Postcards From Old England

Is there any better way to start a new year than with a bracing winter walk through the countryside to a cosy pub? Matthew Williams visits The Surrey Oaks near Newdigate

- Matthew Williams

An eye-catching mix of classic cars and hardworking 4×4s (adorned with the mud to prove they’re used for more practical purposes than the school run) greets visitors to the postcard-pretty Surrey Oaks pub near Newdigate.

Found down the kind of country lanes where the hedges are almost architectural during the winter, offering glimpses of the North Downs through their bare branches, it’s a real slice of old England.

This 16th-century hostelry is very much a traditional (or “proper” as some might say) pub, with all the dark wood and regular drinkers to prove it. Inside, it’s a charming and higgledy-piggledy mix of nooks and crannies but it is a pub that also moves with the times.

While they’ve won Surrey’s CAMRA pub of the year so many times that the group might be thinking of retiring their shirt now in celebration of the pub’s real ale legacy, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a more exciting mix of modern craft keg beers outside London.