Cocktail of doom! How a pub with everything went down the hatch

FEARS are mounting for the future of The Inn at Freshford as regulars desert our once-packed local in droves.
With many former customers switching to pubs at Limpley Stoke, Hinton and Midford, the question on every observer's lips is:
How could it happen to a pub in a spot that most landlords would die for, set in a beautiful village nestling in one of the most stunning valleys in Britain?
As recently as 16 years ago The Inn was enjoying one of the most popular periods in its history as drinkers and diners flocked to Freshford from miles around to join villagers and tourists alike in a packed pub humming with warmth and life.
And now? At 10.30 on a Friday night recently there were just two customers in the place. On a Saturday night at 10 o'clock there was one.
So why has it all gone so wrong?
No one doubts that changing habits, the smoking ban and the recession have had a devastating effect on Britain's pubs as up to 12 a day shut their doors for the last time.
But with The Inn it has been deeper than. Much deeper.
Over the years since those heady days in the early Nineties, a lethal mix of arrogance, shallow management, bad judgment and rotten service have allowed the pub to lurch inexorably towards the brink of extinction.

One previous boss – a dazzling example of the square peg in a round hole – was abrasive, had no pub experience and displayed an undisguised contempt for locals who chose to drink there but not eat. His loathsome attitude emptied the place within months.
Then a partnership took over and, as regulars feared, The Inn's precious identity was all but swallowed up as it became part of a pub chain.
This was compounded by an ill-judged facelift which effectively destroyed what remained of its traditional "cosiness".
Then, astonishingly, a chaise-longue was installed in the bar – presumably because the next landlord was convinced it was "just the thing" for a Somerset village pub.
Instead – to the dismay of the regulars – it became just the thing for teenaged couples who saw it as rather cosier than the back seat of a car. What's more, they could make a Coke last all night.
By now, trade was beginning to ebb away as talk about The Inn's decline dominated the conversations in rival watering-holes. Already, many brassed-off drinkers who had used the place for years weren't just trying other local pubs – they were trying them and staying.
Yet for all the gloom, The Inn still had three winning cards . . .

    •    Its music: the phenomenally popular Irish folk night on Sundays and its jazz session with the regular Derek Oldroyd band on Thursdays.
    •    Its ingenious and highly praised £5-a-year "loyalty card", which cut the price of its gluggable Box Steam Brewery beers to just £2 a pint, and
    •    Its barmaids . . . some of the most stunning in Somerset.

But while the loyalty card brought in the drinkers on Sundays and Thursdays, it didn't necessarily bring the guarantee of a full pint – a "hanging offence" committed by one manager, according to several of his, furious short-measured customers.
Then the landlord, based at The Cross Guns in Avoncliff, outraged a huge section of his clientele by scrapping their Irish music night on Sundays.
The result? The band and their outcast fans decamped to the Hungerford Arms, then the Fox & Badger at Wellow, where the group has since become a Sunday-night sensation.

By the spring of 2009, when a much younger manageress was running The Inn, things were looking desperate. On some nights – even Saturdays – you could count the number of customers on one hand. Most would be teenagers who'd nurse their drinks for hours, lolloping over bar stools with their knees pushed high against the counter as they sparred with the barmaids.
And there on a wall behind them was a chalk-board almost as absurdly out of place as the teeny-snoggers' chaise-longue. On it was a long list of the day's cocktails on offer, some of them with wince-making titles more suited to the Thrombosis-a-Gogo pole-dancing club.
As one villager told The Stroller: "To anyone walking through the door at that time, the place simply looked yobbie, unpopular and uninviting. And, of course, the cocktail board was ludicrous in a village pub.
"Very often towards the end of the evening, dogs would be running everywhere, even though many people hate them in pubs where food and drink are served. On one occasion, I saw staff picking them up and cuddling them behind the bar. Then a girl emerged from the kitchen of all places, sneezing into her hands. She couldn't stop and obviously had something wrong with her.
"Even then, I thought: 'This place has the kiss of death about it'."
So it's little wonder that former regulars continue to talk with immense affection about pub veterans John and Jackie Thwaites who ran The Inn for just three years in the early Nineties and left it in tremendous shape. Many of them still rue the day the couple quit.
"The place would have been packed back then," says a pal of The Stroller, "because John and Jackie were intelligent, humorous and knew the business inside-out. And, most of all, they knew exactly how to treat customers – and how to keep them coming back."

