Harper’s Brook - Oakley Vale, nr Corby

On the home straight now with just three pubs to go, and it's come down to a Beefeater, a Family Dining Pub, and a bar themed on a Scottish Sitcom. Hmm! Saving the best til last is clearly not one of my strong points...

Harper's Brook is Corby's very newest new-build pub, located in the far south of the urban sprawl. So far south in fact that it's probably more accurate to describe it as a Great Oakley, nr Corby village pub. Or, more specifically it's a pub built for the new community of Oakley Vale, nr Great Oakley, nr Corby.

Now, confusingly the pub is not in fact particularly close to Harper's Brook (the watercourse), a point worth remembering if you're planning to navigate to the pub by boat. Perhaps even more confusingly, there's another pub nearby called the Oakley Hay, which by my reckoning is in fact a fair bit closer to Harper's Brook (the watercourse) than the eponymously named Harper's Brook pub. Got that? Good, let's move on then...

Charter Court. Shop til you drop, then have a pint. Then a Chinese takeaway.

The very best way to navigate to the Harper's Brook pub is the way the locals do. Up the road from Morrisons supermarket, turn left, along a bit and it's on the right. No watercourses required. You'll find the pub is just past Charter Court, offering the most comprehensive array of shops and takeaways you could ever hope for, in Corby. This is a fair representation of what the Oakley Vale development is all about. A self-contained 'nouveau' village centred around the old-fangled community essentials of School, Chippy, Healthcare, Pub etc. Residents of Oakley Vale need never travel to nearby Corby Town, such is the wealth of services on offer, although an Olympic size Swimming Pool and Multi-screen Cinema are notable strategic misses. Probably planned for Phase 8...

Oakley Vale is an ongoing project of the Great Oakley Estate, historic landowners who got a bit miffed with the burghers of Corby who had a habit of compulsory purchasing chunks of their land for the rapidly growing Steel Town. If houses (and pubs) need to be built, and clearly they do, it would surely be better if we built them ourselves, was the smart thinking, hence Oakley Vale, and hence the Harper's Brook pub.

Now anyone that knows me will be aware of my longstanding ambivalence to new-build estate, or more particularly Retail Park pubs. I've tried a few over the years, at worst they really are just licensed restaurants, sometimes in locations you can only get to by driving, businesses that pay nothing more than lip-service to committed boozers like myself. At their best however, they're a fair bit better than that, proper pubs that may lack the heritage of 'ye olde village inn', but are nevertheless attractive, welcoming, and succeed in offering a bit of something for everyone. An offering that todays hungry pub-going families and mature social Gin and Prosecco drinkers clearly crave.

The Harper's Brook is definitely at this 'better' end of the spectrum, and really quite nice and pubby for the style. It helps that it's not just a destination eatery, it's very much a local in the sense that it's at the heart of its community, and not just a place to go for a meal after a Sunday white goods and soft furnishings buying spree. It's a pub first and foremost, and I commend it to the blog!...

I took Mrs EPIC along for a soft drink and a slap-up bag of Mini Cheddars. It's "quite nice and pubby" was her take on the place, a future pub blogger in the making. As you can see, Cask Ales feature strongly at Harper’s Brook. These are the beers you could have had (right), presumably in the heady pre-COVID days when everywhere offered twelve (almost identical) cask ales as standard. A much more sensible two (2) on our visit meant the Marston's Pedigree was in fine form. I wasnae going anywhere near the Hobgoblin Gold though, I know a 'southern' beer when I see one, though looking around the pub it seems I was in the minority here.

Quite a jolly crowd in for a Tuesday evening. A Tuesday evening with no football at that! In fact it took a little while for the busy but cheery and efficient bar staff to serve us, the kind of patient queueing in a pub I haven't experienced since the golden age of the 1980's (sigh!).

Pram pram, as the Brummies would probably call this area.

Contemplating taking our shoes off for the lovely carpet

There’s also the inevitable ‘craft beer' offering, a selection of keg rarities including this authentic German beer from a new-ish railway arch brewery in (checks notes) Westphalia-on-Rhine, the Burton-on-Trent of Europe apparently. Sooty can be seen here zealously guarding the strict principal of the German Beer Purity Laws. Sweep is performing a similar role with the authentic Bratwurst Pizzas in the kitchen.

Proper Pizzas! Oh yes, the 2020's pub equivalent of Pickled Eggs and Big 'D' Nuts, it's everywhere now, and for fussy eaters like myself it's literally a revolution in pub eating. Meaning I will now, (very occasionally) actually eat in pubs if there's proper handmade Pizza on the menu. Or Thai, or Pork Pie. Or Scotch Eggs.

Is a pub even a pub these days without a fully functioning Pizza Paddle?

We retired to the patio on what proved to be an absolutely gorgeous balmy Spring evening, thunder clouds rolling ominously in from the Kettering, nr Corby direction. “Do you think it’ll rain?” asked a local, “I’ve been here all afternoon..." he added unnecessarily. He looked good on it though. I reassured him it would definitely rain but it shouldn't stop him pushing through 'til closing time. This conversation would recur several times before we left. Lovely chatty locals, proper British weather banter.

So, not much more to say really. A busy pub, principally for the food market, but not without a separate 'Bar' area with Pool Table and Sport (Football) on the telly. Decent beer and a nice patio to drink it on in the Summer, something for the kids to drain you of small change if required (below), and the promise of a Right Royal Knees-Up in June, for some reason...

Is a Corby pub even a pub without a fully functioning sweetie dispenser?