Jeremy Clarkson has had many professions over the years – car journalist, farmer, quiz show host, beer brewer. He can now count pub landlord among those varied roles, as he recently bought and oversaw the renovation of a country boozer just down the road from his world-famous farm.
It also happens to be about 45 minutes from where I live, which seemed like the perfect excuse to go for a blast through the Cotswolds on a lovely late summer’s afternoon, end up at the pub, and call it ‘work’.
The establishment that Clarkson has renamed The Farmer’s Dog was previously The Windmill, a pub, restaurant and wedding venue in Oxfordshire. It’s just by the A40 road, near the pretty tourist-trap town of Burford, and about nine miles south of Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farmshop. It’s also very near the massive RAF base at Brize Norton, so your inner child will be delighted by the enormous Globemaster cargo planes often doing low, lazy circles above you.
The Farmer’s Dog pub
Clarkson bought it earlier this year, reportedly for below £1 million. How much less isn’t clear, but that seems to be fairly average for a pub in this particularly affluent stretch of the British countryside. News that he’d bought the place only broke in July, and by mid-August, it was open.
I dropped in on the Thursday immediately after its opening weekend. Although it was a weekday afternoon, it was also the last full week of the school summer holidays. That, combined with its shiny newness and a magnetic draw we’ll call the Clarkson Effect, meant it was fairly busy.
The main car park is way bigger than usual for a country pub, but even so, the operation has quite sensibly taken over an adjacent field to use as overflow parking. I’d estimate that across both car parks, there were close to 200 cars when I visited – a nice extra earner for the pub, as parking costs £2. It’s not clear if the paid parking is a permanent thing or just to keep things somewhat under control during the initial flurry of excitement.
The Farmer’s Dog overflow parking
Once on the grounds, the main pub is straight ahead of you and seems to be set aside as a restaurant. As there was a big queue for a table, and I was solo, I gave it a miss, but naturally, there were already lots of pictures of the inside floating around online. It also has a rather lovely-looking dining terrace out the back.
The actual pub probably isn’t the main attraction though, because, in a delightful move, the tent that served as the studio for the first three series of The Grand Tour has been pitched in the massive beer garden.
Its purposes are manifold. There are two separate retail areas in there – one selling various products from Diddly Squat farm including Clarkson’s infamously, erm, unusual scented candles; and another stocking Hawkstone Brewery products – mainly in rather pricey 12 packs, so I didn’t pick any up.
Candles in The Farmer’s Dog pub shop
There’s also a bar in the tent serving pretty much the whole range of Hawkstone beers, as well as its cider. I was driving, so didn’t have anything, but I’ve enjoyed all the Hawkstone beers I’ve tried before, and there’s a decent range of lagers and IPAs. I’ve never tried the cider, because cider is alcohol for people who aren’t old enough to drink yet. Pints seem to average out at around £5.50. This seems to have sparked some anger in certain pockets of the internet, which is weird – if anything, that’s a chunk less than I’d expect to pay for a pint of premium-ish beer in this upmarket bit of Britain.
You can also order from a street food-style menu at this tent bar, which can be picked up from a trailer next to it. It’s a slightly limited menu, but I went for the lamb shawarma because I’m never going to say no to lamb shawarma.
It was ready impressively quickly considering how busy things were – the staff there seemed to have pretty quickly ironed out any teething issues. The food itself was decent – pretty flavourful, although the lamb was a bit chewy (not a sentence you expect to write as a car journalist). At £14 for the shawarma with no sides, it’s definitely at the pricier end of the scale, but again, it’s nothing out of the ordinary for this part of the world.
The Farmer’s Dog lamb shawarma
The final part of the tent is an enormous fridge full of meat. Not all of this, as far as I can tell, is sourced from Diddly Squat, but it does all seem to come from farms in the area, and behind the counter, you can see the butchers doing their thing, which is a neat touch.
In fact, the pub is very serious about sourcing ingredients as locally as possible. It proudly states the fact that it doesn’t serve Coke or ketchup, because neither is produced in the UK.
Despite pulling in visitors from all over the country so far, The Farmer’s Dog also seems to have been embraced by locals. The local council has been far more amenable than it was to Clarkson’s attempts to set up a restaurant on his farm, going as far as setting up temporary speed limits on the roads outside in anticipation of an initial wave of traffic. Traffic itself is well-managed, and the pub seems to have provided an immediate employment boost in this rural area (although I’d guess some of the staff are coming from catering firms).
The Farmer’s Dog beer garden with view
So, is it worth a visit? If you’re planning on travelling far, hoping for a Caffeine & Machine-style automotive venue, or lots of nods to Clarkson’s car-based TV work, then you’ll probably be disappointed. Other than the tent, there’s very little linking it to Top Gear or The Grand Tour, and that’s reflected in the car park – it’s far more full of posh family SUVs than modified MX-5s and Fiesta STs.
If you’re a local or holidaying in the area, though – or indeed if Clarkson’s Farm has made you a newfound fan of the man – then it’s definitely worth a trip. The food’s decent, the drinks are good and reasonably priced, and the beer garden looks out across a view that’s such a perfect summation of the pretty English countryside that it could have been lifted straight from a watercolour. Just don’t expect Clarkson to pop by – he’s got a farm to run.
