The Golden Lion, St Ives

Finally a proper pub!! was on holiday with friends and spent the first two days in st ives trawling the usual tourist trap dives with great disappointment untill one night when leaving the harbor front on our way home we heard fairly loud music and evidence of a busy bar coming down the corridor and spilling on to the street. having not quite had our fill we decided to go in and see what the chances of a late drink were (all the other pubs were shut by this point!). the front of the pub doesn't scream at you to come in and the corridor was quite dark and uninviting but that made it all the more amazing to walk in to a busy bar full of people enjoying themselves. the girls had gin and tonics that were well presented for a pub (lots of ice, you cant go wrong really) and the men including myself sampled the ales. there were only two of the three pumps operational which was a disappointment but when i asked why the other was empty the barman informed me they did a full line clean on all the ale lines between every barrel, no matter how busy it is (something a few of the pubs in town could learn from). so we had a skinners heligan honey that was about as good as heligan honey could get and a hook norton old hookey that had a habit of disappearing far too fast. i would tell you more about the pub but a group of very friendly locals pulled us in to a sambucca drinking session and the rest of the night is a little hazy but i will tell you next time i'm in st ives i certainly will not be wasting my time with the harbor front.

1 Jul 2009 12:05