Two Spoons to do in and around Sunderland meant it was a great place to stay overnight, when compared to a ditch in Blaydon, anyway.
And £35 for a Travelodge on the High Street, too. Musn’t grumble; it would have been £100 to stay in Durham, and £54 in Middlesbrough.
Why have people got a downer on Sunderland ? It’s perfectly safe, after all BRAPA left 20 years ago.
I parked my car by the river and unfortunately it was still there in the morning.
The Travelodge is a good standard too, right next to the cinema and a good place to visualise the development potential and with a view of flat-roof splendour.
The only downside of Sunderland was that I wasn’t going anywhere else. The next nearest GBG tick via train was in Carlisle, about 3 hours away. Easier to walk along Hadrian’s Wall in the dark.
Only 6pm and only one Guide pub; what would I possibly do with my evening since I’m too cheapskate to pay a fiver for Travelodge WiFi ?
A decade ago I’d paid £4 to watch “Harry Potter & the Saucerful of Secrets” (sp.?) in the Empire. Now I could pay a fiver to watch “Rocketman“.
I stuck to pubs, dead and alive,
and the magnificent park.
The east side of the centre is a bit dead, but pub central near the Uni is quite vibrant for a midweek. Particularly the Spoons.
I thought I must have been to all the Spoons (there’s been at least fourteen), but it rang no bells.
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve deleted my copious notes (Huawei’s fault), but I can tell you I formed a lifelong friendship with a chap waving a fiver hopefully while the only member of staff when off to be trained on how to make a Wu Wu or something. At least he didn’t ask for a taster of his Carling.
When it arrived, my pint of Maxim was another corker, even if it was the only pint I saw pulled.
A really good mix of suits, students and Social Workers from South Shields, which is why I like Spoons despite all their irritations.
Perhaps it’s a Tyne & Wear thing, but the beer in Spoons up here is nearly always top.
I should have stopped for a gourmet burger and a second pint, but then you don’t get to use your Spoons voucher,which is really poor form when CAMRA have spent all that time justifying your membership by arranging discounts.
So I went in search of something for John Watson.
In London you’re never more than 2 feet from a craft bar rat; in Sunderland it’s a reminder of Wembley ’73.
Even in Fitzgeralds, the smartest GBG pub in town since the early 90s.
Still very lovely and pubby, though a bit quieter than you’d hope for a place with eight beers on.
But an inarguably good range, including our favourite from Scarborough.
That Black IPA was superb, a third NBSS 3.5 of the day.
All it needed was a bit of banter. Perhaps my notes recorded something more exciting than two students discussing gig venues in Stoke, but I doubt it. The mics and guitar stands were set up in front of the window, but I feared the Kaiser Chiefs covers would be some time coming. I’m sure they were playing the Kaiser Chiefs.
So I left before I got caught up in a quiz, which is how pubs drag students in these days.
Where next. Follow the magic carpet…
retiredmartin 
That Fitzgeralds interior is the sort of thing many American faux-Irish pubs model their look after: highly ornate with etched glass and so forth. I’m told there’s a factory in Canada that produces all this stuff, and that anyone with deep enough pockets can have a convincingly old-looking pub set up in any town they like.
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Yes, very early 20th century. The small Fitzgerald chain around Tyneside have a lot of pubs in their style, I think they own the Crown Posada.
Not sure what the Sunderland pub was before Fitzgeralds but it’s very well-done.
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The Crown Posada’s interior is genuinely old but this Fitzgeralds looks new, more likely from a factory in Wrexham than Canada.
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In fairness to Sir John Fitzgerald, when they do a pub up, they use real wood and actual joiners and polishers to build the interiors. Fitzgeralds in Sunderland used to be Greensleeves but was rebuilt and expanded in 1992 to what it is now. The company does own the Crown Posada.
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Yes, the Fitzgeralds pubs always impress, and food was typically a cut above.
My only gripe is them taking Draught Bass out of the Posada 😉
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Adrian,
Yes, I regret being unfair there. But I blame the heat.
Sir John Fitzgerald, like Sam Smiths, use proper wood and actual joiners and polishers to build the interiors and they, especially Humphrey’s, can be very convincing.
This week Amber Taverns opened a Hogarths in Stafford as “a Victorian Styled Gin Palace” and they’ve intended the same effect but done it relatively on the cheap. There’s loads of panelling but I immediately noticed it’s pale coloured softwood rather than the proper darker hardwood. They’ve spent a fair bit on coloured glass but it’s sort of Art Deco which is of a more recent style than everything else ( except the TV screens ). Only the electroliers impressed me.
I think that Black Country Ales do well with their refurbishments, of an earlier age, not too fancy and probably not too expensive.
Don’t get me started on those new “Joules” pubs !
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I don’t think you’re being unfair at all, Paul.
It’s just some folk are more concerned with provenance and historicity than I am. I’m only interested in how it works today, rather than the history.
Good example is Nuremberg, flattened in the war but recreated to look like it did in the 16th century or whatever. To my mind the greatest looking city in Europe, despite it being a fake.
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Martin,
Yes, most pub goers are interested in how it works today which of course is fine but I, interested in history, just get niggled when I see something new that’s so obviously “wrong”.
I don’t know Nuremberg but it might be so good now because it was rebuilt properly, probably by the same joiners as Humphrey uses.
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We were touring the cellars where they hid their artworks in WWII and an American (typical) knocked over one of the exhibits showing the destruction above 75 years ago.
Quick as a flash our guide said
“Hey don’t destroy our ruins”
You had to be there. Love the German humour.
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Thanks to everyone who added information here; didn’t realize England has its own version of these new-but-made-to-look-old pubs, some more genuinely handcrafted than others. Just for fun, here’s a photo of a place in Plymouth, Michigan, called Sean O’Callaghan’s, that I go to sometimes. One of these factory-made places, but pretty tastefully done I thought, as these places go:
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Yes, definitely 1895.
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Mark,
When I started using pubs in the early 1970s “made-to-look-old” in the lounge of urban pubs meant red flock wallpaper as “Victorian” and older than that in country pubs meant plastic beams – but both were so obviously false that we either laughed or took no notice.
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Glad you got some cracking ale. That Spoons must have someone committed to caring for the cask. The north is east is full of wonderful parks that were a product of municipal thinking and still much enjoyed.
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I guess if you can’t sell at least 30 to 40 pints daily of a good local beer for £1.99 in the busiest pub in town (and sometimes only real ale outlet you may as well get out of cask altogether.
The North Eastern benefactors left a great legacy. Saltwell Park in Gateshead is a gem.
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“That Spoons must have someone committed to caring for the cask” – now there’s an idea that Tim might consider extending across his empire, but it would probably cost too much.
Real Ale really does seem to be in decline away from the south east. Tim’s venues can apparently quite easily get the GBG in the north east and in Wales. His Aberystwyth one, despite all we hear of it, is in and that’s one of only seven of the towns pubs I intend going to next week while ten or so years ago it would have been about seventeen. I remember when our friends in Wolverhampton had six Proper Pubs in Aberystwyth but now its none except a new build family dining pub behind the railway station.
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I’m tempted to join you in Aberystwyth Spoons next week to test the quality, Paul.
I’ve found the North East ones deserve their places, Scotland generally don’t, England is variable these days.
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Martin,
My current plan is Tim’s Hen Orsaf at 11.20am next Tuesday for half an hour before the train to the Hafod Hotel and then from 3.15pm onwards the Lord Beeching, Scholars, White Horse, Glengower, Ship and Castle and possibly Starling Cloud.
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I love spoons when the beer is good and social mix even better…not many boozers can match it on form
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