The Cow & Creek, Oxford

Now, one of the reasons I prefer to use pub rather than public 'facilities' is the lack of libation in the public sector. I've been using the Cow & Creek in Oxford a fair bit recently as it's a convienient (useful word given the context) place for me to wait for a bus home...the stop is a minute's walk down the road. In the Cow & Creek, the libation of choice tends to be Guinness.

The hostelries I use tend to be dedicated to specific inputs, so we have Guinness venues, wine venues, ESB venues, London Pride venues...you get the picture. Anyway, The Cow & Creek is a Guinness venue; the drink is well served, good temperature and head, served generally quite quickly. I don't tend to use the place much in the evening, so can't comment of speed of serviece after about 5pm. They also serve food, and I tend toward the chicken wings here; these are not dry, nor are they too greasy, and they're always pretty hot.

The facilities at the pub, at first sight, don't look too bad...as you can see from the photo. I prefer decorative pictures on the wall to advertising, but if you're there for a quick tinkle, all's good.

However, at the time I was using the place, the 'stand up' area was half flooded; thankfully, the dry area was the more easily accessable bit of the floor. 

The other reason to be thankful in this context is the fact that I needed a 'sit down visit'. Again, on first viewing, the 'seating area' didn't seem all that bad. There wasn't exactly enough room to swing cats (who would want to anyway), but there was plenty of room to unload the backpack or take off the coat without a struggle. Turn to close the door (easy), and lock it (nope!). 

Unfortunately, as you can see from the second photo, there was no lock...now, it may have been replaced by now, but I did get a feeling of impending doom. As I said, there was a fair amount of room, which made the normal 'stick foot against door' technique for security problematic. Thankfully, I'd bought plenty of books this visit so the backpack, being heavier than normal, served a useful purpose on this occasion 👍. The place was however clean, and there was plenty of paper; in a roll rather than individual slices, which is always a bonus I feel

Then we come to the finishing up. It's a manual set-up for hand washing, the type of tap you press the top and it flows for a little while as you wash. Now, in these days of Covid and the heightened understanding for good personal hygene, you'd have thought the tap would run for 20 to 30 seconds to allow for a good scrub...not the 2 secods we are given! This made the washing part of finishing up a tad problematic, but not impossible. The hand dryer was good: it recognised when a hand was there (no frantic waving to get a blast of air), the air was warn (not hot) and flowed at a good rate, and it wasn't overly sensitive about where you held your hand (unlike some machines that require pin-point accuracy). The mirror was clean and useable, and there were no adverts...the wall paper had sultable pictures.

Overall, it's a 6/10 for the men's facilities here...clearly, I'm not in a position to review the ladys'.