Pub of the Year

The launch of the Good Beer Guide for 2010 brings the next phase of CAMRA's Pub of the Year competition with the announcement of the winning pub from each region.

London's winner this year is The Bricklayers Arms in Putney - still selling a good range of beers from Timothy Taylor Brewery but also now has two or three handpumps dedicated to smaller breweries with Sambrook's Wandle Ale a permanent fixture.

Their autumn beer festival is next week, Thursday 16th to Sunday 20th - the theme is beers from Devon and Cornwall and the list of 80 beers from 40 breweries is here.

The winning pub for Kent is The Bull at Horton Kirby. Readers here will be well aware of this great pub that hit my radar when they started advertising their monthly brewery showcases in London Drinker magazine. I have visited a number of times through the year and love everything about it. Nuff said from me but if you want to read far more eloquent and thorough reviews then take a look at Mark Dredge's Pencil and Spoon Blog.

Winner from Surrey and Sussex is again The Royal Oak in Friday Street, Rusper. This was the winner at this stage of the competition last year and you can read about my visit here. The pub was pipped at the final stage by overall winner The Kelham Island Tavern. Can they go one stage further this year ?

The pub of the year for East Anglia is The Wheatsheaf at Whittle, Essex. This is not a pub known to me but is described on their web-site as a traditional English Pub with possibly the finest Greene King IPA, in the area.

Those four pubs are now judged by the four CAMRA regional directors for the region and a winner is put through to the final.

The other winning regional pubs are :

Central Southern - Royal Oak Inn, Wantage, Oxon, OX12 8DF
East Midlands - Old Oak Inn, Horsley Woodhouse, Derbyshire, DE7 6AW
Greater Manchester - Crown Hotel, Worthington, Gtr Manchester, WN1 2XF
Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales - Golden Lion Inn, Llangynhafal, LL16 4LN
North East - Boathouse Inn, Wylam, Northumberland, NE41 8HR
Scotland and NI - Albert Tavern, Freuchie, Fife, KY15 7EX
South and Mid Wales - Severn Arms, Penybont, LD1 5UA
South West - Old Spot, Dursley, Gloucestershire, GL11 4JQ
Wessex - Prince of Wales, Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 8AL
West Midlands - Cock Hotel, Wellington, Shropshire, TF1 2DL
West Pennines - Taps, Lytham, Lancashire, FY8 5LE
Yorkshire - Kelham Island Tavern, Sheffield, S3 8RW

Some old favourites and some unknown to me but I dare say all great pubs and worthy of a visit.