West Jesmond

Jesmond must be pretty special as outside of Newcastle city centre it’s the only other place to have 3 stations service it and West Jesmond station is the busiest non city centre station on the entire network. A station with over a million annual passengers passing through deserves a good pub and the Lonsdale doesn’t disappoint.

If you come out the main doors from platform 1 you’ll see it straight away, shining like a student beacon of beery goodness from across the street. It’s definitely had a make over since the last time we were in about 4 years ago. Gone are the dingy low ceilings and upholstery that smelt of smoke despite the smoking bad being in force for over 5 years. It’s now bright and roomy, with trendy tiled bars, light wood, high tables and cosy booths.

They have a good range of real ales and the barmaid who served us knew their wine stock well, which even when you’re just ordering a glass of the house white is nice to be given options or regions. Despite it being in a predominantly studenty (they offer 15% off to students FYI) area of town there was a good mix of different clientele when we visited early on a Saturday evening. I have no doubt later on a Friday or Saturday night it probably gets a bit rowdy but it’s pretty spacious so imagine it would take a fair few bods in there to make it feel packed.

Now, as it is essentially a student pub there is presence of the ‘terrible two’ as we call them here at WBM towers; bandits and plasma screens. However I will say that that seem strategically placed so they’re not a massive menace. There are plenty of nooks and crannies you could hide in to avoid their annoyance if you wanted to. I can imagine the atmosphere on a match day is pretty infectious, albeit on the busy side.

They have the food menu you’d expect from a pub of this type, all day breakfasts for £5.99, a baguette, chips and a drink for £6.99 and while it’s not in any danger of winning an Michelin stars, if you were looking for some cheap grub to soak up your £3 pint of beer than I imagine you’d be hard pushed not to find something here.

I’d certainly recommend the Lonsdale for a low key session with your mates, combined with some decent comfort food, or a couple of well priced (outside of a Wetherspoons) pre drinks before heading out into Jesmond of Newcastle.

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