A two-parter today. Curb your enthusiasm.
Our next programme takes us back to that golden year of 1964, when retiredmartin was given to the world (22 December, make a note).
The Amateur Cup was the FA Cup for teams paid in legs of lambs and fags rather than cash money.
Supporters of amateur teams had pencil moustaches and drank Bovril rather than Budweiser.
By law only teams from Durham and London were allowed to win the competition.
Even Bishop Auckland and neighbouring Crook Town were getting bored of winning the Cup by 1964. Perhaps it should have been moved to a ground half-way like Retford Town or Maltby.
In Part 2 I’ll bring you match highlights and tell you who won (no spoilers), but “let’s take a look at Crook”, as their furloughed Tourist Ambassador might say.
Easy to dismiss Crook as just another mining Durham mining town (10,019 souls) but it punches above its weight in terms of pubs, life and landscape.
On two trips it seemed as if the whole town was out on the, er, town on a Friday night, giving the pubs the sort of all-ages appeal you don’t get in Petersfield or Potton.
And the Spoons exemplified that. As always, if you haven’t got photos yourself, steal from BRAPA.
Some of BRAPA’s best drunken work here.
“Women does it look like the face of someone who could be …..” What does that even mean?? ”
Fantastic beer, too. Simon said so, and so do I. Probably Double Maxim.
Just up the road in Hamilton Row (or possibly Waterhouses, or Esh Winning), the gloriously “unimproved“ Black Horse was BBB and cob heaven.
Or is it a bap ? Or a roll ?
Inside, I was knocked off my feet by a toddler on a scooter, and immediately asked for a long range forecast at the bar. I sort of love what’s essentially an extended family gathering in a pub,
As I left and said “Thanks”, I genuinely couldn’t decipher whether they shouted “Thank’yer” or “banker” after me. I hoped it was a bit of both.
In Part 2, the many joys of Enfield. Which gives me a day to think of some.
How many new sports leagues would have a Latin motto? “the champions did not even receive a trophy or medals; the league motto was honor sufficit.”
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Which league’s motto is that, Tiddlywinks ?
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Isthmian! A league I had never heard about. Don’t make me translate it.
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It’s like Spartan but they have muskets not swords.
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Loved the line “Some of BRAPA’s best drunken work here.” Surely there is a code among the GBG tickers, that the occasional swiping of one another’s blog photos is not only allowed but encouraged. (“Okay, all right, up to a certain POINT,” I can hear Simon interjecting.)
The name “Santa’s Soot” sounds like a euphemism for something really awful, and I reckon the brewery took that fully into consideration when finalizing the name. “Think of all the inappropriate jokes punters will make, it’ll be fantastic!”
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Simon was delighted.
His photos actually look better on my blog than they did on his, so I’m doing the world a service bringing you his marvellous doses of pub life.
I missed “Santa’s Soot”. Sounds like a Frank Zappa Christmas b side, and not in a good way 😉
Novelty beers are uniformly dreadful, though Castle Eden had a Christmas beer spiced with Frankincense in 95 that was excellent.
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“Typical slightly disheveled Durham boozer” with dreadfully ugly replacement windows.
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It is, but I quite like that. There was a pub in central Durham City in mid 2000s excluded from the GBG for being too scruffy !
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That’s Mike Atherton (ex England cricket captain) on the left isn’t it? Surely.
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Or his Dad 😉
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