Real Ale, Real Music

  An early autumn afternoon's walk around the wonderful city of York, taking in a few classic pubs along the way.... It had been a couple of years since I had last visited the city, surprising really considering it is only 40 miles away with easy transport connections, and in terms of blogging, I have hardly done the city a service with, as far as I can recall, only  a solitary blog   from November 2017 featuring any of the city's fine selection of drinking establishments. Considering that over the years I have been to York on countless occasions, this does not do the city any justice, although in my defence, m'lud, my visits have been much less frequent since I started blogging in 2014. The sun was shining as I caught the train from Brighouse. Just over an hour later, after a quick change in Leeds, I was stepping off the train in York. I heard a muffled "Hello Chris" from behind me, and the masked figure was one of the girls who works at The Grayston in Halifax,

I have recently visited two of Halifax's favourite traditional pubs and found they are both adapting well to life in the new normal.... Back in the days before a number of new bars and micro pubs opened in the town centre, one of the main go-to places for lovers of real ale in Halifax was the Three Pigeons, a traditional 1930's former Websters house situated a few minutes walk from the railway station. With its proximity to the Shay, it is a favoured watering hole of the town's football and rugby supporters for pre- and post-match refreshment. I have been going in there for years but with it not opening immediately when pubs were released from lockdown - owners Ossett Brewery phased in the re-opening of their pubs - I only managed to pay my first visit since March a week or two ago. In fact, the Pigs was one of the last pubs I went in before lockdown began. In those eerie few days after it was announced pubs were to close, there was a strange half-world where some pubs

After a gap of several months stretching back to my visit to the Beer Festival in January, I finally paid a return visit to Manchester. And this is what I found.... I had e-mailed the Marble Arch fairly early in the morning asking if there was any availability of tables for the afternoon as was advised on their website and social media but a few hours later as my train was pulling into Victoria Station, I still hadn't heard anything. As I walked through Victoria's grand but fairly quiet concourse, I decided I would give it a go anyway. I headed across Corporation Street, where the old buildings, many owned by the Co-op, looked even more imposing and impressive after all these months; I was back in a proper city. I walked up Hanover Street which is now open to traffic, having been closed off for a year or two as part of the area's extensive re-development. I expected there to be a gap where the Pilcrow used to be but it was still there and it was still open, it ha