When in the Toon this is the one to visit. Great beers, decor, staff and customers. A real delight.Can't believe it's almost 18 months since our last visit, it felt like yesterday...outstanding range of beer from local breweries. Warm and friendly clientele, happy to launch into a chat about the beer or the football as soon as they knew you were from out of town. Inevitably rammed full and always difficult to get close to the bar to get served, but people will happily pass your pint over to you. Mnaged to get into the snug on our second visit of the weekend, suddenly seems like an oasis of calm in a perenially popular classic watering-hole.Heaving when we got there at about 5.00, but all the better for it. Great character, great mix of people, and interesting beer. Top pub in town.

This is my favourite pub in Newcastle. Excellent range of guest ale and served in great condition. I found the staff to be very polite and welcoming. I enjoyed Thornbridge, Oakham, and Mordue ales whilst there.Cracking pub, great ales (6 on handpull), good staff and has Sky and SetantaI hadn’t been in here for about 25 years and my dim recollections of the place back then suggested that it has been mucked about a bit. However, I’m sure the beer range and quality have probably gone up. The Durham Magus I had was a very refreshing pint, which I understand is a regular beer, while others rotate as guest beers. The football was on the screens about the bar and if I may be allowed one criticism, the volume was up a little too high. However, I was sorry to leave after only one pint but that was all I had time for.

Rather grand building with a trendy clientele; nice riverside patio area out the back. Most importantly an excellent range of ales, including a couple of unusual one like Everard's Ginger Fox and Saltaire Backberry Cascade served in peak condition.Up there with the best Newcastle pubs and a great location. Rather than chase Jack Carter over the High Level bridge having had the door of their Jag Mk II knocked off, the two villains should've popped in here for a few and life wouldn't have seemed so bad.I have been to Newcastle many times but until the last visit I had never found this pub. It is quite atmospheric and "solid". The beers are worth going there for.

The earlier comment that Newcastle is a "desert of real ale drinking opportunities" is totally beyond me. Anyone who thinks that simply hasn't been looking past the end of his nose.

Anyhow, the Newcastle Arms was certainly a lot more difficult to leave than to enter. Solid traditional boozer, good service, good range of beers, served in fine conditionmatt_wilkins, I'd hardly quote Newcastle as a 'desert of real ale drinking opportunities'. What about the Bacchus, Tilleys, Bodega, The Bridge, Crown Posada, The Duke Of Wellington, The Hotspur etc. Yes its not Sheffield and Newcastle does have its dodgy watering holes, but there is plenty of choice for the real ale drinker. The Newcastle Arms is a gem of a pub. Been in there many a time and never had a bad pint! Excellent range of real ales, definitely worth spending an evening there when the queue for the Newcastle Beer Festival was way too long to contemplate joining...not sure about the comment about the smell, there was absolutely no evidence of that during our visit. Lots of evidence of original styling within and the bowed front window and surrounds. Within yards of St.James'Park, so best visited outside of pre-match times, although that doesn't mean it won't be full anyway...it will be.

Good range of beer indifferently kept. Staff aren't really with it; it bothers me to see some mook standing around chatting when there are customers queueing. Apart from that the atmosphere's pretty good, although it still manages to give off the feeling that it's smoky! Don't know how. Not as pleasant as it's sister pub, the Head of Steam, but the beers fare better here; neither are as good as the Cluny.A bit too trendy for me - at 42 I reckon I was old enough to be the father of almost every other customer, all of whom were certainly under 30. Ales were in good nick but it was too dimly lit to read my paper. The Bodega up the road is more my scene.Not as friendly as the Bodega, and a bit more expensive, but OK.

Pretty quiet when I popped in on a Monday night. Closest pub to st James' park - must be mayhem in here when the Magpies have just beaten Sunderland. Loads of old football memorabilia on the walls.Good beer (Deuchars IPA, 80/, Mordue plus Broon on tap), served by a very pleasant barmaid. Huge pie and chips for £4.50. No complaints.Very traditional, think the TVs are the only concession to modernity. Food good and cheap, nice selection of beers. Not been on a matchday, assume it gets rammed.

£2.00pint on all ales,6 pumps with only 2 on, however they were packing up to close for a refurb so will give them a 7/10, prob worth checkin out at a later dateIt needs a bloody good clean. Too many TVs; too bright lighting and some dodgy clientele. Beer continues to be good an varied, however.Probably picked a bad time to visit, walking in during the Liverpool v Chelsea European Cup tie to find it packed with boisterous student types in Liverpool colours. Having bought a pint it was promptly almost sent flying by spotty youths pogoing around when Liverpool scored. Best avoided on televised football nights if you want a quiet pint. Otherwise seemed reasonable though.

With around 10 seperate rooms of very different sizes this is the most un barn like pub I've ever been to and also one of wetherespoon's best.They always have loads of excellent local beer on. The rooms and bars are so different that this could be a wetherspoons pub for people who don't like wetherspoons pubs.

