Our first visit to the Hare & Hounds at Minworth was on the evening of Wednesday 30th July 1986...the first year that I took a picture of every pub we visited.
As I recall it was a fairly large Ansell's pub split into a Lounge and a Bar - a common enough arrangement in those days.
With our boat, Emma Jane, being moored 'Up North' and the 'Darn Sarf' for a few years, we didn't return to the Hare & Hounds until the evening of Tuesday 5th September 1995 as part of her return journey to the Midlands.
And what a change it had undergone in the passing 9 years - it was now a Mr Q's Pool Lounge! Inside there were a large number of pool tables of varying sizes and shapes! It was still an Ansell's pub.
This experience put us off returning until the evening of Sunday 14th June 2015 - a gap of almost 20 years!
In all honesty, if The Boat (#180) had done food on a Sunday evening, we wouldn't have needed to leave and visit the Hare & Hounds at all. I'm glad we did because the Hare & Hounds was now a pub restaurant which caters for both drinkers and diners and, most importantly, they were still serving food for us!
It was no longer an Ansell's pub and the Wacky Warehouse is now Fuzzy Ed's Fun House (not that we went to either!)
We returned just 12 months later on the evening of Sunday 12th June 2016.
This time we were even later getting there, but the staff were great and we got food even though they had, technically finished serving. Excellent service, which is all too infrequent as we travel the canals.
As I was doing a bit of research to see who owns the pub, I discovered that it has changed again into a Sizzling Pub & Grill which is one of the brands of Mitchell's & Butler's. Hopefully they will maintain the excellent service levels.
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