retiredmartin

Your contractually obligated July highlights package is a bit of a fraud.

Look at this travel map,

my busiest month since I completed the Guide in September 2022 (pretty much when parents health started a steep decline).

You’ll notice trips to Hampshire, Newport Pagnell, Liverpool and Edinburgh still to write up, including one of the most extraordinary pubs I’d never been to. Can you guess ?

Seventy-four (74) different pubs in July, a bumper month, almost BRAPA-esque.

Pub of the Month was the Eight Bells in Alton last week, gloriously unchanged since my last visit 20 years ago.

Appropriately, your model Nick from Oxford is wearing a Banks’s Unspoilt by Progress Tee, available at £35 + P & P from my online shop.

Beer quality was a bit variable, blame it on the heat but in truth pubs were a bit too quiet for comfort. So Beer of the Month is a surprise.

Tim Taylor Landlord in a Waterbeach pub, but NOT the Sun. World domination awaits. I must head back to Keighley.

Another highlight was a visit to the home of the Bay City Rollers, the 70s pop fan equivalent of a trip to Mecca or Lourdes.

My favourite was Derek, I had aspirations to become a drummer till I read about Keith Moon.

Best culture came in Hampshire, where Alton’s social history museum revealed a glorious breweriana section.

Rumours that Thornbridge are shortly to launch a barrel-aged version of Carling Black Label remained unconfirmed.

I had a life-changing Chinese squid in Cockerton, but the culinary centrepiece was curry in Clydebank,

which is quite enough alliteration for now.

August brings a new football season; will City achieve the 40 points needed to stay up ?

Plus my annual trip to hear teenage punksters and folkies in a field on Cranborne Chase.

And this year, a visit on Wednesday to the CAMRA (they don’t like you mentioning that bit) Great British Beer Festival in its bucolic new home in Brum.

Talking of CAMRA, it’s not too long till this is released.

I remember the years when that was the most important day of the year.