Real Ale, Real Music

A final weekend away of the 2025-26 football season saw us heading back down south once again. We had a Friday afternoon wander around a few pubs in the central London suburbs then caught the train to the Surrey town of Woking for an overnight stop before the last game of the season there the following day. Here's how it all unfolded.... The train from Brighouse to Leeds was a few minutes late. The three of us had met at the Station Cafe for breakfast, a long day ahead with plenty of travel and ( almost certainly ) plenty of pints to provide some lubricatation. The train arrived in Leeds only a few minutes before our onward train to London was due to depart, but fortunately it was leaving from a nearby platform and our seats were conveniently in the second carriage we came to. We eased into our seats and a few minutes later we were on our way. Bright sunshine greeted us when we arrived in London, but it was underground first to take the Northern Line to Camden Town. We had a few mi...

A return to sample a few different places in what surely has to be one of the best beer towns in the country . I visited a popular micropub, a newly-opened brewery bar, a traditional pub that is a magnet for real ale afficionados, a lovingly-restored community pub, and an excellent brewery taproom. Here we go.... I had been planning to come back to Stockport for a while. All the word seemed to be it was up and coming, new bars were opening, there was a great vibe about the place, and there was some excellent beer to be had other than the local brew Robinsons. Now don't get me wrong, their beers are fine and they have some good pubs, but their erstwhile hegemony of the local beer market had until recent years rendered the town a fairly dull place to come for a drink unless you wanted to drink Robbo's. But with the cost of running a business in central Manchester escalating over the last few years as the city has grown, it has helped the beer and hospitality scene to grow and flo...

It was the annual Good Friday Day Out which this year saw a group of us visit, for the first time on this long-established event, the North Yorkshire town of Harrogate where we enjoyed a tour around some of the town's finest pubs and bars.... Our well-established Good Friday Day Out is a tradition that started in the West Yorkshire town of Brighouse a good few years before I moved there 25 years ago. Indeed, it has only been since the mid-2010's that I have been a regular participant in the event. The origins of the Day have become a little lost in the mists of time as few of the original protagonists are either still around or at least going on them these days, so myths have sort of developed around them, be it about the year when there was a group of 40 or so in attendance, or the long treks to isolated beacons of real ale situated in a dodgy part of Manchester or Salford. These days, the numbers tend to be around 15-20, with the mix including husbands, wives/partners, and th...