Former tea rooms couple celebrate CAMRA pub success just five months after taking over

A couple of familiar faces returned to the district at the weekend as a vintage double-decker bus full of revellers pulled up in Aldworth.

At the end of last year, citing the climate of “business uncertainty”, Gary and Sam Huntley announced they were moving on from the Aldermaston Tea Rooms, the vibrant Wharfside café they had founded and managed for nine years.

“We’d always dreamed of running a pub,” said Mrs Huntley outside The Bell at Aldworth on Saturday afternoon, as just five months later the couple were celebrating being awarded the South Oxfordshire CAMRA Pub of the Season for their new venture, The Six Bells at Warborough.

It is the first-ever CAMRA award for the 17th century listed Brakspear pub in the picturesque ‘Midsomer Murders’ village near Wallingford, overlooking the village cricket field.

So the couple set off with a bunch of regulars of all ages in party mood for an afternoon raising a glass or two ‘over the West Berks border’ in an old Reading bus, owned and driven by Tutts Clump cidermaker Tim Wale.

Parked up outside the village well for several hours, it attracted much attention and at least one drinker recalling being a regular traveller on that very bus number 3 in his schooldays.

After months of renovation, the Aldermaston Tea Rooms reopened in March under new managers Siobhan Wood and Liz Lyons, in conjunction with the Kennet & Avon Canal Trust.