Can any of you recommend any nice places to eat and drink in St Albans? Plus a Hotel with safe parking? Thanks - Steve
@LiveFast...... Try Sopwell House or St Michael's Manor for hotels with safe parking. Both quite expensive but St Albans is not a cheap area. There are loads of restaurants around from a variety of chains through to good independents, pretty much all options are covered. Plenty of pubs too including The Fighting Cocks which is apparently the oldest pub in the country and not just, allegedly, a favourite film of Philip Schofield. The Waffle House is great for breakfast and close to the Roman ruins if you get time. Also worth a look is the cathedral. I'll come up with some restaurant names later, we often meet my parents for dinner there as it is halfway between us.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/restaurant-locator.html#res-show-hours https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/pubs/all-pubs/england/hertfordshire/waterend-barn-st-albans
Sopwell house is nice but it's out of town. I wouldn't say the parking is secure, there is no gate or anything like that bit it is tucked away.
Sopwell House is nice, but it’s a bit out of town. Parking isn’t super secure since there’s no gate, but it’s tucked away so it feels safe enough.
Given this was a conversation from back in 2020 I’m guessing he’s probably found suitable accommodation by now.
10 out of 10 for one member on the smugness scale, 10 out of 10 for another member on the "sincere help, regardless" scale.
Anorak (nearly) Fact:- St Alban's had a real ale pub in the 70's/80's that topped the Hautboy in Ockham (13) for most beers on tap at one time, just don't ask me the name of the pub.. The Garibaldi?
Used to live in the Sopwell Lane just one street across from the Garibaldi. We had three pubs in our road (all of 350m long), our house was next door to The Goat Inn, and quite a few in staggering distance, happy days Got married in St Michael's Manor Hotel.
Sorry for off-topic:- lovely story ^ apart from this pub (The Garibaldi) the only other contenders (for most REAL ales on pump, year i can't remember, but around 1975) in the South of England were:- The Lamb (Lamb's Conduit Street, London) and The Thieves Kitchen & Chop Shop (Worthing). The Garibaldi was the only one of those 4 that i regrettably never got to visit back then. The Hautboy in Ockham was like a sequence from a Harry Potter film virtually everytime you visited - out of this world for building, beer and garden.
There's a reason that CAMRA is based in St Albans. Apparently there are more pubs in St Albans per square mile than anywhere else in the country.
