retiredmartin

One of my venues for catching up with ex-colleagues is the small Staffordshire town of Kinver.  It’s only a few miles from the Black Country towns of Wolverhampton and Dudley, with the affluence of the many attractive villages leading out to the Shropshire hills. Kinver is worth a visit for its wonderful National Trust caves, and… Continue reading KINVER

  I’m just back from my fourth End of the Road Festival, where I’ve seen more than 40 artists across all musical genres and with only the fact they make music in 2015 in common. I must have heard nearly 300 songs and only 2 cover versions (bizarrely Johnny B Good and Atmosphere). Unfashionably, I… Continue reading MODERN MUSIC IS RUBBISH

Tomorrow I’m off to End of the Road, a smallish music festival near Salisbury (just below the Sixpenny Hadley Brewery which I hope to visit at last.  This annual festival is the only one I visit, and is usually one of the year’s highlights. This will be the first year I’m going on my own (boys… Continue reading END OF THE ROAD

  I’ve been visiting a few of the pubs new to the Beer Guide on a trip to Bristol. I’m more convinced than ever that beer quality is being sacrificed in the name of choice and variety, and that this will have bad consequences for real ale in the long run. Firstly, Bristol is an… Continue reading QUALITY v QUANTITY IN BRISTOL

  Coventry is one of those cities, like Stoke, that the rest of the UK seem to miss the merits of. I must visit Cov twice a year, though it’s 15 years since I last saw football there. I’m spending a day there now with Mrs RM, waiting for our boys to exhaust their brains… Continue reading COV

  My favourite day of the year is the day the new Beer Guide arrives.  That may be sad but I really enjoy looking through a new guide to see the annual changes and the trends they reflect. The 2016 Guide arrived today quite a bit earlier than usual.  It’s officially launched in mid September… Continue reading GOOD BEER GUIDE 2016

Yesterday I made an early morning trip to Hazel Grove using a slight variation on one of my many routes (A1/M62 and A14/M1/A50 are least disliked). I don’t use SatNav, but a quick look at Google Maps showed that because of A1 delays a trip from Elkesley to Bolsover, and then through the Peak, would… Continue reading THE DUKERIES

To celebrate City’s latest win at Everton, last night I walked to one of Cambridge’s newest pub gems, though by no means a new pub. The Blue Moon is the latest venture by Cambridge real ale legends Terri and Jethro, who also run the famed Cambridge Blue round the corner, and an excellent village pub in nearby… Continue reading BLUE MOON

  While the main point of retiring was to explore, I’d also been looking forward to a few lunchtime pints in Cambridge pubs, with loads of Dickens loaded on Kindle to finally read. In reality I’ve only spent a half-dozen or so lunchtimes in town, but today I decided to see how our city centre… Continue reading A LUNCHTIME DRINK