By June this year, the hopes of The Inn's few remaining customers were raised when a Yorkshire-born manager and his family moved in.
However, these hopes were short-lived, according to one story reaching The Stroller. A fortnight after the family had arrived, a group of villagers dropped in for a gargle and spotted the new manager standing behind the bar, grim-faced, arms folded, talking to a young barman.
Remarkably, he didn't look at the group. He didn't introduce himself. He didn't even speak to them.
Which may have seemed odd for a man who'd chosen a job that brings him face-to-face with customers seven days a week.
"Sod this," muttered one of the group. And he decided to engage the Leeds-born manager in conversation to "draw him out". . . a move that will probably go down as a first in the chequered history of the British pub where the age-old problem has usually been persuading the governor to belt up.
Not this one though.
A drinker standing near the group remembers: "The villager asked where he was from, where he'd run pubs. The usual stuff. But he was was getting clipped replies – and clearly the manager found it hard to smile."
When he was told he appeared a trifle "dour", the manager said: "Maybe I am. But that's because I don't want the customers to get too familiar. They'll walk all over you."
Mouths dropped. The silence was deafening.
For it was painfully obvious that customers weren't so much in danger of walking over him as walking out on him.
When one of the group pointed to the almost-empty bar and asked the manager how he'd fill it, he was told: "Don't worry. That's all in hand. We're getting there."
But clearly The Inn is not getting there. Just the reverse.

Within six weeks of arriving, the manager had axed the jazz on Thursday, which for years had been the busiest night of the week. To the fury of their fans, the hugely talented Derek Oldroyd band was relegated to two Wednesdays a month – the other two devoted to a "swing" jazz band which produces the sort of piped music you'd hear in a supermarket.
Switching Oldroyd to Wednesdays had the expected negative effect and before long the new swing band was playing to an almost empty pub.
Then, out of the blue, the manager sacked Derek and his band in what has been described as "a brutal and unnecessary" fashion. He wasn't even given a reason.
So why did the Thursday jazz session have to go?
Because suddenly it was seen as the prime evening for customers to eat there . . . and the jazz audience was in the way.
Wrong again. On the first Thursday evening without jazz it was painfully evident that only a handful of people were dining at The Inn. The following Thursday was little better.
Yet after the initial bombshell, Derek Oldroyd's sacking was to prove a blessing in disguise. A fortnight later he and the boys found a new home at the Swan Hotel in Bradford-on-Avon where they now weave their magic before a packed audience every Thursday again.
By now, though, the atmosphere at The Inn was so ghastly that one former regular told The Stroller: "I've yet to meet anyone with a good word to say about the new manager. It's bloody dreadful. His 'people skills' are zero. Many of the locals who've been drinking there for donkey's years feel they just aren't welcome any more. In fact, when we took our custom elsewhere it seemed exactly what the new regime wanted."
Certainly, many regulars were convinced they'd been driven out by stealth.
"A large section felt there'd been a hidden agenda," said a former Thursday-night jazz fan. "Everything pointed to the place being turned into an up-market "restaurant pub" where drinkers and jazz fans would merely be an encumbrance."  
Others believed the The Inn would be turned into a wine bar – although even displaced locals saw this as an absurd notion considering that the boss owned a successful local brewery which supplies The Inn with some cracking ales.

As popular, friendly faces began to vanish from behind the bar, it was clear that all was far from well in this once-thriving pub. And little was being done to stem the steady exodus of customers while attracting new ones. In fact, quite the opposite.
In late summer after lunch the manager could be seen sitting outside The Inn enjoying a smoke with his wife and daughter.
And that's just where a lady found them after walking the short distance from her home to buy a bottle of wine. Except that it wasn't mid-afternoon. It was 10pm – an hour before closing time!
When she asked if the pub was shut, the manager replied sharply: "Yes, it is."
And that was that.
There was no explanation. No apologies. And, plainly, he was happy to lose £12 on a bottle of wine that probably cost him a couple of quid.
So what's the future of a pub that even has to shut its doors before closing time?
Plainly, it's dire. The food trade may have perked up a bit – but the real test of its "popularity" will come this winter, particularly in January and February when the pub trade normally nosedives.
But while time is not on The Inn's side, urgency has never seemed a priority there in the past few years.
Six months ago the pub finally completed a refurbishment of the Gents lavatories which had been left half-finished for nearly four years. "It had been so long that most of us had forgotten when they started it," said one regular. "It was a disgrace."
The same can be said for the exterior paint-work which shames this pub in a picture-book setting. A grey undercoat was slapped on the woodwork more than four years ago – and, astonishingly, the village is still waiting for the top coat.
"It looks bloody awful," said another local, "and some of the windows seem to be rotting, too. No one appears to give a toss. Yet the owner has gone to the trouble of putting up new black-and-white Inn at Freshford signs which look totally out of place."

