Harrow Inn, Steep, Hampshire

 This is a pub I first visited for slightly questionable reasons - a friend of ours who had moved to the US was visiting the UK, and we wanted to make her regret the decision to live abroad. Pubs simply do not exist outside of Britain and Ireland - other countries may have pub themed drinking establishments, but they're not genuine pubs. It is quite normal therefore for pubs to be the thing people miss most of all when living abroad, and the Harrow Inn is the sort of magical, beautiful pub one might daydream about when in some far flung land.

The recommendation came from two places: Dad had suggested it almost a decade before my first visit, and it appears in CAMRA's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors (always a good source).

It is, also, partly where I came up with the idea for this blog. On one visit I got talking to a group of people who clearly had the same strong feelings about this kind of idyllic unspoilt pub that I do. In fact they said it was a major pastime for them, travelling the country, compiling what they referred to as "the list". I shared with them many examples of my favourites from far and wide, and I was surprised by how they knew nearly all of them. They said they would share "the list" with me, and took my contact details, but I never heard from them. I had been reading Hilaire Belloc's The Four Men at the time, and started to wonder if, like Belloc's three travelling companions in the book, they might have been an apparition. There were to be no shortcuts on this quest - nor did I want there to be - the only way to obtain "the list" would be to compile it myself.

Of the three times I've been so far, it has always been under either grey skies, or at night, so you'll have to excuse the muted tones of the exterior shots above - but I always felt arriving in less than perfect weather made it seem all the more cosy and welcoming.

On that first visit in February 2018 I was part of a group of four. We did have a first drink in the main bar room, but as we were planning to eat lunch we moved to the tap room next door instead for the bulk of our visit. It's a lot quieter in there, and arguably not quite as atmospheric as the bar room, with its huge inglenook fireplace, but it is still a very pleasant space, and somehow, as newcomers, we felt a bit less like we were intruding there. Although I have to say the staff made us feel extremely welcome even though we were obviously "down from London".

I returned - alone this time - in January 2019, this time in the evening, as I'd decided to stay overnight in Petersfield so I could make an early start on the next leg of my walk along the South Downs Way the following morning. I arrived not long after 6pm on a Friday, and it was pretty busy then - although it only takes about a dozen people to fill the main bar room. That seemed to be the peak though, and gradually the "crowds" thinned down, until by about 8:45 I had the place to myself. That was a treat actually, and gave me a chance to really savour the interior, with the only sound being the crackling of the fire and the ticking of a clock.

My most recent visit was right at the end of December 2019 - New Year's Eve in fact. They had their Christmas decorations up, and I've never seen more tasteful Christmas decorations in a pub - or anywhere for that matter. Not  a bit of plastic in sight - it was all natural, the flowers hanging from the beams were particularly lovely. 

It's such a magical pub that I bought a couple of pictures of it on one visit (although I think here the charm lies more on the inside than the outside).