No. 56 The Marlborough Arms

Visited on 2/6/11. And so to the final pub of the night – and at last, some decent ale. Local(ish) microbrewery Stonehouse supplies the cask for this place and the bitter was on reasonable form. Only good to average in absolute terms but infinitely better than any of the swill served at the previous three establishments. This is a small pub – one of the smallest in Chester, so it’s a bit odd that it puts on live music as the gear always takes up so much space. It seems to be popular though. There was a solo act appearing on this occasion, who seemed to be cocooned by his own fan club. They prevented the sound from reaching the back of the pub – which was nice of them, so that’s where we headed. I sort of admire what the owners have tried to do with what was quite frankly a tired old pub – emphasis on quality cask ale, supplemented by a big selection of Belgian bottled beers, aimed at a wide age range of drinkers (there's no way that all 60 odd beers from the menu were packed into those fridges though - bit of show I reckon). Sounds perfect, but the place is a bit, erm, scruffy ! Bit of a ‘back-packer’ vibe going on maybe – they should get rid of the foreign bank note collection from behind the bar and other such nonsense. Reckon we could quite happily spend an evening in here though. And it was good to see the Chester chapter of the motorcycle outlaws (over 50s section) in there, all enjoying their milk stouts.