retiredmartin

I’m off to Dublin shortly, but don’t expect a string of posts comparing the craft keg against the Guinness*.   I’m still recovering from Manchester.

Thanks for your sympathy.

Instead we’ll be doing the cultural trail, centred on University College Dublin with its famed literary alumni of Joyce, Flann O’Brien, and Kevin Moran.

Flann (Brian to his mates) wrote the classic line about a pint of Plain in “The Workman’s Friend“.  Just south of Reading’s majestic Madejski** stadium lies the attractive village of Shinfield, home to A Proper Pub where you can get that very beer. A half, anyway, it is still Dryanuary.

You know the Bell & Bottle is a proper pub because a) it’s in the venerable Reading & Mid-Berks CAMRA section of the Guide, and b) it’s got a big Fosters sign on the wall.

And c) because as soon as I sat down I got chatting to blokes who looked too young to be drinking in the pub on a weekday lunchtime.  The conversation was about IT companies in Cambridge, a subject about which I can pretend to know an awful lot.

Just an unpretentious pub with good beer, proper seating and pub blokes. And if that’s not enough to get you off the sofa and down to Shinfield, there’s this;

A winner every time.

*The Export Stout is the only true Guinness, of course.

** Probably not called that anymore, but still the Madejski to me.