The kings of Corfe castle

You can admire many things about the pubs in Corfe Castle in Dorset. For a start, there's their history and the good fortune to be based in a village dominated by the imposing and slightly eerie ruins of the castle that Cromwell knocked about a bit.

Or you can just sip a beer and glory in the fact that it costs less than £3 a pint. The licensee in the Fox Inn drew a pint of Taylor's Landlord for me and had the temerity, the brass-necked cheek, to demand £2.60 of my hard-earned money. When I recovered my composure, I told him the same beer would cost around a pound more in my home town of St Albans.

He shook his head in disbelief and no doubt made a mental note never to visit the Home Counties. In the Fox, even Greene King's Abbot Ale, which registers 5% abv on the Richter scale, is only £2.85 a pint. As I savoured my luscious pint, I thought for a few happy minutes that Alistair Darling might not exist, just a figment of my fevered brain.

The Fox is a simple, ancient ale house. It dates from 1568, a fact that sends a shiver down the spine. It was serving ale some 70 years before the Civil War that blasted to bits the royalist stronghold of Corfe Castle.

The pub has a comfortable wood-panelled front room and steep steps take you down to the main bar that opens out into a spacious room for drinkers and diners. A covered well suggests that centuries ago brewing probably took place on the premises. There's a large garden at the back with, inevitably, fine views of the castle ruins: rather like the Mona Lisa's smile, the castle follows you wherever you go in the village.

The ales are all drawn straight from the cask. It's a fascinating taste experience and I wondered what the brewers at Tim Taylor's would think of their beer being served in this fashion, several hundred miles south of Keighley. The beer is as flat as the proverbial mill pond. No hand pump intervenes between cask and glass, and the lack of foam means you have to search harder for the hoppy aroma and flavour of Landlord.

The Bankes Arms Hotel stands opposite the village square and is built of the local grey Purbeck stone. It takes its name from the aristocratic Bankes family that lived in the castle and held out against one Roundhead attack before succumbing to a second pitiless bombardment.

The hotel claims to be even older than the Fox, first built in 1549, though I suspect it's been extended over the years. The main bar is large and comfortable and leads, via some steps, to a back room used for dining. Beyond is a large back garden that's always packed on warm days. The garden is just a few yards from Corfe station and trains on the restored Swanage Steam line go chuffing past.

The Bankes Arms has long been a welcome outlet for Ringwood beers from neighbouring Hampshire. Not only were the brewery's Boondoggle and Best Bitter in excellent nick, but I'm also still getting change from £3.

Over the road, the Greyhound Inn dominates the square and has the good fortune to stand at the foot of the castle grounds. It's a 17th-century coaching inn formed out of two even older cottages. It has several small interconnected rooms and a back garden with views of the castle, the Purbeck hills and a viaduct that carries the steam trains on their short journeys to and from Swanage.

The Greyhound is a splendid supporter of cask beer. As well as Cottage, Ringwood and Sharp's on the bar, it stages several beer events throughout the year, including a major festival over the August bank holiday weekend.

The inn also serves exceptionally good food. I've eaten there many times over the years and noticed with interest how the menu has changed with the arrival of chef Andy Watts. The food used to be standard pub fare of the steak-and-ale and sausage-and-chips variety.

But now you will find tapas, Mediterranean vegetable salad, Caesar salad, mussels, whisky chicken and a great emphasis on locally-caught fish. The Greyhound has not become a gastropub, but the food is imaginative and, as you queue for a table, it's clearly not driving customers away.

The pubs are thriving in Corfe Castle. They're helped by the fact that the village and the castle draw visitors all year round. And in these cash-conscious times, if the beer and the food were not good then visitors could easily move on to other pubs in nearby Swanage and Wareham. My brief holiday is over. I'm back home and extending my overdraft every time I buy a pint in St Albans, a grim reminder that Alistair Darling is alive and active, as grey and forbidding as the castle ruins in Corfe.