The Three Horse Shoes

Merthyr Road, Birchgrove [map]

 

It's a pub. It's a very damp picnic area next to a main road. It appears to be flogging The Famous Five for £3.95 (although we're fairly certain that selling children is illegal - even in Birchgrove).

And it doesn't have a full complement of horse shoes.

 

We've never understood why pubs have little shelving units displaying their bottled beers. Is the fact that you're trying to shift the utterly foul Budweiser really so incredible that you have to put it on a plinth?

(No. In case you were wondering.)



"Proper food. Proper prices," proclaim the menus. The sort of utterly meaningless marketese that's enough to drive anyone to bibulousness.



Another food-related note: you can tell they're absolutely mental here as they serve roast dinners on days of the week other than Sunday.

With this sort of experimental approach to cooking, it's only a matter of time until they're drumming up nitro poached aperitifs and snail porridge.



Never trust a cash machine in a pub. Even The Photographer has never been so desperate for a pint that he's been prepared to pay the inevitable £2.75 surcharge.



The bar goes on forever.

You can't quite tell as much from this photo but walking its entire length takes about 12 days: going from one end to the other is like trying to hike Offa's Dyke, albeit with greater opportunity to partake in gassy American lagers and roast dinners along the way.

The New Inn

67 Caerphilly Road, Birchgrove [map]
 

What the hey? This is what happens when town planners return from lengthy liquid lunches and confuse the placement of the local pub with the location of the double-glazing showroom.

In this instance, a compromise was reached by combining the two.

Swift delivery of lager by friendly bar staff. Note the Deal of the Week, which offers two bottles of VS Mix (presumably some form of low-grade WKD clone) for £3.50.

Take your pick from lemon, cherry or, erm, blue flavours. What exactly does 'blue' taste of - a chlorinated swimming pool? We opt against finding out.

That's the weekly shop done, then: 240 tea bags, 50 economy sausages, some lemons and a large tub of Clover. No idea what the deal is with those flags, by the way.

Good to see a pool table with plenty of room around it. Nothing worse than accidentally cueing someone in the testicles while attempting to break.

Oh god, The Photographer's trying to be all arty again. That's all we need.

Look up and it's like one of those spiked ceilings that gradually lowers towards the floor in a bid to comprehensively impale the hero in a 1980s action movie.

We don't fancy being spiked, so make our escape to the conservatory area at the front of the pub. Where we're strangely overcome by an urge to buy some new uPVC windows.

The Birchgrove

1-3 Birchgrove Road, Birchgrove [map]


It may look as if The Photographer has invested in some form of fisheye lens in order to take this shot. But there's no trickery involved here: this is just what The Birch looks like.

Everything's leaning in at such a weird angle that it's like a Brains-fuelled supernova that's about to collapse in on itself and create a tiny black hole in the middle of Birchgrove. Which will certainly be confusing for anyone trying to drive out of Cardiff on the A469.


We risk cosmic annihilation and venture inside, where our bravery is rewarded with two chilled pints of Foster's.

On a separate note, what exactly has been going on to cause the large scuff mark on that pole? It's as if it's some sort of scratching post for pissheads.


Bear right when you go in and you'll enter this extensive lounge area, which has a particular focus on serving food.


The Photographer insists I make some sort of amusing remark about the fact that the fish tank is adjacent to the specials board but, frankly, I can't be bothered.


Through to the other bar section where, you feel, the real drinking action takes place. Note telly in corner decanting a few bloody rounds of pugilism, surely the only appropriate weekday afternoon viewing in a pub that's populated exclusively by blokes.


If, after a few pints, you fancy getting involved in a bit of sporting action yourself, boxing is actually rather frowned upon (come on, this isn't the Royal Oak).

But there is a dartboard and, perhaps more excitingly, this skittle alley - which also doubles as the venue for dwarf throwing contests on the third Sunday of every month.

The Aneurin Bevan

Caerphilly Road, Birchgrove [map]


Here's an idea that seems not so much too good to be true as too true to be good: a branch of Wetherspoon marooned on the Caerphilly Road roundabout at the north end of the Gabalfa flyover that's only accessible by a subway.

It sounds like some sort of Ballardian hellscape come to life - albeit one in which you can purchase a beer and burger for £4.99.


There is some irony in naming an outpost of a chain of pubs known for shifting cheap booze by the gallon after the founder of the NHS.


The main bar area. The usual high tables, fruit machine, brown carpet and, at the far end, a large telly spewing out the BBC News Channel.


Through a door and there's this funny little side room. Not many takers, to be honest.


Into the main space (which, oddly, has no bar of its own), where one couple has clearly decided to make an afternoon of watching live coverage of John Prescott giving evidence to the Leveson inquiry. Well, it gets you out the house, doesn't it?


But if Leveson isn't quite for you, there's always the opportunity to catch up with a spot of Samuel Pepys instead.

"I was in mighty pain all night long of the winde griping of my belly and making of me shit often and vomit too, which is a thing not usual with me," he wrote in July 1666. "But this I impute to the milke that I drank after so much beer."

We know the feeling.