retiredmartin

July 2025. Alton. Hampshire.

The Beer & Pubs Forum offer Old Codger-approved “pub crawls”, but once the invite gets extended to CAMRA Discourse members the ante is upped. Whatever an ante is.

It becomes a “curated pub exploration”, participants are required to sign an NDA, and strict timetables with new CAMRA logo are produced on which must be adhered to, on pain of excommunication.

Those timetables give no time for culture, so after checking in (10am !!!) at my deluxe £39 Alton hotel,

I set out to do the two museums cruelly denied me by Monday opening when I brought the in-laws here a year ago.

But first…Eggs Benny at dill, next to and linked to the Ten Tup Tap.

It’s very important that us Boomers show Gen Z what luxuries they’re having to forego in order to survive in 2025, and dill (ironic lower case, controversial lack of apostrophe) delivers a classic dollop of smashed avo on sourdough.

More importantly, their staff are quite wonderful and we riff on the Victoria Wood two soups sketch. Three generations of women come in, the youngest explaining flat whites to the eldest, it’s all charming.

As is Alton, for the most part,

though you wouldn’t necessarily think “posh Hampshire market town, home of Jane Austen” walking the High Street.

An hour before CAMRA-approved noon kick-off (morning drinking is for reprobates and Life members) means the Curtis Museum, a classic exhibition of social history,

a place where you can find out the grisly origin of “Sweet F*** A**“.

I don’t think the Beatles were formed here, but I do know Alton’s brewing reputation , commemorated with exhibits of all your favourite beers.

At the front desk the volunteers noted my Bass T-shirt (later, later) and directed me to follow the smell of hops, assuming incorrectly I knew what hops are.

An essential half hour visit for tourists, beery or otherwise, as is the Allen Art Gallery just around the corner.

The best ceramics display outside the Potteries,

a gorgeous garden,

and absolutely no pub stuff.

Apart from this.