PRIDE DRINKING WELL ON THE (DELAYED) BIG RETIRED MARTIN 60th BIRTHDAY TRIP TO UXBRIDGE.

February 2025. Uxbridge.

You’ll remember the trauma of my significant birthday (22 December, but you knew that), as plans to mark the day with a fancy trip to Uxbridge were scuppered by my mum, bless her, staging a sit down protest.

Last Wednesday I finally took that pilgrimage to the end of the Metropolitan line.

I’m betting not many of you have willingly been to Uxbridge. Even Alexander de Pfeffel Johnson, who was MP here for 8 years.

Only a man at the end of a long spiritual journey can imagine the joy of finally making it to the edge of West London, greeted by a giant underground station and a (closed) chocolate kiosk.

Nice coat of arms, mind.

Look, I’d have loved to have spent an hour doing all the Trip Advisor recommendations for UB8,

but it’s a plain little market town with a quaint university and a canal running through it.

But I can forgive anywhere that names its bistro after me.

It looks Old Skool, and the menu is a real throwback.

Had it been 22 December (my actual birthday) I’d have been tempted, but today I press on to the General Eliott, a first new GBG pub here in an eternity.

It’s a homely canalside pub, but though all tables have a printed menu (Fish & Chips £15.95) it’s 50/50 diners/boozers, and frankly sometimes a cosy dining pub with roaring fire works for me.

“Dance on the table” ? Sounds like the sort of thing BRAPA does after six pints.

Talking of BRAPA…

It’s not a great pub, but unlike Silly Simon I picked Pride, which was drinking well, a cool and chewy 3.5.

It’s £5.20, and I feel guilty that I hand over a tenner rather than a fiver and then scramble round looking for coppers. The barmaid really couldn’t care less about giving me £4.80 back in coins.

Two ladies talk about weight loss, two blokes show each other spreadsheets on laptops, the soundtrack is firmly stuck in about 2002.

I gaze longingly at a plate of cheese and biscuits on the bar.

BRAPA would have helped himself and asked permission later, wouldn’t he ?

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

14 thoughts on “PRIDE DRINKING WELL ON THE (DELAYED) BIG RETIRED MARTIN 60th BIRTHDAY TRIP TO UXBRIDGE.”

  2. Rumpole of the Bailey described a trip out to west London to appear at Uxbridge Magistrates Court as akin to visiting one of the circles of Hell. I’m sure he would have stopped at that kiosk in the Underground station for some cigars before facing the ordeal.

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  3. I always thought Chesham was the proper “end of the Metropolitan line”.
    Maybe that’s where I should go for my next significant birthday.

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      1. I think Aldgate is the London end.
        Having spent thirty-four nights there from 1973 to 2008 I’m sure Buckinghamshire is a real place.

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      2. It may be real but I doubt it’s “Proper” any more, Paul ! Actually I recall some wonderfully unspoilt Brakspear houses (single pump) in the Chilterns. That 3.4% Brakspear was a great pint.

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      3. All my time in Buckinghamshire was sadly spent well north of the Chiltern Hills.
        Back to birthday trips, this lunchtime we took my wife’s middle brother to the Bull and Bladder, incredibly his first time there in two-thirds of a century living within several miles of it.

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      5. Er, probably less pubs in a year than you’d do in a day but it wouldn’t do for us to be the same as they say. But he enjoyed his pint of Bathams Best Bitter, faggots, chips and peas though.

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      7. Martin,
        There is the Banks’s Brewery in Wolverhampton till towards the end of the year so Thursday 3rd April will be in good time before the Burton brewed Banks’s.
        I should be able to check the proper pubs in the next few weeks.

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      8. Thanks Paul. I was getting a bit confused by references elsewhere to the last Banks’s Mild in Wolves the other week.

        It would be good to have some Banks’s on home ground. I mean, what does Burton know about brewing ?

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      9. Yes, Banks’s Mild and Sunbeam were two of eight cask beers discontinued several weeks ago but the Amber Bitter continues and I expect will do in Burton.

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