Greyhound Inn, Burgh-by-Sands

Jul 31 2005 By Eddy Eats

MANY’S the time Mrs Eats has suggested a bit of a walk before Sunday lunch. . . but she rarely goes through with it.

She’s happy to talk the talk, as the saying goes, but not so eager to walkthe walk. I’ve known strolls she’s lined up over the years get downsized from a hike of several miles to the distance from Eatsmobile to pub door on many anoccasion.

Not the other Sunday, however. Mrs E had heard tell of the Hadrian’s Wall national trail and decided to try it out for herself . . . not the whole 80-odd miles, obviously.

A likely story, I thought, but for once she was as good as her word. Yes, we did only walk a mile or two and, yes, we did end up at a pub tucking into a couple of Sunday roasts in next to no time at all . . . but some putting of one foot in front of the other was involved and that, for us, marked something of a breakthrough.

It might have been a small step for just about any other member of mankind but it was a giant leap for Mrs E. The pub to which our on-foot excursion led us was the Greyhound Inn at Burgh-by-Sands in Cumbria, about seven miles from the start of the Hadrian’s Wall trail at Bowness-on-Solway.

You couldn’t in all honesty describe the Greyhound, part of the Pubmaster chain, as the sort of boozer you’d go any great distance out of your way to visit, but it’s a friendly place seemingly popular with locals and does have the added recommendation of being the only pub for miles around.

It was certainly a welcome sight for Mrs E and I on a hot Sunday afternoon after our appetites, never in need of much stimulation, had been built up by our walk. An even more welcome sight was the well-kept pint of Marston’s Pedigree and half of Kronenbourg 1664 lager we got stuck into as we studied the menu.

Having said that, the menu didn’t require much contemplation as it was one of the briefest I’ve ever encountered. Brevity, as well as being the soul of wit, can be a blessing in a menu, as it reduces Mrs E’s scope for indecision, meaning we end up getting our lunches sooner. The choice on offer was roast lamb or roast beef, both costing £5.50, so we decided to sample the entire main-course menu and have one of each.

Our meals weren’t long in coming and they weren’t at all bad either. There were three large but fairly thin slices of beef on my plate accompanied by a pleasant-tasting and not too thick gravy. This was accompanied by two roast potatoes and three scoops of mash. It was a little off-putting to see the mash served using one of those scoops beloved of school-dinner ladies and ice-cream men, but it was actually as good as any I’ve tasted for quite a while.

Pretty much the same applied in the case of Mrs E’s lamb, also described as being well up to scratch, although she did miss out on the two good Yorkshire puddings that I was given. Our veg — generous quantities of nice and firm broccoli and nice but not quite firm diced carrots and swede — arrived on a separate serving plate.

So far so good, but sadly our puddings weren’t up to the same standard. We both went for bread-and-butter pudding, one with cream and one with ice-cream, confident that, try as you might, you can’t go far wrong withthat classic dessert.

We were wrong. Our puddings, priced at £3.25, appeared to be bought in rather than home-made, but that’s no crime in my book so long as you buy in something half-decent. That, alas, wasn’t the case here as both puds had an unappetising glutinous texture to them and only managed to muster one raisin between the pair of them.

The disappointment was eased, for me at least, but not for Mrs E as she was driving, by a further pint of Pedigree in the beer garden before heading back, on foot, for the Eatsmobile.

To get to the Greyhound Inn, head west along the A69 to Carlisle,continue west through the city heading for the Cumberland Infirmary then,shortly after that, take a right turn for Burgh-by-Sands and Bowness-on-Solway. The pub is on the left as you drive into Burgh.