Sunday was sunny and warm so after some weekend chores I took off for a run to Wendlebury to try out the Red Lion there. Thing is, there aren’t many Red Lion pubs in Oxfordshire and later in the week I plan on doing a 20 mile or so run to hit four more of them to the south, southwest and to the east of Banbury so it seemed appropriate that I should go have a beer at the nearest one to my house before I run out of them altogether.
I’ve passed this one several times in the past, usually in the morning or too early in the evening to find them open. It is a fairly straightforwardly laid out place but has nice stone and timber construction and the food smells great. I settled for a Hook Norton Bitter and headed out to the garden.
The garden was more like a pair of giant fields the total size of a football pitch, although the midfield line was made up of a hedge. There was ample shade and not too many wasps over by the Aunt Sally pit where I sat and sweated happily. On my way back through I noticed a number of beer-related quotations painted on the walls like this one:
The Endless British Pub Crawl Drink, run, work, talk bollocks (first 1292 pubs since 19 January 2009 here, then continued at http://drunkenbunny.wordpress.com)
Your humble reporter
The Endless British Pub Crawl 
I used to work at this pub, lovely enviroment to work in, people are lovely, just an overall lovely place.
I just came from the page of the Centurion, Bicester-in-the-Hedges, and what catches the eye? The Red Lion pub sign! Obviously designed by the Kalifornia stoner who created Jefferson Airplane’s concert posters. What has happened to England? No, seriously, what?. I bought the old Red Lion sign, c.1979, from Bob Mitchum and I’ll sell it back for $30 + shipping. I loved this pub and the Wendlebury folks. I also loved telling my high school Latin teachers about the metal detector chappies who would wander into the Red Lion with a handful of Roman coins freshly exhumed just down the road. Need a sub for Aunt sally?
“Martin Hodson” with an unverifiable email address makes claims found in this May 2012 Oxford Mail article: The changing face of WENDLEBURY