As if things couldn't get worse, it's feared now that the pub's "loyalty card" may be in jeopardy – which would be a crazy move for a landlord who owns a brewery and was behind the The Inn's third beer festival recently in aid of charity.
However, if the general exodus from The Inn goes on at this rate, our local could be gone within six months.
The Stroller believes passionately that it must not go under – and we're the first to applaud events like the beer festival.
But The Inn needs more than the occasional one-off winner. Much, much more.

    •    It needs commitment from an owner-manager and his wife both working behind the bar and engaging with customers. For pity's sake, it's what they're supposed to do.
    •    It needs a small but superb range of beers – all served at full measure.
    •    It needs a great chef producing memorable food at reasonable prices.
    •    It needs to restore its weekly jazz session.
    •    It needs to axe its piped music – loathed by drinkers and diners alike who are there because they want to hear themselves talk.
    •    It needs to chuck out that ridiculous chaise-longue and put back its cosy carpet.
    •    And, most of all, it needs to chuck out its bloody awful manager.
Only then will The Inn at Freshford have a fighting chance of being a great pub again.

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Kids storm Mr Pastry landlord in pub siege

HUNDREDS of screaming children besieged The Inn at Freshford last night after news leaked out that TV favourite "Mr Pastry" had taken over as landlord.
The sole customer in the pub was trampled to death as the marauding kids clambered over the bar to demand the autograph of balding Leeds TV legend Fred Scrotum.
Derek Oldroyd, whose jazz group was sacked from The Inn this summer, spotted the riot as he drove past in his car and tried to calm things down by hurling a brick through the window.
But Scrotum stood his ground and drove out the children by playing old Max Bygraves records and tracks from a CD by the Checkout Turds, a new  'jazz' trio at The Inn who have cornered the market in "Supermarket Music's Eternal Greats" or S.M.E.G. – a nationwide shopping phenomenon which has had millions of Britons falling asleep over their trolleys.
Asked to comment, Scrotum said in his empty bar: "Appen, I've nothing to say, except 'We're getting there' and 'I hate the general public.'
"Anyway, you bastard, don't you realise it'll be nearly closing time in at least three hours? So just drink up and bugger off. And you can tell that toe-rag Geoff Edwards he's barred."
Mr Pastry is 94 in the shade.

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Demise of Jazz at The Inn at Freshford

It is with great regret that I have to report that the long standing Jazz at The Inn as now been discontinued.  The present manager, without consultation with any locals that I know of, decided to switch the Jazz night to Wednesdays and further complicated the matter by only having jazz every other week. The Derek Oldroyd band consists of a double bass, drums and piano, and each week a quartet was formed by the addition of a front line musician. The fourth musician would be a different musician each week.

Apart from the loss of revenue to the band by being reduced to playing once a fortnight, the disruption to the lives of the musicians, and the failure to take into account that nearly all of the regulars had built their week around there being Jazz on Thursday, the ignorant manner in which these changes were implemented by the present manager has driven nearly all regulars away. This is a great pity as surely a local pub should welcome locals. The Box Steam Brewery beer is excellent and the range of beers, lagers and ciders that The Inn serves is also excellent.

The only good news is that The Derek Oldroyd band is now playing every Thursday at The Swan Hotel in Bradford on Avon and anyone who feels that they will be among strangers need not fear, as all the old Freshford regulars are now going to The Swan. 

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The 3rd annual Inn at Freshford Beer Festival

 

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HUNDREDS of screaming children besieged The Inn at Freshford last night after news leaked out that TV favourite "Mr Pastry" had taken over as landlord.
The sole customer in the pub was trampled to death as the marauding kids clambered over the bar to demand the autograph of balding Leeds TV legend Fred Scrotum.
Jazz band leader Derek Oldroyd, who used to play at The Inn, spotted the riot as he drove by in his car and tried to calm things down by hurling a brick through the window.
But Scrotum stood his ground and drove out the children by playing old Max Bygraves records and tracks from a CD by the Checkout Turds, a fabulous new trio at The Inn who have cornered the market in "Supermarket Music's Eternal Greats" or S.M.E.G. – a nationwide shopping phenomenon which has had millions of Britons falling asleep over their trolleys.
Asked to comment, Scrotum said in his empty bar: "Appen, I've nothing to say, except 'We're getting there' and 'I hate the general public.'
"Anyway, you bastard, don't you realise it'll be nearly closing time in at least three hours? So just drink up and bugger off. And you can tell that toe-rag Geoff Edwards he's barred."
Mr Pastry is 94 in the shade.

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DEATH OF OUR LOCAL?
How has The Inn ended up like this?

