Pubs often live many more lives than the rest of us; they have more failures and successes, more makeovers, endless midlife crises, fresh starts galore. The Thatchers has had days good and bad, but its best are hard to beat. It sits with its gaze over green fields smudged with yellow, of trees and hills and hay bales, and a sky that seems bigger than usual.
Inside, under the run of wood beams, expect a decent range of beers, nothing unusual but lots good, while the food leans into pub favourites: good beef bourguignon; pan-fried salmon; steak and ale pie; even ham, egg and chips. In the winter, wood-burning stoves keep the rooms — the kind that come in all sizes, in odd places — toasty, and it becomes all too easy to sit, have a final round, settle in for bar billiards and forget to leave. Nice, that feeling.
Hall Road, Bures, CO8 5AT, thatchersarms.co.uk
