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location:
address:
2 Broad Street, RG1 2BH
phone:
01189 508 119
nearest station:
Reading 
(430m)
how to find it:
From Reading train station, walk towards the main pedestrianised shopping high street by exiting right out of the main entract and walking up a street called The Forbury. Follow it round to the right onto Butter Market which joins onto the start of Broad Street and thus the pub.
click for directions to Hobgoblin from wherever you areclick here for a larger map
Pubs on identikit pedestrianised high streets tend to match their unimaginative surroundings, so it was a great pleasure to have spent a few hours in the Hobgoblin. From the exterior it looks tiny - and from the inside you'll find it is indeed tiny - but it makes up for this with bags of character. Leading off from the main bar there's a handful of wood-panelled rooms, some only large enough for two people. You'll also quickly notice that festooned over every vertical (and some horizontal) surface are beer mats, taken from their 14 years of serving literally thousands of different ales to the locals of Reading; on our visit we enjoyed a small handful from the selection, all of which were well-kept. It's a little tatty around the edges but that just adds to the charm, as does the idiosyncratic ban on mobile phones. As you might imagine it gets busy here, but Hobgoblin is still a great pub worth visiting.
14/12/2006
pub features:(click on an icon to see an explanation)
regular guest beers
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