Reborn On The Fourth Of July

It was with a mounting feeling of anticipation that I headed out this morning, my destination was Wetherspoon's Barker's Brewery.  Will there be any decent ale?  Will there be a queue?  Will I need ID to get in?

No queue!  I headed in, walked up to the bar, and ordered a couple of pints of Big Bog Willo-The-Wisp, and sat down at one of the tables.

Wonderfully, nothing much seemed to have changed.  OK, the tables were more scattered, some screened off, and there were screens around the tills at the bar.  But the basic experience was unchanged, the ale was very good, the staff were friendly and chatty.  Most of the Saturday morning crowd seemed to turn up, although overall I felt it was slightly less busy than a normal Saturday and very few breakfasts were served.

The manager stopped for a chat, bemoaning the difficulty of ordering real ale last week, many breweries being sold out, but luckily Big Bog had come up trumps.  He said the choice might be a bit limited, we advised that one decent real ale was enough to be going on with!  (Actually, I later had a Porter also from Big Bog, so that's at least two decent ales.)

So, a gentle return to something approaching normality, let's hope it continues like this.