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 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.