It’s quite useful having a search engine on this site, not that any of you seem capable of using it.
I can tell you that my trip to Newport recently was my sixth in two years, which is actually enough to guarantee me a Welsh passport after 29 March.
This time, I spread my custom and stayed in the Newport Student Village in a block with four students, who looked a bit worried when I tipped up in their kitchen in my Bass/Star T-shirt. £53 for two nights in better (and cheaper) accommodation than my lad has in Sheffield.
And you get views like this on Saturday morning;
After seven pubs in Cardiff I was taking it easy, with just two nearby ticks in Rogerstone and Caerleon. I did contemplate Tenby by rail, but at my advanced age you can’t afford to commit 3 months of your life to a train adventure like that.
And I would have walked the ten miles or so over the M4, but I don’t like the chicken run and it was raining. Though it stopped as I reached the bus station.
I know you like to see my breakfasts, so you can see how I eat well before my exertions. So this is Drago Lounge, whose bubble and squeak variants are very Shoreditch.
Then it went downhill.
I tried to buy a Day Ticket for the buses at the travel centre near the shops.
The kiosk said “No cards. Cash only“. I had cash. But the young man wouldn’t sell me a ticket, it only being a travel centre or something. I had to buy it on the bus. Which I’d just missed.
So I had an hour to admire the tiling in the indoor market.
On the bus the driver looked at me quizzically. “A Day Ticket you say. Never heard of it. Where do you want to go ?“. Er, everywhere ? Behind me a line of Old Boys and young mums were hissing “Get on with it stupid man“. I gave up.
Back at the Travel Centre the young man explained the Day Ticket was only sold by Newport Buses, not the other lot. Thanks for telling me, I wish I’d walked.
By the time I’d got to Tiny Rebel‘s beer factory 45 minutes later I really wished I’d walked, the bus having taken me round every possible housing estate en-route, to give the skies time to unleash their load on me as I walked to a grim industrial estate.
No-one else had come to the back of beyond by public transport, but it was packed, busier than the city centre Tiny Rebel bar.
I’d compare it with the Magic Rock Tap, but you can walk there from ‘Oodezfield, and frankly the burgers and TV are more akin to TGI Friday if they teamed up with Brew Dog (not insider knowledge).
Cwtch for £2.90 on cask and the weird Puft one, good to very good (3.5) though not quite as wonderful as in the Newport bar. Often the way.
High tables though, and that dreadful team of Scousers fluking their way to another win at Bournemouth, so I made sure I caught the bus on its return journey.
There’s nothing to match the thrills of a bus whizzing round corners and over speed bumps when you’ve had two pints and a burger in 45 minutes, is there ?
Sympathies to the usual address.
I see that Tiny Rebel logo in about half of the places I go these days.
But ah, in kicks the old synaesthesia, yet again (sorry, long word) and so I buy something else.
“Cwtch” is such a stupid word too. It doesn’t even work in true Welsh phonetics.
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It’s nice beer, and it was less than £3 a pint. Not sure I mentioned that.
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I know. Just can’t help myself.
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Tiny Rebel beer is fantastic …stay puft is best dark drink I know…
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“not that any of you seem capable of using it.”
(raises hand)
I have made use of it a few times. 🙂
“And you get views like this on Saturday morning;”
With regards to the OS map above, it’s all bloody consonants strung together with the odd vowel looking forlorn here and there.
“Proof of rain”
I thought that was proof of leprechauns?
“Thanks for telling me,”
And I bet when you left he mumbled ‘bloody tourists’. 🙂
“Cwtch”
Gesundheit.
“Sympathies to the usual address.”
It’s in the post. 😉
With respect to the photo below, at least they have line measurements on the glasses. 🙂
Cheers
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My favourite “Gesundheit” gag is to ask someone to remind you of the capital of Somalia. “Mog..er..Mog…er…” you go…
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Enjoyed your comment about the student accommodation -a bargain as you say !
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I’d be quite happy to live there for 3 years, no idea about the quality of teaching 😁
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You wouldn’t have time for the teaching.
Too many pubs to get to.
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If there’s one thing that annoys me more than allegedly humorous Christmas jumpers it’s calling a campus a “student village”.
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Well, a “student village” isn’t properly a campus. Manchester has one for instance. It’s an area of accommodation for students, but among the general buildings of the city.
But maybe that’s exactly what you mean?
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What I mean is that anything calling itself a “village” must have people for much of their life from cradle to grave, not just three years, doing other than just learning or teaching and it must be semi-rural with ancient buildings including a church, a pub and a post office.
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Thanks Paul, but I’m going to cut the users some slack. For instance, I quite like the description of London as “Two Hundred Villages”.
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Well, yes, I can almost comprehend London as Two Hundred Villages merged into one and sheltering under countless railway arches.
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“Warehouse chic” is the perfect way of putting it. I know the GBG doesn’t necessarily care about these matters, but this sort of location could truly be anywhere: Am I in England, or Texas, or a recently-opened venture in Shanghai? (I’ll stop before I sound like the grumpy old guy that I am!)
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Hadn’t noticed you as Grumpy Mark ! Of course, if they’re going to build a bar at their Industrial Estate brewery it’s not going to have oak beams, or if it is it’s going to look like that EPCOT version of a British pub (have you been to EPCOT ?)
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I think Mark’s grumpy with a small ‘g’ and nothing like as curmudgeonly as me.
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I never have been to EPCOT, actually. I suppose you’ve got to give them credit for trying to include a pub– did they do a decent job of it?
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No😉
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