Final round nears for Pub of the Year

VOTING is now over in the mammoth quest to find Suffolk's Pub of the Year 2003 with the competition hotting-up as the final round nears.

Now in its second year the competition is set to be the biggest and best yet.

Over the past few weeks Evening Star readers have been sending us your views on which of the hundreds of pubs across our beautiful county deserve one of the coveted awards.

Hundreds of text, phone and postal votes have flooded into our office, inundating our dedicated team.

Now the different voting formats are being added together, counted and recounted to find out which pubs have made it through to the finals.

Your precious votes have whittled out who you think are the best from the rest.

The contest has been hard fought with such a rich diversity of Suffolk pubs to choose from.

We have divided the competition in eleven categories this year, each chosen to represent the scope of variation we have across Suffolk.

These are best town pub, best village or country pub, best community and teams pub, best food pub, best family pub, best real ale pub, best music or live entertainment pub, best large screen pub, best waterside pub and best landlord or landlady and best specialist pub.

Only a handful of votes separated the successful finalists from those that did not quite make it.

The pubs that have made the grade to reach the top three in each of our eleven categories will be revealed in the Evening Star next week, with news from the competition's sponsors Pubmaster, Ridleys and Adnams.

In the final round a member of our judging panel will pay an anonymous visit to each venue to sample it delights to see if it is a worthy champion.

When we have selected our winners an independent judge from the Suffolk Campaign for Real Ale will visit them to select an overall winner.

All the winners will be announced at a spectacular glittering awards night on the premiere of the new Colin Firth film S.W.A.T at the Odeon Cinema in Ipswich on December 5.