No.52 - The Five Bells, Wrentham, Suffolk

Saturday 10th November, 2012
With our next planned stop being closed for the afternoon we headed on over to Wrentham to pay The Five Bells a visit. With the weather now turning a bit soggy it was a nice sight to again be greeted with a warm open fire. In fact there was an open fire at each end of the public bar, but thankfully just the one was lit.
The pub dates back to the early 1800's and a lot of the original architecture remains. Lovely thick beams are still very visible, and as already mentioned, the 2 large fire places still look in very good condition. With it now being 3.30pm on a Saturday afternoon it was no surprise that we were the only ones in the pub, so we gathered round a nice big table in front of the fire and set up the scrabble.
Before starting, we had a chat with the new owners of the place. They had only been in charge for a week or two so were still finding their feet. The landlord spoke to us about all the newly fitted accommodation that was now available, and also the 40 pitches which were out the back of the pub put aside for camping. Obviously this was sounding rather appealing to us - camping in a pub garden !
With a choice of Ghostship, Broadside and Bitter, 3 Ghostship's and a Broadside were ordered. A very nice pint it was too with Andy being the brave soul to have a Broadside. Ghostship has really started to grow on me and with it now being available in tins, which we had back at the house, I would certainly now chose this over a Bitter.
The scrabble finally kicked off and the lead which I had accrued from the 1st game was slowly and surely being whittled away. Not even turning over one of the tiles to pretend it was a blank helped me, although this was purely an accident! The Landlord had now disappeared, but his wife did hang around behind the bar and performed a stirling job as 'dictionary corner' with her laptop, although some of the words we were throwing at her were a little desperate.
Once more time was our enemy and 4.30pm was soon upon us. Beers had been finished and Andy had completed a fine comeback in the scrabble scores. There was just enough time now for us to head into Southwold with our list of shopping that the girls had given us, and return home to help out with the children's tea. But, we were heading to Southwold, home of Adnams, would we be able to resist temptation and avoid having one final quick pint for the road?  Yes, was the answer! We had the phone call at 5pm!  Cheers chaps for the afternoon.