30th January 2023.
Three nights in Waterbeach, only one (1) Chung Hwa takeaway, but now time to leave Mum and Dad to enjoy some peace and head off down to Cardiff for the Amber Arcades gig. Mrs RM wanted to come with me but I made her stay in Sheffield while the water meter was installed*.
At last, some proper ticking ! (Not that I’m doing GBG23). A quick look at my GBG23 wants list made it fairly obvious I needed a night in Bristol,
and three hours later I was parked up in Portwall Lane long stay, facing St Mary Redcliffe. I always park here, as much for the view of St Mary,
as the ease of getting of the M32 to Portwall. And I got the last space.
Astonishingly, Bristol Council require you to pay in coins if you use cash, so my little purse containing pound coins for pubs was royally decimated by the time I’d popped fifteen quid in. Thieves.
Anyway, five pubs, allegedly ALL open on a Monday. “It’s a miracle !” as Warden Norton would say.
Of course, the closest one (Golden Guinea) didn’t open till 4pm (not even a micro), so I start at the famous one I’ve never been in, stopping only to read something inspirational about trees.
The Llandoger Trow on crafty King Street is surely the most famous pub in Bristol after the big Spoons, but us beery types never went in it because it’s a Brewer’s Fayre or something, attached to one of the 27 Premier Inns in the city.
So how has it suddenly made the GBG ?
I consulted Boak & Bailey’s peerless guide to the city’s pubs, but it’s hard to read when you’re walking.
So I asked the bloke drinking a pint at the table next to the bar.
“Did this used to be a Brewer’s Fayre ?”
It did, and now it’s owned by the folk who run the Euston Tap (but NOT the Sheffield Tap, which always confuses me).
Somehow the blackboard gives away the provenance.
From a good mix of beers the nice chap even recommended the Bristol Beer Factory Milk Stout, which was a cool, rich NBSS 3.5+ I perched on the chap’s high table while I nipped round taking photos.
I guess, like in the Trip to Jerusalem, every tourist does that.
Actually, there weren’t many tourists at 14:30 on a Monday, half a dozen punters at most, but that’s Mondays for you.
A lovely place with a great barman, and I left with a top tip for a Bristol pre-emptive that really surprised me.
Thanks, whoever you were. You’ll recognise your knee (above).
*You don’t get this level of detail on the beer blogs/
retiredmartin 
Nice to see the Llandoger open again. It may have been a Brewer’s Fayre but back in the day it was a Berni Inn. When I was a student, I used to go to jazz nights at the Old Duke across the street but get my beer from the Llandoger because the beer in the Duke was rubbish. Later, I found out that the landlord of the Duke did the same thing.
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I barely remember Berni, Bill, may have been one in Cambridge we visited once. Boak & Bailey’s “20th Century Pub” has an excellent section on the dining pub.
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Berni Inns were expensive and Watneys so I can’t comment on them.
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Stafford Mudgie, I never thought Berni Inns were that pricey; you used to be able to get a three course meal for about a tenner. And the Llandoger had Theakston’s.
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But a tenner would have bought you a house in Merthyr Tydfil in 1971, or so I always read.
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Bill,
Yes, a tenner.
In 1974 I worked “a 40 hour week, the rates of pay being £22.00 for 40 hours” ( plus an ‘allowance’ of two pints of Mild a day ) and I needed more than two meals a week – and still do.
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Yes, my understanding is that it was originally a Berni Inn, but it may have become a Brewer’s Fayre later. It was a GBG stalwart in the early days, but it had probably fallen off the radar by the time you began ticking.
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Presumably when Whitbread bought it and then used for meals for their Premier Inn custom.
It’s a very familiar name.
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Yes, Aldo and Frank Berni sold the chain to Grand Metropolitan (Watneys) for £14.5 million in 1970 and it was sold to Whitbread in 1995. It’s just a brand now.
Frank Berni died 10 July 2000, aged 96, in Bristol.
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Stafford Mudgie, I don’t go back that far, I was thinking of the mid to late 80s.
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Bill,
During the mid to late ’80s, about thirty-five years ago, I was earning £4.30 an hour gross so would probably have thought that a tenner for a meal was expensive. I very very rarely ate out from 1979 to 1992 while I was paying off a mortgage.
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You can get a meal for a tenner with a pint in a pub chain in 2023. Forget the name.
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Maybe, but they were properly cooked meals and full pints in salubrious pubs that didn’t need vouchers back in the 1970s and ’80s.
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We’ve had a water meter for ages. I’m sure you’ll notice a difference in your water bill once you start being metered, especially now that your two boys have left home.
Our 30-something lad, likes to positively drown himself in the shower each morning, using far more water than Mrs PBT’s and I combined. He creates more washing than the pair of us as well, bless him!
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Oh yes ! The shower ! 20 minutes for Matthew alone. At least he smelt lovely.
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Never mind the water that’s about a quid in electricity.
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We had a new water meter early last year and haven’t had a bill since so it’s better than I could have expected.
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When I bought my little stone cottage in West Yorks twenty-odd years ago I turned off a stopcock to see if it was the one for the whole house – and it was.
I heard some animated chat outside, and so I went out to join the pow-wow, which turned out to be about why the water for the four adjoining cottages might have gone off.
I’ve run in new, separate supplies for me and my neighbours, but at least I don’t get pestered to install a water meter.
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Etu, not if your water comes directly from the hot water cylinder, and is heated by gas. It still accounts for a large chunk of your total energy bill, though. 🤔
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Don’t get technical with me !
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Paul, Mrs. E and I have three showers between us, two as you describe, and one electric. The latter gets most use, as it is in the best bathroom and you don’t have to wait long for it to run through warm.
It’s stuff like this that keeps the internet alive.
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As I told Etu when (spoiler) we met on Tuesday night, it’s that level of detail this and Paul’s blog thrives on.
Of course, Paul would have told me the makes.
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You waited to get a water meter until after Simon visited Sheffield?
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