retiredmartin

March 2026. Stansted Airport. Essex. Dave (not that one) from Chicago was mildly astonished at the beer and breakfast trade at my local Spoons the other week. Goodness know what he’d make of the drinking at Stansted Airport at 7am this Monday. I’ve resisted the lure of a pre-flight pint since 2018, but what else… Continue reading THE RETURN OF THE 7am STANSTED PINT

Some folk told me it was too far to walk out to the Elms from central Burton; lads, it took 16 minutes to get back to Coopers, admiring the ducks, and the bridge over the Trent. Just time to catch up with the hipster vinyl chart at the record shop, and be unwisely diverted under… Continue reading UNDER THE ARCHES. PREEMPTIVE BURTON

March 2026. Burton-on-Trent. A third Bass in rapid succession, perhaps too rapid, but breaking up pints with espressos leads to madness. The “We ❤️ Bass” Facebook page had suggested the Roebuck and the Devvie for the best 🔺 in Burton, but I was heading east of town, over the actual Burton Bridge, past Stapenhill cemetery, to… Continue reading BEST BASS IN BURTON ?

March 2026. Burton-on-Trent. A Friday afternoon in search of Burton Bass, and a couple of votes on the Bass fan page for the Burton Bridge, another GBG regular that has had it’s share of turmoil of late. But nothing like the turmoil of the Hangar, aka Crossing; Caliente; Brewers Bar; Cosmo; InnStitute; Cosmopolitan; and the… Continue reading BURTON BRIDGE

March 2026. Burton-on-Trent. Never blog after six twelve glasses of Kolsch. Never mind, it’s nearly all pictures from the home of Bass, I’ll leave the prosaic descriptions and history to others. I guess Bass in the Coopers is as iconic as Paffgen in Lommies, but I hadn’t been for nearly a decade till Friday. Less… Continue reading THE COOPERS TAVERN, A JOULE IN THE BASS CROWN

March 2026. Burton on Trent. Last week seemed like mental torture, another weekend without making it to that Guisborough brewery tap that only opens 3:30 to 4 on Saturdays. But in fact I did manage East Grinstead (whoopy doo) and Burton on Trent (whoop), the latter scratching a major itch. Despite living a mere 42… Continue reading GOING FOR A BURTON

March 2026. East Grinstead. West Sussex. Our weekly trip from Sheffield to Waterbeach was followed by the monthly mercy mission to Kent, where we took father-in-law over Sussex border to the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead for essential maintenance. The Vic is a world-renowned centre for facial surgery, but sadly the parking isn’t quite… Continue reading THE MAGIC OF EAST GRINSTEAD

March 2026. Sheffield. Our friends from Chicago roused themselves at an uncivilised hour on the Monday and we ferried them back to Luton, a journey which might have shattered their illusions about pastoral England. By Tuesday I needed to get out the house, anywhere, and jumped on the first bus from Langsett Road, heading out… Continue reading HAND PUMPS IN PARKHEAD (NOT THAT ONE)

March 2026. Sheffield. It was two-thirty on our “cultural Sunday” and we still hadn’t taken our Chicago guests (a bit wary of an extended pub crawl, perhaps), in a pub ! Apart from the breakfast pint in Spoons. Five and a half hours later we’d rather remedied that omission, and I think Meighan and Dave… Continue reading AN ARTISANALLY CURATED TOUR OF SHEFFIELD PUBLIC HOUSES