs dotted around an area to the north of Bedford, stretching almost as far as Wellingborough in the games heartland county of Northamptonshire.

The skittles table was fully equipped with a set of Boxwood pins and cheeses ready for practice and casual games, a good enough reason to visit the pub even without the attraction of a bite to eat, or a few beers in the garden of a really lovely village pub.

The Cordwainer, Kettering, Northamptonshire

With this post I bring my recent whistle-stop tour of Ketterings generally underrated, and for my part, infrequently visited estate pubs to a conclusion. Finishing with a recently refurbished community local that, in common with both the Stirrup Cup and Woolcomber, would be yet another entirely new pub to me.

There's a good reason why I rarely visit these estate pubs, and it's not entirely down to the (often but not always!) limited beer choice. Despite Kettering being just a short bus or train ride away for me, and a town I like to visit at least once a month, most of them are just that little bit off the beaten track, and frankly a little too far to walk to from what is after all a very well-pubbed town centre.

Not so The Cordwainer, a pub I've been aiming to visit for some time now but always assumed was an inconvenient bus ride away at best. In fact the pub is located on the very edge of a late-Victorian residential area just to the North of the town centre, a sprawl of mostly terraced housing built to accommodate workers in Ketterings burgeoning shoe trade. 'Cordwainer' is of course an archaic name for a shoemaker.

Although the Cordwainer stands opposite a row of late 19th century housing, it's clear from the pubs appearance that it wasn't built as a classic Victorian mid-terrace alehouse. In fact very few such pubs survive in Kettering, the Melton Arms being the latest example to close for good, and most of the social drinking on this side of town takes place in the numerous trade and social clubs such as the nearby Miniature Rifle Club. So The Cordwainer is a newer build, established to serve the much later 20th century housing that surrounds the adjacent North Park recreation space, perhaps even as late as the 1980's from its appearance, a much less functional design than some of its 50's and 60's 'flat roof' peers.

As with the Woolcomber on the Ise Lodge estate, my early 90's edition of the local CAMRA pub guide indicates that Home Bitter from the brewery in Daybrook was the only real ale available at the time. Indeed a page on the Brewery History Society website lists both of these pubs as being Home Ales houses originally, which would have made them considerable outliers to the brewerys core pub trade in and around Nottingham. Sadly it's been quite a while since any ale appeared on the Cordwainer's single handpump.

The pub was extensively refurbished quite recently, but thankfully retains its original two-room layout. The current licensees appear to have taken a leaf out of the Stirrup Cup's book, converting the left-hand lounge bar (right & below) into JKs Cafe during daytime trading hours. This bar then reverts to more traditional pub use in the evenings, and it's here that the pubs Dartboard and vintage Northamptonshire Skittles Table reside.

One thing that's become very clear to me from visiting these estate pubs, is that the traditional concept of social drinking alongside sport and games, whilst still popular in some pubs at certain times of the day, is simply not enough to sustain what are often marginal businesses anymore. Particularly so on weekday afternoons when all but the most commercial high street chain bars tend to be very quiet. The future viability of estate pubs like the Cordwainer clearly relies on developing a good food trade, but also imaginative use of what are often substantial buildings on generous plots. Functions and social events have always been a strong point for these suburban community locals (and the ever-popular weekly Meat Raffle of course!), but this diversification into an afternoon café function seems to work well, it's what locals want from their pub at this time of the day. So I was delighted to see the licensees at the Cordwainer have taken this very positive initiative.

Of course the heart of a pub like the Cordwainer will always be pints at the bar, a chat with fellow locals, and the all-important televised sport and traditional pub games that this blog is all about, all of which were on show when I visited on a typically slow weekday early afternoon.

Pool is the most important game played at the Cordwainer, the pub fielding three teams in the Kettering Town Pool League, currently clustered mid-table in Division 1 which must make for an occasional fixture clash. The main Pool Table is immaculately maintained by locals in the front bar, with a second table covered and available when required in the lounge bar.

Pool, Darts, and Table Skittles are common features of all the pubs I've visited around Kettering recently, which is as it should be. Estate pubs like these are often the last stronghold of the more traditional pub games like skittles, though happily this is not the case in Kettering, with several notable venues for the local game dotted around the town centre. It's quite likely that a skittles table would have been installed at these 'modern' estate pubs from day one, the game being hugely popular throughout Northamptonshire at the time. Indeed many clubs in the area are known to have had several tables until relatively recently, such was the demand for a game, with competitive play in several overlapping leagues throughout the week. Interest in the game has of course contracted considerably in recent years, and Skittles is now played at the Cordwainer in a combined Kettering, Burton Latimer & District League, the home team currently leading the field in the second tier of competition.

The table itself appears to be something of a hybrid. Constructed in 1973 by W.T Black & Son of Northampton, as evidenced by the stencilling underneath which can be found on almost all Blacks tables. At some point the table has been refurbished and/or repaired by G.J Pepper though. The Pepper brothers of nearby Wellingborough were perhaps the most highly regarded of all the Northants skittles table manufacturers, and presumably in competition with the Northampton company, but would have worked on many of these tables once the 'Black' company ceased trading. The square-form netting at the back of the table is certainly more typical of a Peppers table.