As if anyone needs an excuse to visit one of the best pubs in the Vale of Glamorgan then why not head down to the Plough & Harrow in Monknash for their beer festival?
£5 entrance, all in aid of Ex-Services Mental Welfare Society (COMBAT STRESS) via Gerald McCarthy and his 9 Peaks Kilamanjaro Challenge. Starts at 1800 tonight (Friday) and continues throughout the weekend until Sunday. Live music, good food, beer & cider, all in a marquee in the grounds of the pub.
Beer list
St Austell's Tribute
Skinners Cornish Knocker & Keel over
Crouch Vale Galena & Amerillo (Possibly Golden Duck if we can get hold of any)
Church End's What the fox hat
RCH Pitchfork & Firebox
Brewster's Decadence
Titanic's Lifeboat
Purple Moose Dark sde of the moose & Snowdonia
Celt Experience Silures
Otley O5 & Thaibo
Untapped Sundown
Wickwar Long John Silver
Neath Ales Firebrick
Brecon Twilight Beacons
There are also regulars Bass, HPA, HB, etc.
There will be another possible dozen ales to add to this list once confirmed.
Ciders i.e.
Black Dragon
Happy Daze
Farmhouse Sweet and Dry
Two Trees Perry and the new stronger Pyder
Trying to get hold of some Cornish Rattler and Black rat
Plus some others, again to be confirmed.
The Vale of Glamorgan has plenty of good pubs but the Plough and Harrow, Monknash is a truly outstanding one. The Plough is a short bus journey (No 145) from Llantwit Major or there is plenty of car parking available in the field opposite. There is a bus timetable to the side of the bar in case customers wish to extend their visits and catch later buses home.
Set in the hamlet of Monknash, there was never a monastery here, just a grange or outlying farm of Neath Abbey where the lay brothers farmed the land and there are still ruins in the fields behind the pub dating back to monastic times.
The approach to the pub is via a walled pathway and the entrance porch is popular with local swifts as well as local customers! Don't forget to duck on entering the doorway, where you have the choice of a bar to the right or a lounge on the left. The bar is as traditional as anyone would hope to find in an old pub, with wooden settles and a huge fireplace for those cold, distant days of winter. The interior of the bar hints at the fourteenth-century age of the Plough and Harrow with a now-blocked up arched doorway with a spiral staircase in one corner. Stone-flagged floors and wooden tables make up the bar area with what must be one of the smallest bar servery counters in Wales. Crammed onto the bar are 5 handpumps serving real ales such as Otley O1 and Wye Valley HPA, whilst on a rear stillage beers such as Bass and other guests are served straight from the cask. The thick, stone-walls of the Plough keep the building cool in summer or customers can choose to sit out in the quiet beer garden and enjoy the weather.
Cider lovers are not forgotten either and the Plough was awarded Cider Pub of the Year 2009 (South Wales) by CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale. The cider range features local makers such as Gwynt Y Ddraig with their Barnstormer or Two Trees Perry as well as makers from Somerset. Wine and whiskey lovers are also catered for with a wine of the month and and a good range of single malts and Penderyn Welsh Whiskey.
The food menus are chalked up on the old oak beams and blackboards in the pub and is served 12-2.30, 6-9 Monday-Friday, 12-5 Saturday and 12-6 Sunday. There is an extensive range of food on the menus with locally made faggots to Sea Bass appearing on the beams, along with separate children and desert menus. Wednesday night is steak night with £10 meals on offer and half price deserts.
The Plough and Harrow also holds an annual beer festival with live music in July. Always well-attended, the Plough and Harrow really is one of the top pubs in Wales and has been a regular in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide for years and has even made it into the Rough Pub Guide, recognised as one of the top 50 UK pubs.
