Real Ale, Real Music

The trains are running again on Saturdays, and so I have decided I will make up for lost time and get out and about as much as I can this year. And so the other week I took a trip to deepest South Yorkshire.... I had never been to Elsecar before. For those who don't know, Elsecar (pronounced ' Elsica ') is situated a few miles south of Barnsley and can be reached via the rail service that runs between Huddersfield and Sheffield, or alternatively Leeds-Sheffield trains pass through. Why go? Well, there are a couple of pubs in the Good Beer Guide, but there is also a Heritage Centre there as well. All around the village, as befits a former pit village which also produced steel, there are plenty of reminders of its industrial past. I caught the train at Huddersfield, and after passing through the suburbs of Lockwood and Berry Brow, the train soon hits some of the attractive and somewhat underrated countryside to the south of Huddersfield. Hidden valleys appear, the od...

I went to Saltaire last Friday to visit the Bradford Beer Festival and Ossett Brewery's gleaming new flagship venture, Salt.... Salt bar and brewery.... I had missed the Bradford Beer Festival last year, but decided that I would go again this time as it is always worth a visit and you always bump into lots of people you know. I sort of knew that after the heights achieved by  Manchester   it was a big ask to hope it would be as good, but Bradford is a different kettle of fish anyway, more, well, traditional. And on a Friday lunchtime, with free entry for CAMRA members, it had drawn a large contingent of the old guard to the beautiful Victoria Hall. Victoria Hall, Saltaire It wasn't exclusively oldies though. A large number of younger ones had taken the day off work  to be here(I suppose I fell into both camps....), and the main hall was pretty busy when I caught up with some of the lads I had arranged to see there. And then a bloke I know from Leeds whom I onl...