Our favourite bars in the South West

Travelling is thirsty work, especially when your train dashes past a great-looking country pub or an appetite-inducing brewery. Here are three recommended boozers where you can sample some top-notch real ales.

Brewhouse & Kitchen

Dorchester

This modish brewpub is bright and airy with its gleaming brew-kit standing to one side of the bar. An outstanding cast of international craft beers as well as beers brewed onsite are available.

Essential tip: don’t eat before visiting as the menu groans with such rib-sticking delights as beer can chicken and robust burgers (there are also veggie options).

What to drink: If American pale ales tickle the palate, plump for the onsite-brewed Massachusetts Bay.

The Barley Mow

Bristol

This delightful backstreet boozer had a classy makeover when Bristol Beer Factory took it over. Inside there’s an appetising array of cask and keg beers, many from Bristol Beer Factory as well as other local heroes such as Arbor and Wiper & True. Good beer, good food and good ambience – the Barley Mow is definitely worth stepping off the train for.

What to drink: The sheer hop dynamism of Bristol Beer Factory’s Southville Hop is hard to beat.

The Wyndham Arms

Salisbury

This is a late Victorian corner street pub with a wrought iron carving of a welcoming Dionysus above the old entrance. Back in the late 1980s, the Wyndham Arms became home to the then new brewery Hop Back (the brewery moved out in 1992).

The pub continues to sell the whole range of Hop Back’s beers, while maintaining a comfortable ambience complete with front parlour, snug and front bar.

What to drink: What else but Hop Back’s multi award-winning ale Summer Lightning.