The Pennycomequick Hotel

This is only the third time I have ever been in this pub!! I guess it's just in the wrong place for me because it served it's purpose rather admirably and I popped in before the evening match against Colchester which we romped to a 4-1 win in. I'm getting a bit off the point here but we seem to have a history of besting Colchester in promotion seasons!! Way back in '75 Mariner's Mob won promotion by beating them 1-0, Warnock's lot beat them 3-1 in a play off to get to Wembley in '96 and we played them at the end of the Div 1 Championship season under Williamson. Could it be significant?

Evening matches are always a problem timewise. There is just too little time pre-match to get things done and this one proved to be no different. I had hoped to get there at around 6pm and suspect it was closer to 7pm when I arrived. I had hoped to catch a darts match during which bragging rights could be settled between Lostwithiel Green and Argyle Andy. "Great blog material" I thought to myself. Well it may have been but I missed it. LG won several legs of darts 4-1 and 4-1 to claim the trophy (if there is one, which I doubt) or the beer (which is far more likely). To be honest LG has a physique which has clearly been honed to dart-hurling perfection over many years and Argyle Andy was a slip of a lad who really needs to invest the time and money that LG obviously has over the years. The meeting was noteworthy not just for the darts ; it was also the first time that I had ever seen LG not wearing a hat and I had no idea that he was an eggshell blonde!! It was also nice to put a face to a name when I met Pasoti's Charlie Wood.

All 3 pubs blogged so far are also the closest ones to Home Park from their respective directions with the PCQ being south, the GH north and the HP east. To the west the nearest pub would be The Britannia which we'll get to in due course. Funnily enough this leaves a rather huge swathe of Plymouth almost entirely publess and none of them are close to Home Park in a way that anybody that has ever been to a pub close to Brentford's Griffin Park would understand. At Brentford there is a pub at every corner of the ground and I mean right there as in next door. The PCQ is again a tidy walk from HP and took around 20 minutes, I guess, up a rather unforgiving and steep hill. I don't mind admitting that I was glad to reach the top of the hill and it's a far more strenuous walk than from either the GH or HP.

Apart from being familiar to roundabout lovers the PCQ is also the only pub that you'll encounter if you travel by train to Plymouth
and then go directly to the ground. This, I would think, makes it a fave with away fans and Cornishmen. In fact there is no reason why it should not be a fave with anybody. It's a 2 bar pub with darts and pool in the public bar. In both bars there is satellite TV. The beer was fine and reasonably priced and kids were welcome. There is even a beer garden. Not the plushest beer garden you'll ever see but it has a small area for seating and it serves it's purpose. I have no idea at all as to whether it serves food and I wasn't there long enough to check out the facilities beyond noting that the toilets were in doors. I don't recall the bar staff at all which rather implies that they were either men or women who, shall I say, do not linger in the memory.

That said the evening did have rather a racy ending!! I have been asked what I'll do if we end up confronted by a pub full of strippers and prostitutes... Well the first taboo has been broken!! I met up with Norm who just that day had been to see his doctor for a check up. While there he had an ECG and that entailed parts of his chest being shaved. He couldn't wait to show us and so, to my complete amazement, Serendipity actually goes topless and the first nipples blogged are here for all to see. I must admit I did not expect that to occur in the PCQ and I did not expect it to be Norm...


I have to offer apologies here too. To be honest I am a bungling incompetent with the camera and have next to no idea how to work it. Due to a mixture of lack of preparation, flat batteries and carelessness I managed to record some dodgy sound files and the odd bit of useless video when I actually intended to take a snap or two. I actually meant to take several more photos than this of various people but they are lost forever now I am afraid so if you were expecting to see yourself: sorry ~ there's always next time which will be in Stonehouse at the Victualling Office Tavern at 1pmish and quite possibly a few others, too!!