retiredmartin

June 2025. Byker.

An immutable rule of this blog is that it must always have 100 pubs in the Top 100 pubs. And with the unfortunate deletion of Sheffield’s Christmas Alpine Bar (it melted) it becomes imperative I fill that vacancy with all haste.

And why not the Cumberland, Ouseburn’s GBG perennial, the music led pub at the top of the valley,

seemingly unchanged in decades. Newcastle’s equivalent of Sheffield’s Fat Cat, perhaps.

After a run of brewery taps that wasn’t to everyone’s taste, the Cumberland did the trick.

Bench seating (sadly too hot to sit inside),

a lovely cask range (why all the Pravha glasses, Newcastle ?),

and that reassuring vertical queue to the bar.

Mrs RM nabbed four seats at the end of the trestle table, the two at the other end took the hint and left, I moved from halves to pints with a gorgeous Stewart Stout that defied the heat (NBSS 3.5).

I spent ages trying to work out why there was glass in Jane’s beer,

before working out it was a Vault City Radler. She has shares in Vault City, I reckon.

“Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations” said the stone.

As so often the stone was right.