IT'S the question everyone's asking: Why is Freshford's local pub finding it so difficult to attract customers?
A place like The Inn should have it made, set in such an idyllic location next to the River Frome against a spectacular backdrop of woods and hills.
Yet for more than a decade it seems to have had the "black stick" as regulars desert the place in droves. But why, for goodness sake?
Certainly, Britain's pubs are under pressure from the recession, plus legislation aimed at improving our health by banishing smokers to the "beer garden".
But the recession is a relatively new national problem – and I have no trouble with the smoking ban. In fact, I believe more people will use non-smoking pubs, although it may take some time to get them in.
So just what's wrong with The Inn? It's under new management – yet it seems to have been cursed for ages. In the last few months there have been as few as two people at the bar at 10.30 on a Saturday night when the whole place would have been heaving in its heyday.
As if things aren't bad enough, many loyal customers are incensed at recent changes which have switched the pub's successful Thursday-night jazz slot to a Wednesday. And, worse, it's rumoured that Derek Oldroyd's group will play only on alternate Wednesdays, rather than every week.
So what will happen on the alternate Wednesdays?
We'll get a charming but utterly lack-lustre band which has played only a couple of times at The Inn. It serves up what can only be described as easy-listening pap – the sort of piped-music that assails us in supermarkets.
It's a far cry from the genius of Derek Oldroyd's phenomenally popular group. For years, he has served up a continuous programme of REAL jazz at The Inn – filling the car park every Thursday,  week after week, in all weather.
But what really infuriates customers is that this ludicrous decision was taken without even consulting them. The bar manager seems oblivious to the notion that the Oldroyd boys attract dedicated jazz enthusiasts who have organised their lives for years to ensure they keep Thursdays free for their regular trip to The Inn. Many have other commitments on Wednesdays.
Equally damning is the apparent total disregard for Derek and the band who may have other arrangements on Wednesdays and, by all reports, will lose money.
Many regulars believe that the latest barmy decision is merely symptomatic of the malaise which has been gripping The Inn for too long.
And, make no mistake, if things don't change, there will be only one outcome.
This once-great pub will die.

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It's July. It's not cold, but it's not really summer is it?  I don't see many visitors to Freshford. Our local pubs, after being hit by the closure of the A36, are facing difficulties. But the British pub is facing problems, it is not just a local issue. The link is to a CNN news video that explores the factors that have lead to over a thousand pubs closing in 2007.  What I find particularly disturbing is the remark that if a tenth century man were to visit us today the only things he would recognize in Britain today are churches and pubs and our pubs are closing down.

What is a local pub? In my opinion it's a pub that you can walk to. I suppose many locals just get in to their car and go off to other local pubs, rather than go to the pub that they can actually walk to. If this trend continues, locals will lose their local pub. Read more about pub closures here. 

What would bring you back to your local pub?

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I regret to see a notice in The Inn, last night, that it will be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays from June the 2nd 2008. I understand this is because of the A36 closure affecting trade. I don't suppose the recent poor weather in "flaming June" (well almost June). has helped.

As for the A36 damage; I don't believe their reasons for why the work is needed. Whilst subsidence caused by regular flooding in the valley may be a partial contribution, the main reason is the Juggernaut lorries that may weigh in excess of 38 tons that use the A36. The A36 is not a trunk road. Sainsburys and other lorries should use the appropriate roads that do not have ancient bridges.

And Bristol docks should be used properly rather than the A36 road which goes through some of the most beautiful parts of our countryside.

Incidentally, I saw a tanker with a tanker trailer (never seen one before) go over Bradford On Avon's ancient bridge this week (Tuesday) One must wonder how much damage this will cause that we will have to pay for, eventually. So much for Shared Spaces. The only way to control these events is to capture the law breakers with decent HD video-cams and prosecute them.

It is so nice to be able to have a drink when one is out walking. I like walking to Iford, but I can't have a drink there - no pub. Locals and visitors (from all over the world) can have a drink in the Inn and the Cross Guns and The Hop Pole, not to forget The New Inn and the Hungerford Arms and the Rose and Crown, when they use local footpaths. Short of subsidizing these pubs they must be supported by locals.

It is not enough to occasionally visit these watering holes they should be visited regularly. Alternatively, perhaps country pubs should be given a grant.

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Just a reminder that we are really privileged to have live jazz at The Inn every thursday evening. The musicians are are among the finest in the country and by that I mean the UK. 

And not only that, there is no charge for dropping in to hear this fine music. And you are not expected to down five pints of real ale or a couple of bottles of fine wine and scoff a plate of Freshford Mill oysters although  it all helps.

The only downside is that you often can't hear what your chums are talking about, mind you head nodding helps.

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