Beer sodden guide to Durham
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
It is about time someone made a real entry about our small city. By this I of course mean.......A pub guide!!!
As any good student knows, the most important thing you can do whilst at university is attempt to try every single variety of beer available to you. Since Durham is a very small place this shouldn't be too difficult. Should it?
Despite the small size of Durham there are at least 16 pubs. Add to this all the college bars and you have got the perfect recipie for pavement pizza. Some of the pubs are better than others. I would advise you to stay well away from the coach and eight, due to their habit of watering down the beer, and from the fighting cocks, unless you like a good kicking from a large group of northeners (there appears to be nothing that northeners like doing more than dishing out beatings!!). In my humble opinion the best pubs in Durham are:
---The swan and three sygnets
---The woodmans Inn
---The shakespeare
All of these do good beers, especially the woodmans inn which has a large and regularly changing line up of real ales (there are even a couple of lagers for those of you who can't handle a drop of the real stuff!). Although the other two pubs don't have as large a range of beer, the shakespeare is one of the nicest pubs I have ever drunk in and the swan (as it is affectionatly known) is dirt cheap at £1.24 a pint (and the beer tastes damn good)
You also have your compliment of chain pubs such as Yates, the hogshead and o'neils. For some reason these pubs/bars think that the best way to attract customers is to play their music at ear drum burstingly high levels. This counts against the hogshead as otherwise it has a very good choice of beers. Come the weekend and O'Neils becomes packed with women wearing very little. This might sound good, untill you realise that the average age in there must be close to 40. In all my life I haven't seen as much strained lycra. And the sagging, oh the sagging!!! These women wobble in all the wrong places, including the jowls!! In isn't uncommon to see these women tottering drunkenly in high heals outside the pub whilst trying in vain to keep their belly button from ending up between their breasts. If Durham was in Essex these women would have names like Sharon or Tracy.
The college bars can make a nice change from the pubs as they are cheap and usually have a good line up of beer (and once again lager for all those women out there). Sadly, unless you are a member of the DUS or know someone who is, you have very little chance of getting in one of these top class establishments. You can always consle yourself with the thought that at least you won't be spending the evening in the company of a couple of self obsessed RAH's (Durham slang for rich arse hole. Believe me, there are plenty of them about the place).
As any good student knows, the most important thing you can do whilst at university is attempt to try every single variety of beer available to you. Since Durham is a very small place this shouldn't be too difficult. Should it?
Despite the small size of Durham there are at least 16 pubs. Add to this all the college bars and you have got the perfect recipie for pavement pizza. Some of the pubs are better than others. I would advise you to stay well away from the coach and eight, due to their habit of watering down the beer, and from the fighting cocks, unless you like a good kicking from a large group of northeners (there appears to be nothing that northeners like doing more than dishing out beatings!!). In my humble opinion the best pubs in Durham are:
---The swan and three sygnets
---The woodmans Inn
---The shakespeare
All of these do good beers, especially the woodmans inn which has a large and regularly changing line up of real ales (there are even a couple of lagers for those of you who can't handle a drop of the real stuff!). Although the other two pubs don't have as large a range of beer, the shakespeare is one of the nicest pubs I have ever drunk in and the swan (as it is affectionatly known) is dirt cheap at £1.24 a pint (and the beer tastes damn good)
You also have your compliment of chain pubs such as Yates, the hogshead and o'neils. For some reason these pubs/bars think that the best way to attract customers is to play their music at ear drum burstingly high levels. This counts against the hogshead as otherwise it has a very good choice of beers. Come the weekend and O'Neils becomes packed with women wearing very little. This might sound good, untill you realise that the average age in there must be close to 40. In all my life I haven't seen as much strained lycra. And the sagging, oh the sagging!!! These women wobble in all the wrong places, including the jowls!! In isn't uncommon to see these women tottering drunkenly in high heals outside the pub whilst trying in vain to keep their belly button from ending up between their breasts. If Durham was in Essex these women would have names like Sharon or Tracy.
The college bars can make a nice change from the pubs as they are cheap and usually have a good line up of beer (and once again lager for all those women out there). Sadly, unless you are a member of the DUS or know someone who is, you have very little chance of getting in one of these top class establishments. You can always consle yourself with the thought that at least you won't be spending the evening in the company of a couple of self obsessed RAH's (Durham slang for rich arse hole. Believe me, there are plenty of them about the place).
