retiredmartin

Two (or three ?) Swindon ticks down, and a third in the New Town as I took the scenic route down the hill past the Roaring Donkey.

My big regret about Swindon is the total absence of Arkells in the GBG, perhaps the least highly-regarded of all traditional brewers apart from that lot in the Cotswolds.

20 minutes take you from ivy and micros to retail parks and desert parlours.

Note the charming rhyme about a character called Simon who captures the stars.

“And Simon was ever so glad” that his GBG arrived before retiredmartin.

The New Town is the bit built for the railways, I guess. It’s pedestrian, in every sense, but not without charm.

The GBG entries I remember round here are a Yates’s and 2 Spoons, which is the sort of Guide offer you just don’t get in York or Sheffield.

As always in UK towns, the tip is “LOOK UP !”.

But not for too long or you’ll bump into street clutter outside the Wyvern Tavern, our GBG target.

You know, it looked terribly familiar. Big pillars, sports screens, pool tables, gin bottles.

And just now, writing this, I realise it WAS that Yates’s run by an enthusiastic manager nearly a decade ago, so in theory this WAS a revisit.

But so what ? Only my liver will complain, and the Arbor was really gorgeous, cool and crisp (NBSS 3.5).

You’ll see duller beer line-up than that in Bristol’s King Street, but in Swindon you get current pop music too !

And “She Moves In Her Own Way”. But you can’t have everything.