On a previous visit to the Lazy Dog I spotted there was not one, but two dartboards in The Forester’s Arms. This necessitated a future visit, which happened to be an overcast Monday evening. On arrival the pub was suprisingly busy, however, it only signified that freshers week was in full swing. Although, I assume these were seasoned second or third years from the lack of organised fun. There were a couple of cask options. I went for Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, still with original pump clip for now. It didn’t taste off, but it was a long way from the best Landlord I’ve had.

As mentioned there are two boards in the Forester’s Arms. One takes up the centre of the rear room, described as the pool room by the bar woman, I assume from a bygone era. We started on the board in the main room, after moving some high tables out of the way. It had a specific hole in the wall cut out for it and an electronic scoring board. However, the LED halo in the special cut out was non-functional and the second digit of the twenty segment had been knocked off, leaving the highest scoring segment as nineteen. As soon as the rear room was clear of other pub-goers we nipped in to take the prime spot. The board was a Winmau Blade 6 as usual. Not on its first rotation but in fine condition. Bounce-outs or poorly seated darts were not an issue.

The oche did leave something to be desired. A few faintly scratched lines in a herringbone floor made foot alignment a bit of an issue on throw. However, Sam and I play a very casual game, as long as your foot placement is in the spirit of darts a few centimetres either way can be forgiven. Fortunately, the weather was still mild, with rain only threatening rather than falling. This meant the inside of the pub was largely empty. I suspect as autumn progresses the oche will be trickier to access and will have more interruptions as people visit the bar and the loos.

In-situ scoring methods were also non-existent, leaving a phone app of your choice as the only scoring option (and there is only one true option). There were also two types of bunting adorning the room. Some innocent village fête multi-coloured bunting, and some perhaps more nefarious England bunting. It is a world cup year, but I’m not sure how long the grace period is before transient England fever becomes permanent flag-shaggery. It didn’t seem like a stop the boats pub, but that could be due to our visit coinciding with term time. I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for enjoying England’s good run this year without being overly zealous.

For once I threw some decent darts on this pub visit, including a two dart 101 checkout (treble seventeen, bullseye) pictured below. This could be the highlight of my darting career, and almost lead me to add a point to The Forester’s darts set-up rating. However, as much fun as we had playing there, I don’t think it’s somewhere you could reliably go for a throw if it was busy.