Hi, I'm Bear...
Pup in a Pub
Howl-lo! It’s almost time for celebrations of royal paw-portions as we get ready to celebrate Queen Elizabark II’s Platinum Jubilee. Earlier this year, she became the first British Monarch to reach 70 years of service... that’s like 490 dog years! Maybe that’s what people mean by Long Live the Queen. Woof!
This summer there will be huge pawties to mark this historic event and people will be goin' mutts. Little corgis everywhere will be united in dogged jubilation! As my contribution to the festivities, this pup wants to tell you about two pubs worthy of Royals and us common pub goers:
The Windsor Castle and The Victoria.
The Windsor Castle
Kensington
Fur-sure, it’s the place where the Queen lives when she’s not at Barkingham Palace. But this Windsor Castle happens to be a local pub dating from the 1820’s with a historic interior. It’s a traditional, well-preserved pub with wood-paneled walls and cozy seating areas with partitions dividing the pub into multiple compartments (one of these partitions has a door that’s only 3 feet 6 inches high! Just the right size for this pup to walk through). And the nice outdoor beer garden gets my tail wagging– it’s in a walled-off courtyard with a huge tree in the middle…pawfect for those sunny and lazy dog days. I get treated like royalty whenever I’m here…one time I even got to sit in front of one of their fireplaces. You may not get to see the Queen at this Windsor Castle, but as a great pub with great brews, what dog will notice?!
The Victoria
Paddington
Queen Victoria was the 2nd longest reigning queen in the UK, and it’s fitting this pub was named in her honour: it dates from around 1839, close to when she became Queen and supposedly, she stopped in here on her way to nearby Paddington station (this pup wonders if that’s just a tall tail). This beautiful corner pub has magnificent Victorian decorations and fixtures, large, gilded mirrors, cozy leather chairs, fireplaces, and lots of pictures of…woof! you guessed it, Queen Victoria and her pack. Be sure to walk your paws upstairs to see the Library. There’s plenty of outside seating and I love walking over here after a romp in my nearby favourite park, Hyde Park! And supposedly David Bow-wowie performed a live gig here in 1966 to launch one of his records. This is a pub worthy of a visit by a Queen, as well as regular pub drinkers and pups like me.
