Ye Olde Cider Bar, Newton Abbot

"Ye Olde Cider Bar?!?" I hear you question, "but you write about real ales and pubs, and sometimes brewing, Steve." Indeed I do, but I'm writing this blog for a number of reasons, not least, because I used to visit the Cider Bar quite a bit in my youth, though I haven't been there for getting on for about 25 years now... Also, they've just won the award of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) National Cider Pub of the Year!

Ye Olde Cider Bar is at 99 East Street in Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 2LD (tel: 01626 354221), which I first visited in about 1978 with an ex-girlfriend, Teri, and two friends, who are still together and still living in Newton Abbot, Steve and Jude, who we were visiting after making friends with them on a holiday to Austria. I visited Steve and Jude many times before moving to Devon to train in Mental Health with Exeter Health Authority in 1985, obviously nipping into the Cider Bar every now and then, and also when visiting Newton Abbot races in the 1990s. Though Steve, Jude and I have met up in Exeter more recently, I do need to visit Newton Abbot again, soon.

As you can see, many ciders are sold, and straight from the barrel too, which has changed over the years. When I first visited in the 1970s, they had 3 ciders from handpumps, a dry, sweet and medium, that cost 25p a pint, no spirits or beers, but fruit wines and mead, I'm guessing it's sold as a honey wine, and they do still sell mead and fruit wines, plus ciders (though many more!) and perries, and I note from their facebook page "a few selected spirits" are sold now, and it is believed to be one of the "four remaining cider houses in the UK." 

My first impression, at lunchtime I believe, was of a small bar (it has been enlarged since) with a number of small older men seated around the edges, each with big red noses, which is more like a description of me now! The dry cider tasted to me of apple flavoured white spirit, not that I've ever tasted white spirit, but proper cider was new to me, the sweet was like sweet apple flavoured spirit, and the medium, well, I could happily drink that at the time, though I am obviously an ale man, I do enjoy drinking cider from time to time, though I do prefer a good perry. 

By the late 1980s, Julie (ex-wife who I met in Exeter, no, that's not us in the photograph!) and I regularly were travelling over from Exeter on the train, often with friends, and you should have seen the state of some people returning to Exeter after enjoying the delights of Newton Abbot, though not us, of course! The bar was bigger, there were still the 3 'rough' ciders, and a collection of keg stuff too. By now, if not drinking the medium cider, we sometimes drank the dry with a lemonade top, how things change over the years. Indeed they don't appear to sell 'keg' anymore.

So who are the two people in the photograph? Well they are Kim Leonard and Jonathan McCool, who have been running Ye Olde Cider Bar for just 2 years now, and have already won the prestigious CAMRA award, so congratulations to the both of them!

I have borrowed images from CAMRA and Devon Life, many thanks.