As a recent report revealed that sales of cask beer are down year-on-year, I spent an afternoon in York where it appeared to be as popular as ever, not least at the city's annual beer festival.... The spectacular and magnificent bulk of York Minster has been a constant presence in the city for hundreds of years, keeping a watch over its citizens and the many thousands of visitors that are drawn to the city every year. In its time so many of the significant events in the history of this country have come and gone; the War of the Roses, the English Civil War, the Great Fire of London, the Industrial Revolution, the first and second world wars. Guy Fawkes, who plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, was born in the city. There is so much history here, from the Romans who first established the settlement here as Eboracum in AD71, to the Vikings, to the Normans, to the railways, to the chocolate barons of Rowntree and Terrys that seemingly every turn of a corner in its ancient str...
I went to Manchester last week on a team day out from the Grayston Unity/Meandering Bear in Halifax and rather than traipsing around the usual suspects we mixed it up with one or two places I don't get to visit that often.... We normally have a team day out in September after the summer gigs at the Piece Hall in Halifax, which being very close to both bars, bring in a lot of extra business. And whilst I don't generally do as much as I used to during that period, I always get tasked with sorting out the pubs and bars to visit on our trips. And so this time I felt that we should mix it up a bit and include some places that might appeal to those who are not particularly interested in cask ale. Manchester had been chosen as the venue this time, and whilst we had been before, with more recent visits having been to Liverpool and York, it was our first team visit here for a year or two. We arrived at Victoria via the train from Halifax around 1pm. DJ Turnip was already there, having ...