Someone asked me today if I intended to tick the new Good Beer Guide. I said “Yes” straight away (Mrs RM wasn’t there) but I’m not sure using GBG23 to guide my travel is quite the same as being determined to finish it again.
For a start, if you’re aiming to complete the Guide you can’t afford to be diverting your efforts (and weekly units) to unprofessional activities like beer festivals or pre-emptive ticks or revisits to old favourites.
And I’ve been too easily led astray by Cambridge pubs on my visits home.
In late September I popped to see the Cam’s riverside bar in its final week of operation.
Other Syde opened up their bar in the space outside the Technology Museum in 2019, Cambridge’s first biergarten,
and Mrs RM always nagged me to take here there on those endless summer days that are accompanied by a run on the ice cream.
A rather “tighter” keg beer selection than when Thirsty ran it originally,
but the Brewboard Ripchord is at least local (a mile or so down the A10), and is a good example of your 2022 grapefruit craft.
£6 your pint, Sir. A price which ensures most folk drinking on the layered seating running down to the Cam are sticking with Vedett.
A nice pint, as long as Table 37 isn’t reserved, and if your favourite banter is students discussing pub quizzes on Mill Road and microscope then you’d be in your element.
While I was there I saw the place was closing at the end of the month, always a shame, but tonight I see that another Cambridge brewery, Calverleys, are taking it on. Hopefully that’s the way things will go as we head into 2023.
Talking of commercial opportunities, wouldn’t those boating clubs make great micro pubs ?
retiredmartin 
Would the new GBG take you to many places you have not previously visited?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good question, Dave.
I still haven’t finished the cross-checking of Wales and Scotland, but I think that a return to Scilly (St Mary’s this time) would be the highlight. Quite a few places I haven’t been to for 20 years or so, and want to explore more e.g. Hillingdon in London, Prestwich in Manchester, some remote bits of Lincolnshire, but otherwise not really. I visited Shadwell in east London today, that was good.
Expect a post on that subject.
LikeLike
Any new heroic forms of travel required? Jet packs or such?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Any travel into the bit of Lincolnshire between Lincoln, Grantham and Skegness is heroic.
LikeLike
HI Martin did you visit the Turner Old Star in Wapping during your E1 excursion?
Much more characterful than the Captain Kidd or Town of Ramsgate
I am hoping you took photos of the exteriors of the Old Rose and Dean Swift
That would be derelict pub porn of the first order
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Alan, I visited the Turner Old Star in 2015, very early blog !
https://retiredmartin.com/2015/10/25/a-saturday-in-e1/
I was only in E1 for 45 minutes before crossing into New Cross, but no doubt I’ll be back soon enough.
LikeLike
That would be the Atlantic Inn in HughTown? Excellent pub, loved it when we were there in the Spring
LikeLiked by 1 person
Good to hear, look forward to that one, John.
By the way, how many GBG pubs have you done ?
LikeLike
No idea, I don’t tick ’em. Just like a good pub and a good pint. Did a lot of brewery “passports” back in the day – Youngs, Fullers, Gales, King & Barnes, Harvey’s, Ridleys, Rayments.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You need to tick, John. Start with all the Rayments pubs.
LikeLike
You’re doing it so I don’t have to! Besides, I’m 78 so not taking on many new challenges.
Did the Rayments pubs just before Greene King closed the brewery.
LikeLiked by 1 person
78 ? Happy birthday, John.
You don’t look a day over 58.
LikeLike
There was quite a lot of Rayments livery about when I was visiting the Greene King pubs around Essex, but never drank it.
LikeLike
Closed in 1987. You were too young to drink then.
LikeLiked by 1 person