The Bear Hotel

If ever you find yourself in Crickhowell, South Wales, I heartily recommend you enjoy the hospitality at The Bear Hotel. Where I'm from (the Outer Hebrides), "good living" is the term used to describe only the most staunchly religious and 'dry' individuals but being more of the wet persuasion myself, I rather fancied a taste of the Reverend James' good life.

I'm in pretty good drinking company, Johnny Depp was regularly spotted relaxing at the bar when he filmed The Libertine and Robbie Williams' stay here lasted months.

Dating from the 15th century and claiming links to the Battle of Agincourt, The Bear Hotel is a blessed haven of roaring inglenook fireplaces, ye olde worlde charm and free WiFi to boot - yahoo!

This Rev. James ale has an oddly familiar taste... 

When I was a child, my dad became obsessed with finding shortcuts to all things domestic after my mum died. He must have condemned the teabag for not being convenient enough because one day a jar of lemon flavoured 'Instant Tea' appeared. We really did try to convince ourselves that although unusual in taste, it would be an acceptable alternative to normal tea. 

It wasn't.

Yip, there's just a hint of that lightly tannic lemon tea but alongside a lovely wheaty cola flavour. 

Divine.

The Bear is jam packed with relics of byegone ages. Not sure what Ostler actually means but it sounds slightly Germanic, I rather fancy it was the 'trick' bell to weed out Nazi spies.

*OK, so now know 'Ostler' actually means stableman.*

The Bear Hotel Crickhowell.