STRANDED

October 2026. The Strand. London.

Two hours between trains in London was enough for a couple of ticks in Aldgate and Charing Cross, but really life these days is more about the smiling child on the Circle Line than the cask in Charing Cross.

Note the local artwork depicting the chopping down of trees in 1294 to produce that year’s Good Beer Guide, the largest produced until GBG27.

Talking of Beer Guides, our next tick takes us past Coutts, where BRAPA keeps funds saved since his 5th birthday ahead of an assault on completion of the GBG in ’29 (2129).

I thought you might need to be a Coutts client to afford a beer in The Stranded (note the definitive article, like The Jam),

but despite the elegant interior within the listed West Strand,

the beer prices don’t look that bad to me ?

Quite why you’d come to a place specialising in authentic Budvar and have the ubiquitous Tim Taylor I don’t know, and I thought the Dark Mild was long gone,

but I feel an obligation to bring you reports on all the sub-£5 London cask I keep encountering.

Despite the lacings (top) this was a tad watery, but what do you expect at 3.4% ?

It’s a lovely setting for late night drinking, but sadly empty at noon, which at least meant I could take photos of the Gents to my heart’s content.

With a nod to Roxy Music in that blog title you might have been hoping for the cover of their 3rd album, but we don’t have filth like that on this blog, oh no.

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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.

18 thoughts on “STRANDED”

  1. The definitive article has always been overused thereabouts, “STRAND” commonly referred to as “The Strand”.
    (The) Landlord was drinking well when I used (the) Coal Hole six months ago today for the first time in over fifty years.

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      1. Yes Martin, and their ‘Avalon’ has plagued Glastonbury with a massive annual music festival. A very influential band.
        This has reminded me that when ASDA, understood to be an acronym of Associated Dairies, open their first big shop ( neither ‘super’ nor a ‘market’ ) in the Midlands everyone within ten miles of Bloxwich referred to it as “The ASDA” and many still do.

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      2. Excellent stuff Paul.

        Some people refer to Tesco as Tesco’s…

        I remember when The Bath Festival transrees-moggrified into Glastonbury…

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      3. And on Roxy, Have you ever met Roxy Beaujolais of the Seven Stars in Carey Street just behind (the) Strand ?
        She’s quite a character and loves cats as much as our late Peter did.

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      5. Yes Etu,
        I met a Staffie in Stafford’s Metropolitan Bar last Saturday, then the next day its owner recognised me waiting for the Lichfield bus.
        There’s plenty of Staffies round here.

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  4. When we had a business in Walsall the locals referred to their supermarket as Asda’s.
    Ah, the Coal Hole; when my bosses at Taylor Walker decided that the free trade sales director had run his course, the tenancy of the Coal Hole was part of his departure “package”.

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  5. Stranded was the most polished and confident of Roxy Music’s albums, in my opinion. I can’t remember when I last played it, as it’s one of those albums that I can play in my head. I’m going to have to dig it out and give it a listen – see if there are any surprises.

    Released in 1973, the album and it’s magnificent sleeve art would have been way over your head, young Martin. Maybe you’re old enough to appreciate it 53 years later.

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    2. SH,
      During 1973 “Do The Strand” meant Charrington’s IPA in the George, Bass in Yates’s Wine Lodge and Youngs in Sinpsons-in-the-Strand.
      I was a few yards off the previous year in the Princess of Wales, Villiers Street with my Charrington’s IPA and first ever nearly foot long sausage roll (12p). It’s odd what one remembers from being a seventeen year old. The Ship and Shovell then was keg Trumans.

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      1. Food, particularly food you didn’t see much, is often a teenage memory. I recall getting to go on a trip to A Midsummer’s Night Dream in Regent Park at 16 with the school English Literature “O” Level group and my only memory being the beef burger (25p, a fortune in 1981).

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      2. Yes Martin. Coincidently I did a Midsummer’s Night Dream for English Literature “O” Level precisely ten years earlier but only dreamt of going to see the play.

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