The Royal Oak — Restaurant in England

Stopped by for lunch on the drive home from Weymouth to Essex. We had a really nice lunch at the Royal Oak, recently under new management and looking very smart inside. Our trip home from a short holiday was made much better by this gem of a local pub, with friendly staff and great food.

During the 4 hour drive home a quick Google for villages along the A35 turned up Bere Regis, an interesting sounding place with two open pubs. We left the busy A35 and quickly found it, a pleasant little village with a long high street through the middle. At one end of the village you leave Bere Regis and enter the hamlet of Shitterton. Worth visiting just for the photo opportunity.

The Google search for pubs turned up the Royal Oak, so we headed there and past the other open pub. Approaching from the East it is not immediately clear that it's open. We parked up in the road, and got out thinking it was closed. The main and only entrance is round the corner on the West side. They have an area of grass and seating outside with more parking and a more impressive approach.

Being a bank holiday they were running both evening and lunch menus all day. The choice was good, classic pub dishes and some more interesting dishes. We chose bellypork and game sauages, the kids had pasta with sauce. Everything was good quality, well cooked and served with a veg side dish. On the bar they had a decent choice of ales and wine.

The gents is downstairs in a basement area. To our amazement, the pub boasts a large second bar downstairs with its own traditional 9 pin bowling alley. Complete with wooden balls and pins for an...

When I arrived here this weekend I had to to double check my booking as the photos I had seen at Booking.com compared to real life looked very different! Very grubby on the outside and grubby on the inside! Tbf the lady who show us to the family room was polite and answered our questions. However.. our room had staines over the carpet, a picture looked like it was hanging off the wall, black mould on the pipes and just grubby again on the doors and walls. Hole in the ceiling to allow the steam from the shower to vent as apparently the steam sets the fire alarms off.. Food… well again, nothing like the photos were trying to portray.. All we were given was a couple of photocopies of their food that reads like it’s straight from Tescos or Brakes either or.. Fine I’m sure if you want a place to stay over a busy bar and I was the only guy in there at the time with hair!lol Anyway, it was so bad even my Transit Custom tried backing away from the joint and set its own alarm off to get our attention as even it didn’t want to risk staying at the ‘The Royal Oak’ No seriously there’s nothing ‘Royal’ about it just call it ‘The Oak!’ Found a much nicer place to stay at the ‘Springfield Country Hotel’ literally 10 mins drive away! I feel like we...

Room chilly, only one radiatorworks, so there is a panelheater in the room which my husband had to turn on in the morning. The shower room was cold, heated by a very small towelheater. We didn'tbrave a shower. The bed was firm but comfortable. |Breakfast disappointing. 1 teaspoon for tea/Coffee & yogurt between 2 of us. No bowl for cereal or spoon unless you used the 1 teaspoon. 1 knife between 2 of us. No butter for the crossaunt, meats or cheese, only jam. Not really a continental breakfast, more like style. Fruit juice and fresh milk in the fridge for the cereal, that you couldn't eat! You have to collect your breakfast from the sideboard and fridge on the landing and eat alone in your bedroom. There is nobody on premises overnight, in fact as we were the only guests, we were totally alone in the 'hotel'. There was nobody around in the morning to help resolve the problem of no cutlery or china. The door to the restaurant downstairs locked, so we couldn't sort this out. No instructions on checking out, where to leave the key. Calling this a hotel in not accurate, I'm not too sure what to call it. I would have preferred to discuss our disappointment in person but...