The Orange Tree, Winchmore Hill

The Orange Tree is an excellent traditional pub offering a warm welcome and traditional ales. Steeped in history, football memorabilia and full of character, it has been commended on numerous occasions by Enfield in Bloom and quietly won the CAMRA Pub of the Year Award.

It's great for the Summer with a secluded, child friendly garden, real ales changing on a weekly basis and excellent home prepared food, from an award winning Chef.

The owners have been running the pub since 1992 with a friendly and generous approach to all that embrace The Orange Tree. We popped in on our way to Haringey Borough and enjoyed a few ales in the garden.

Shame we had to leave for football as an afternoon session in the garden at The orange Tree would have been in order.

Rating 4/5

The Old Orchard, Harefield

The Old Orchard has THE finest view we have seen this season. You cannot see another building in the whole panorama, and yet amazingly, it lies within the M25.

Having said that, it's pretty special inside the pub as well, with open fires, good solid wooden furniture, a decent bar at the centre of things, a friendly, chatty atmosphere and a huge dog!

We did not have time to sample any of the fine fare available from the menu, but it did look very nice, if a little pricey. We did, however, try the honey and chili peanuts which were amazing and had a hell of a kick!

We managed to sneak in a few ales and sampled the Oscar Wilde, Buntingford's Solstice and the amazing Vanilla Stout. It was the first time we had sampled any of these three and have got to say that despite the mellow taste of the Oscar Wilde and the hoppy Solstice Brown Ale being top draw, they were not in the same ball park as the Vanilla Stout. If you can not find it anywhere else, it is worth the trip to the Old Orchard just to sample it.

Rating 4/5

The Woodman, Ruislip

The Woodman is situated in Breakspear Road a little way up from the crematorium on the outskirts of Ruislip and slap bang opposite Hillingdon Borough FC.

The Woodman has two bars and an arbour out the front with tables, where you can watch the traffic amble by and the odd horse going towards the stables up the road.

Nevertheless this pub has remained unchanged for many, many years and is perhaps the only "real" public house in Ruislip.

On our visit we had many pints of Otter Bitter from the Otter Brewery based in Devon. This would certainly be high up in the Beer of the Season competition and topped off a great pre-match evening.

Rating 3.5/5