Real Ale, Real Music

It's a place that often gets overlooked by visitors these days, with to-let signs and empty shop fronts a-plenty dominating parts of the city centre. But until recently it had been well before the pandemic since I had paid the city a visit. Here's what I found.... It was a hot day as I queued to buy a ticket at Halifax railway station. The lady with the dog in front of me was wanting to get to Blackburn but had numerous questions for the guy behind the screen, so by the time I'd got my ticket and headed down the stairs to the platform, my train had just departed, the next one going to Bradford was 30 minutes later. Slightly frustrated at this unscheduled delay, I took what seemed to be the best course of action and went to the Ring O' Bells, the nearest pub to Halifax station, which is situated just over 5 minutes walk away. Set beside the town's Minster, the pub is not one that generally features in the usual pub circuits, has hardly if ever featured in the Good Be...

Last week I headed down to South Yorkshire and paid a very rare visit to Doncaster to visit a number of pubs in and around the town centre. Here's what I found.... The last time I visited Doncaster was a few years ago when we were following Halifax Town away and we had to change trains there for our connection to Lincoln. We had about 40 minutes to wait, so we decided to go find a pub. The nearest one - and it was only a few yards away - was a pub called, surprisingly, the Railway. There was some ok hand pump beer on, but that day the pub wore it charms lightly, and didn't really stick in the mind. Whether it clouded my view or not, I don't know, but I never considered giving Donny another look. Until last week. The Railway is still there, and still open. The big difference now is that there is an even nearer pub now if you are changing trains, or if you are not on the train and simply want a good pint, and it is to be found on Platform 3B. This is the Draughtsman, situated...

I have just spent a couple of days in one of the country's most unsung counties, where I stayed in a lovely market town with a good number of pubs in the Good Beer Guide. Here's my thoughts on what I found.... Early in 2020, Uncut magazine ran an interview with musician Robert Wyatt, formerly of the 70's prog-rock bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, and who briefly bothered the singles charts with covers of The Monkees' I'm a Believer and Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding. Within the article it came out that he and his wife have lived in Louth in Lincolnshire for over 30 years, and as I was looking out for new places to visit, I added it to the list, only for nothing to happen as we became overwhelmed by the pandemic. But the place stuck in my mind and I finally visited last weekend. And in any case a visit made sense as I am technically 25% a  Yellowbelly , as people from Lincolnshire are sometimes called, as my Grandma on my Dad's side was born in the county...