Pub Review: Hunters Inn, Harrogate Road, Leathley
TAVERNER
I HAD set out to go somewhere else entirely. It has only been about 18 months since this column was last at the Hunters Inn, but horrible traffic in Wharfedale on an oppressive Sunday afternoon gradually funnelled me towards its front door.
Whichever turn I made seemed to be the wrong one, bringing me back into the queues. The car was overheating, and so was I.
So by the time I admitted defeat and pulled into the car park, I'd have been glad just to find something cold to drink. The fact I was at a pub doing nine great real ales was a significant bonus.
The nine are spread out along the length of the Hunters' long L-shaped bar. A real ale aficionado would no doubt have perused each pump clip, perhaps taken a sample or two from the miniature taste glasses handily provided, considered the style and the ABV, taking into account past encounters with beers from any particular brewery, or recalling tasting notes from the CAMRA guide.
You can put it down to the heat, or exhaustion, or just the fact that I've never been too particular, but I just plumped for the first one that caught my eye.
It turned out to be Parklife – appropriate for a guy who will have been at the Blur concert in Hyde Park by the time you read this – which comes from the splendid Kelham Island microbrewery in Sheffield.
Dave Wickett's beers are usually named on a theme – Pale Rider, Night Rider, Riders on the The Storm – with arty pumpclips to match, but his monthly special ales are a diversion from the series, and have been paired with gaudy, colourful pumpclips by a local cartoonist.
Parklife's features a grim-looking family on a camping trip, but this light straw coloured beer is the kind of pleasant refresher which would cheer up any fed-up holidaymaker. It looked almost indistinguishable from the pint of Carlsberg served to the drinker next to me at the bar, though the condensation on the lager glass showed there was clear difference in temperature.
This pub always has a slight feel of being trapped somewhere in the past, a suggestion of a frontier alehouse where gunslingers would mingle with backwoodsmen over shots of whisky and smoky games of cards.
A rifle mounted over the bar certainly reinforces the image, as does a kind of dead animals corner where a large stag's head, and various bits of a duck, a fox, a tiger have been joined by a rather unfortunate owl, pinioned in mid-flight.
There's a gaudy toucan's head, too, but that may have something to do with the Guinness, one of a few alternatives to the cracking, regular-changing selection of real ales – only Theakston's Best is a fixture here.
If you've never found The Hunters, it's about a mile outside Pool-in-Wharfedale on the Harrogate Road. It looks rather curious – a long, squat, whitewashed jumble of architecture, whose south-facing front terrace with its attractive hanging baskets offers a perfect sun trap at this time of year. Big patio heaters stretch the use of this area into the cooler months.
Inside there is a slight feel of having stepped back in time, though precisely which era you've landed in is rather harder to discern. The RAF memorabilia suggests something post-war, the liberal use of Artex on walls and ceilings is no doubt the remnants of a seventies makeover, while the arcade video game set into a table top is an eighties classic.
Huge round tables, half-enclosed by long comfortable banquettes, dominate two large bay windows either side of the front door, while a small corral at one end is home to the jukebox and pool table and a raised seating area at the other seemed is chiefly for dining.
Quite which era gave us the bizarre seating arrangements at the bar I'm not sure, but they have to be seen to be believed. Someone has seemingly cut the legs off a set of turned-wood pine chairs, and nailed them to the top of a set of bar stools, to produce these hybrid high chairs, which look precarious to say the least.
I took my pint and sat in a corner instead and waited for the food to come – a rather splendid geezer's lunch of pie and peas (2.55), helpfully served with mint sauce in best pub grub fashion.
Another beer followed, the very pale, beautifully rounded White Lion, which I drank on the terrace, watching the traffic, and observing three blokes getting rather hot under their respective collars trying to get a scooter started. They'd come out for an afternoon ride and were stuck here in the baking heat – two bikes all revved up, but the other refusing to move. I could have offered some helpful advice about tappet clearances, but I thought better of it.
They got moving eventually, and at least the traffic had calmed down a bit. So I supped the last of my White Lion and bowled into the heat of Lower Wharfedale once again.
s.w.jenkins@ntlworld.com
FACTFILE
Type: Great real-ale pub
Beers: Theakston's Best Bitter (2.40) plus changing range of eight other real ales – currently Tetley's (2.40), Deuchars (2.50), Waggledance (2.55), Parklife (2.50), Goose Eye H'ale'o (2.60), White Lion (2.55), Saltaire Crystal Red (2.55), Abbeydale Absolution (2.75), plus Carlsberg, Kronenbourg, Coors, Guinness, John Smith's Smooth.
Wine: Decent choice
Food: Sandwiches and pub grub
Children: Welcomed – no special facilities
Disabled: Split level inside
Entertainment: Pool table, jukebox and games machines
Beer Garden: Some outdoor tables on veranda to front
Parking: Large car park to front
Telephone: (0113) 284 1090
APPEARED IN EP 4th JULY 2009
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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