As you’ll know, all the best bits of Newcastle are actually in Seaton Sluice. But Gateshead has its attractions too, including some of the darkest, scariest roads outside of Harare (but better pub windows). I was too early to make the BALTIC cutting-edge Christmas ceramics workshop, so had to make do with a couple of new… Continue reading GATESHEAD’S PUB BUSKERS
KNOTTINGLEY KICKS BACK
One of the few downsides of the improvements to the A1 (Newcastle in 3hrs 30) is that it’s much harder to turn-off to little Knottingley these days. That’s meant that our custom for West Yorkshire’s finest pizza takeaway has rather dried up. Dario’s is still hanging on in the fairly grim little arcade along the… Continue reading KNOTTINGLEY KICKS BACK
NEWCASTLE COMPLETE
Another new batch of Beer Guide pubs in Newcastle, which only needs to add a fast hovercraft service to Bergen and a Vietnamese café or two to get in the same league as Manchester. Last year was all about a clutch of new Uber-Craft places, including two microbrew places lumped into a confusing new “Quayside”… Continue reading NEWCASTLE COMPLETE
JULIA JACKLIN & PUB CATS IN THE OUSEBURN VALLEY
Among plenty of reasons to visit Newcastle, I count some of our best live music venues, craftiest (?) pubs and proper graffiti art. The Free Trade has two of those qualities, and a legendary free jukebox. Much more importantly, it also has a quite wonderful pub cat, clearly a favourite of the FT’s resident bog artists. I hadn’t been… Continue reading JULIA JACKLIN & PUB CATS IN THE OUSEBURN VALLEY
SUNDERLAND GETS UP A HEAD OF STEAM
Mrs RM let me visit Tyne & Wear on my own, even before she’d seen my punishing walking itinerary. Her loss. I didn’t get to Sunderland last year, the first season in a while I hadn’t got a ticket for City’s trip to the Stadium of Light. I was a bit amazed to see five new… Continue reading SUNDERLAND GETS UP A HEAD OF STEAM
A JARROW GEM
My laptop just expired on me so I’m on my way back home to get Mrs RM to tell me off for breaking it. So a very quick post on my mobile phone so Dave and Dick don’t think Im dead. Deaf, yes. I’ve been in Newcastle finishing GBG entries for Tyne and Wear, and… Continue reading A JARROW GEM
NO-GO CAMDEN ?
I’m unimpressed by media alarmists (that’s all of them) telling old folk that our town centres are no-go areas and they should stay at home on a Saturday watching “Strictly” with a bottle of imported booze. They should get down the pub and watch English eccentrics with a pint of English beer. In the last year I’ve… Continue reading NO-GO CAMDEN ?
PEDIGREE & A COB IN SAWLEY
My Quiz question for Castle Donington was, of course, Nikita Khrushchev, who opened the power station at short notice when “H” from Steps became unavailable. Just over the border in Derbyshire is the large canalside village of Sawley, where no doubt Nikita stopped for a cob and pint of Pedigree back in 1956, though those records have… Continue reading PEDIGREE & A COB IN SAWLEY
MANIFOLD CONTRASTS
Nowadays children at Cottenham Village College get to go to China, Berlin and Peterborough for their expensive research trips into modern beer production. Back in ’78 it was Ilam Hall or nothing. I remember the highlight was being allowed to stay up to watch the Home International highlights with teachers well beyond 10pm. I presume it’s… Continue reading MANIFOLD CONTRASTS
BUXTON ALE STOP
You’ve probably deduced by now that I don’t jump for joy at the prospect of even more micropubs in the Beer Guide. Despite decent beer quality, keen pricing and plenty of banter, they rarely produce the variety of custom, and atmosphere, of a great English pub. And many of them look exactly the same. Buxton’s Ale Stop is… Continue reading BUXTON ALE STOP
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