Mrs RM bought the campervan she’s been eyeing for a year, so plans are being prepared for exciting trips to Anchor, Shropshire and the Belgian coast. Our first trip out was even more exciting, a night in Brownhills Motorhomes in Newark.
There’s many worse places to be than Newark on a Saturday night, unless the town is hosting it’s annual ’80s Festival night. I’m game for almost anything, up to and including Black Sabbath, but a night of Bananarama and ABC in their fifties is a step too far. We did catch Midge Ure rehearsing “Vienna“, allowing me to shout “Shaddap you face” over the perimeter wall.
Newark itself looks gorgeous, and the explosion of new cafes and pubs over the last few years has added something to a solid town.
The castle and church have always stood out, but now the town is pushing its civil war heritage with a flashy museum to pull in the kids, or failing that Peppa Pig starts at the Palace in July.
The riverside area has all the smarter chain places now, but we gambled on the independent Proper Burger Co., which looked a little like the small Fatty Arbuckles chain that used to grace Stevenage when we had the joy of working there.
The Boston wasn’t unpleasant, albeit a bit malty and with little turnover (NBSS 2.5), while Mrs RM’s Portland Ale on keg was a decent copy of Punk IPA. A little research traced Portland Craft Beer back to Openshaw, a short walk from the Etihad. That might be a distribution address; if these are imported they’re very competitively priced.
It’s encouraging to see cask tried in a mass market restaurant, but I suspect more people would have a second pint of the keg. The burgers and fries were even better, in the same league as the Grosvenor in Hanwell. I recommend it highly.
I’d been looking forward to a drink in a proper pub, but sadly we were getting close to the first strains of “Dancing with tears with in our eyes“, and if you get to close to that you end up looking like this poor lady.
retiredmartin 