February 2025. York.
Last musings from our mini break in York, which proved the UK tourist industry is in rude health in 2025, folk desperate to bask in our tropical temperatures and pay a tenner to see a load of reconstituted timber.
14th century Barley Hall was “rediscovered” in the 1980s by the York Architectural Society, which makes you wonder how it had been hiding in plain sight so long. Probably a Sam Smiths pub.
The highlight was the completely convincing “real fire made out of foam”,
and Mrs RM delightedly telling the lady at the till that I was so old I qualified for a concession.
York was just quiet enough to enjoy that Monday morning,
and our last pub of the mini break was ticking over but with a spare table but pounced on by Mrs RM.
Another classy Thornbridge conversion, amazingly predating COVID,
the star of the Market Cat was a cheery young barman who chatted for 5 minutes about Thornbridge, Sheffield and life in general. Young folk are great.
The Thornbridge Jaipur and Lord Marples were almost great, cool and tasty 3.5 stuff, but I missed Bad Kitty.
The big surprise was finding that the Market Cat isn’t, as thought, a small ground floor bar.
There’s two more levels, with great views over to the Shambles.
A late £15 two course Syrian lunch at Damastique on Goodramgate,
and a £2.50 Americano to finish at the York Tap.
And not a BRAPA in sight.
retiredmartin 
Don’t suppose you found tartan scarf up there?
Stu.
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Got a quid for it.
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“Damastique”? Thought it had a different name? Unless there are two Syrian restaurants on Goodramgate.
Assuming it’s the same place, we loved it.
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Think it used to be Bab Tooma, which came up on searches. Almost certainly the same. £15 lunch deal was great.
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I had a short break in York last year with Mrs. MPO. Loved drinking Jaipur in the top floor Market Cat. I think Jaipur is still a great beer, whatever anyone else says.
Cheers. Robin
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I agree, Robin.
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I like the 14th century building hiding in plain sight as a Sam Smiths pub. 🤔😄
Easily worth the admission price for this site of the equivalent of eight pints of Jaipur.
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Right (8) pints of Jaipur ! That’d buy Luton a new striker.
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Jaipur is rank.
But I agree with your sentiments on tourism and against the general media consensus that GB UK is finished.
It ain’t. We’ve just got to hold our breath for four years until we get rid of the socialists again for a decade or so.
Where I live businesses, trades and tourism are flourishing. But then again it’s not an area where 50% of everyone who has arrived in the last 10 years along with the rest of their family is permanently on benefits.
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Could only be the Prof with that welcome nurse of positivity !
We’ve got our American friends over from Minneapolis and they say England looks better than ever. Great pubs in Emsworth near Chichester today.
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‘Ere naaah. Labour voters are all foreign and there all unemployed on benefits and they all work in the public sector with gold-plated pensions and there all commies and revolutionaries like that Keir Starmer and there just another part of the liblabcon establishment and lazy foreigners who will not work come here and take our jobs and the world owes no one a living and if you put a red bicycle bell on a donkey then Labour voters would go mountain biking on it and they all wear their bike clips all day because their fathers and grandfathers wore theirs all day and they would just give in to these here balsamic fundamentalists and that ex-Oxford University Conservative Association President the BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson is just a leftie maahfpiece for them vote Reform. Er vote Tory. Er, ooh er
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Always keep your clips on. If you keep your clips clamped on, you’ll never be in the nude.
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Back to the Market Cat. With the cellar being on the top floor, what type of control valve is on the handpump to stop beer constantly flowing out of the tap?
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That sounds like a beer question, Stu.
I defer to the Pauls on beer.
I remember a ’50s Greene King pub in Cambridge (Snowcat) which had pipes upstairs. Can’t remember how that worked.
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I think the Snowcat and a pub in Liverpool simply used the equivalent of a keg tap rather than a handpump.
The weight of beer from one storey might not be enough to adversely affect the workings of a handpump.
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Yeah I’ve seen keg style taps used to dispense cask, presumably from gravity. In Ale & Antiques, Tankerton and Tapped in Leeds I think.
I had a box of homebrew on a counter top, attached to a handpump which was also attached to same counter. Just the height of a few inches forced beer through the tap.
Anyway, still good beer in the Market Cat.
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Stu,
“Keg style taps used to dispense cask” were commonplace fifty years ago, either acceptably with a freeflow electric pump or unacceptably fizzed up by top pressure carbon dioxide.
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Definitely good beer, and dispense method never entered my mind, Stu!
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