The Halfway House

The Half Way House is nestled nicely away from the madness of Blackwood's High Street drinking circus, and provides a great little venue to enjoy a pint in a warm, welcoming, clean, safe and traditional looking pub.

The Half Way House has been successfully managed by it's landlord, Graham, for years and leaves one feeling 'He must be doing something right' when you consider most pubs in the locality are disasterously changing ownership, on average, every 2 -3 years. Something at the back of my mind tells me that the Half Way House is what the former landlady of the nearby Rock and Fountain pub was aspiring towards?

The pub interior is layed out over three tiers (bar area being the middle) with a fantastic leather settee 'chill out' area on the lowest tier. The selection of wines, beers and lagers are all good, the range of food is diverse and of good to very good quality.

The Half Way House is fairly difficult to fault (for what it is) because it neither professes to be a high class restaurant or a sophisticated pub venue. It really is simply a nice pub. Nothing more and nothing less. The one niggle I do have is if you plan to dine there, I suggest booking a table during the week as I felt table service could have been better if staff weren't so thinly stretched during the busier drinking hours.

A lot of Blackwood's fly-by-night pub landlords/ladys could learn a lot from Graham's managerial strategy.