Greetings from the cheap Travelodge in Brighton, where I’ve just completed the East Sussex GBG chapter in fine style. But I’m still not paying £4 for internet, so this is a short post. You left me at the top of Bootle, in need of a comfort break and a flat white. Ah, here’s an attractive… Continue reading STANLEY ROAD
Author: 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.
A BOOTLE TOOTLE
That Cambridge diversion was particularly inadvisable, as I was off to “Bootiful Bootle” the next day (yours for a quid, that one). There’d been a particularly unsavoury joke about Bootle accommodation doing the rounds over the weekend, but let me be the living proof that you can survive, and indeed enjoy, this great Lancashire (never… Continue reading A BOOTLE TOOTLE
CAMBRIDGE TIPS
You left me one pint of 6% Green Devil down, and Brighton one-up on Derby, to the joy of no-one. Possibly not even Brighton. It’s a good job I know the Chesterton area of Cambridge better than anyone semi-alive, having had my first balanced ledger and doner kebab there. I literally bumped into Leon and… Continue reading CAMBRIDGE TIPS
A TOLLY FOLLY
Increasingly I’m getting away on Sunday nights, when the A14 is passable and hotels are half the Friday rates, but you can still expect 1 in 3 of the new GBG entries to be open. So that means I’m spending more Saturdays close to Cambridge, tidying up blogs and cupboards. Feel my pain. Last Saturday… Continue reading A TOLLY FOLLY
DEXY’S AFTERNOON JOGGERS
On the way back from Rye with Paul we popped in two Sussex stragglers that reminded us how inconsistent “service” is in pubs these days. Three Legs beers were on the bar at the Ypres Castle, but you know how I love a brewery tap on an industrial estate. Their Tap is only open… Continue reading DEXY’S AFTERNOON JOGGERS
HIGH IN RYE
This Pub Taxi Business is becoming addictive. Two days after dropping BRAPA in the middle of nowhere (aka Dorset), I popped down south again to take Paul Bailey to see Jeff Bell’s new home in Rye, something I promised on a drunken evening of Tonbridge karaoke last Easter (photos lost, I hope). Rye is the… Continue reading HIGH IN RYE
CHEESE NIGHT IN CRANBORNE
Here we go then, the final stretch of Dorset 2018. Day 5 for BRAPA, Day 3 for retiredmartin. The most anticipated tick of the day, the brewery tap on a converted stables. Like a micro pub, but with homebrew ! What’s not to like ! The WiFi ran out on entering the mythical city of… Continue reading CHEESE NIGHT IN CRANBORNE
SIXPENNY BITS
Where were we ? Simon four pints up/down, with just the bewildering Sixpenny Sods to make his half dozen and reach thirty pubs for the trip. #Legend. Amazingly, Si didn’t ask me to stop as we zig-zagged our way north of the End of the Road site into the heart of Cranborne Chase. Zig… Continue reading SIXPENNY BITS
SHAFTESBURY – GOLDEN PUBS ON GOLD HILL
Two pints down for Si, and a dead pub in the bag, with no discernible alteration in the BRAPA mood. Child Okeford was five minutes up the road, noticeably hillier as we got into Cranborne Chase territory. Si became animated as we drove right through the village without spying the Saxon Inn, which I assured… Continue reading SHAFTESBURY – GOLDEN PUBS ON GOLD HILL
SQUEALERS IN STOURPAINE
Next stop, dunno. Si scoured his GBG, hideously desecrated with green marker, for pubs open now but shutting in the afternoon. We bypassed the aptly named Blandford Forum, a real ale desert, on the way to Spetisbury. I had no recollection whatsoever of the Woodpecker, and it hardly mattered as we’d missed it by… Continue reading SQUEALERS IN STOURPAINE
retiredmartin 