Old Green Tree

Super little pub with fine choice of real ales, enjoyable traditional food, lots of cheerful customers and friendly service

As ever, this particularly well run town pub is a delightful place with a wide mix of customers and excellent licensees; it can get packed, so to get a table you must arrive before midday. Green Tree Bitter (brewed for them by Blindmans Brewery), plus Butcombe Bitter and RCH Pitchfork, with guests such as Stonehenge Old Smokey and Wickwar Cotswold Way on handpump, a dozen wines by the glass from a nice little list with helpful notes, 35 malt whiskies, winter hot toddies and a proper Pimms. It's laid-back and cosy rather than particularly smart, and the three small oak-panelled and low wood-and-plaster ceilinged rooms include a comfortable lounge on the left as you go in, its walls decorated with wartime aircraft pictures in winter and local artists' work during spring and summer, and a back bar; the big skylight lightens things up attractively. No music or machines; chess, cribbage, dominoes, backgammon, shut the box, Jenga. The gents' is down steep steps. No children.

Generous helpings of popular lunchtime bar food includes soup and sandwiches, ploughman's, a changing pâté, bangers and mash with beer and onion sauce, summer salads such as smoked duck and poached apple and smoked trout with asparagus, and winter beef in ale pie and pork and cider casserole; no starters or puddings.