A barn!
I can't beleive he said that. The moon under water on deansgate in manchester is a barn.A great barn of a place (as are so many JDW pubs), it was quiet today early lunchtime, but it can get very busy. I whiled away a very pleasant wait for a train (the station is just across the road), trying one of the current beer festival ales.
Interesting building with very impressive interior and usual decent range of beers (and prices) that you expect from Wetherspoons.
If you're staying at one of the Quayside Travelodge type hotels and are looking for a cheap breakfast - don't come here for it - the morning we went, there wasn't even bread for toast, and no eggs or sausages, never mind anything else. Smacks of dodgy management....

Same management team as the HOS but someone here knows how to keep the beer. Great, lively pub.Only a moderate pint. Toilets were poor. Long time since that protection machine had a clean.Went in Thirsty_Jonny's suggested condition of mind and drouth, and were a little disappointed. Barmaid looked seriously unhappy in her work, Sunchaser OK but no more - have had much better. The kitchen, however, compensated both in terms of charming service and decent food in substantial portions. Twenty live gigs this month - serious music pub. The Q2 bus from the City Centre stops at the far end of Lime Street, just 3 or 4 minutes walk away.

Just been back and it was great. Friendly stsff and well kept real ale. Couple of nice chicks too.Just been back and it was great. Friendly stsff and well kept real ale. Couple of nice chicks too.What on earth has happened? A real pub running short of ale on Saturday night? Sounds like this place many years ago before the previous landlord got his act together.... Never mind the new upholstery, look after the beer too. And what was that smell of fat from the kitchen when they decided to sell burgers one Saturday night? Disgusting. This pub had a good clientele - a mix of students and locals (okay, many of the locals were ex-students or uni staff, but I'm not splitting hairs). The last Saturday I was in, it was virtually empty. You can't rely on rugby and football games to keep the place ticking over. Pull your finger out before it's too late and it's taken over by someone who'll turn it into some place rotten like the pub up the road.

This place stinks. Not the beer - there's still a decent range, despite what one correspondent thinks, not the staff, who have never been less than friendly and have to put up with the occasional lunatic; the place itself stinks. Is it the toilets? Is it dampness? Is it the sewage pipes underneath the street? If this place was a restaurant, it would've been closed by the health inspectors long ago. For God's sake do something about it before you get shut down.Somehow felt a bit spartan when I popped in during a city centre crawl. Adequate, but plenty better.Sadly the Duke has gone off the boil for real alers! Now concentrates on the main national brews with few guests. Still a good pub as the beer is kept well, but lack of choice marks it down for me.

Very atmospheric pub within a large medieval riverside building Main bar room is quite small and three oafs had managed to position their barstools in a circle so it was pratcically impossible for anyone else to get to and from the bar for service. There's another larger room with seating around the corner and some sort of function rom upstairs. Four or five ales on handpump.Still needs a greater range of ales, but vastly improved; nice feel to the place.I spoke to the then new landlord about a year ago, but haven't been back since.

He said that he had taken a golden handshake from Endemol, and was using the money to extend upwards, start a fine dining operation, and generally really make the most of the site.

How did he get on?

FWIW, the beer, staff and punters were fine when I was there.

Great choice of real ale and a very nicely fitted out pub. The toilets are a bit of a climb but worth it for the superb photographs of Newcastle on the way.Beer good - very good often, but THE BLOODY NOISE OF THE MUSIC WAY TOO LOUD DUE TO THE PILLOCKS IN THEIR LATE TEENS EARLY 20'S SERVING BEHIND THE BARS.. WHERE IS THE ********** MANAGER FOR GOD'S SAKE ?????? (Marked as 6 because of this)Relatively trendy city centre pub down a side street. Nicely fitted out (the aim being to resemble the bar of an ocean liner I believe) with eight real ales to choose from.

It's been done out again. The former downstairs toilet area is now a neat little room. I know that sounds bad, but it's not. The bogs are upstairs (there awlays had been upstairs toilets but they were closed before the previous fairly dimwitted relaunch). There's a rooftop beer garden but I suspect there's been some legal problems, because it was closed last time I was there.

You don't have to be a lager anorak to enjoy the beer because they actually manage to keep a few real ales on at Fridays and on weekends - though they're not kept very well.

Staff are so-so. You get the impression they'd rather serve attractive chicks, but then wouldn't we all...?Scampi Fries? I don't think so (nice pub though, the best one to go for while waiting for a train)Vastly improved since the smoking ban came in. Agree that real ale anoraks might be a bit sniffy about the beer quality but there is also a decent range of continental bottled beers (Duvel, Kriek etc.)

Only one real ale on last Friday and the smell from the bogs shared with the Red House suggested somebody hadn't quite made it in time and freestyled. For Christ's sake, this should be a good pub. Still, if you get enough no necks to spend their ill-earned drug profits on fizzy beer, I don't suppose you're too worried. We won't be back.Having a veggie for a wife, she was very happy to visit this pub at a quiet time (5pm on a Friday) to sample the all-too-rare extensive veggie menu. Very good and very cheap food, friendly barman, not a great ale selection (one hadpump only as mentioned elsewhere, interesting building with three seperately named pubs under one roof. Does have a lot of competition close by, but whn we walked past again much later in the evening, it was rammed to the gills.Old pub close to bridges and Quayside, Ale nothing to write home about though