Real Ale, Real Music

I have recently been a visitor to this small West Yorkshire town which enabled me to check out the state of play with the local pubs, with one visit involving a farewell drink with an old friend from the town who is heading North to pastures new. Our catch-up reminded me of some of the places we used to get to when a group of us from the town would set off walking.... I'd got a WhatsApp? message the other day day from a new group which had been set up by an old friend, someone I hadn't seen for a few years. The message was inviting a group of us to join him for a farewell drink at the Drop in Elland, as he and his wife were moving up to Scotland. And whilst given the short notice ( three days ) it was not surprising that several of the invitees had prior commitments and were unable to make an appearance, there were a couple of us that could. Not a simple journey on public transport, but that said I'd discovered that there was a daytime bus service that ran on a Saturday be...

I recently paid a first-ever visit to Burton-on-Trent, famous for being one of the spiritual homes of the British brewing industry, just as one of the stalwarts from the town announced it is exiting from brewing altogether.... As far as I can recall, I had never been to Burton-on-Trent before, the nearest I'd been was driving past the town on the A38, with the nearby site of the Marstons brewery with its clouds of steam rising into the sky a splendid spectacle. I have to say though that given Burton's pre-eminence in the history of the brewing industry, the fact that this was the first visit to the town for a beer writer is an admission of a serious omission, a dereliction of duty some might say.  The original settlement that is now known as Burton-upon-Trent, or Burton-on-Trent or just plain Burton grew up around an abbey which had been established near the river, although the Romans had been here earlier. The town was granted a charter to hold a market by King John in 1200, a...

Last week I took a short road trip into a local area where the wildness of the moors is left behind in a delightful wooded South Pennines valley. This is a place with history and points of interest aplenty, whilst as you would probably expect my trip also included visiting a couple of splendid pubs.... And so I was driving high into the Pennine Hills along the A58, which runs for 75 miles between Wetherby in West Yorkshire to Prescot on Merseyside, although I was only doing a short stretch around the Lancashire-Yorkshire border. I had passed through the large village of Ripponden on the Halifax to Rochdale stretch, from where the road climbs into the hills, leaving the houses largely behind save for the odd farmhouse or barn sat within the fields. In the distance were the moors, looking gloomy under a glowering sky, dark grey clouds broken up occasionally by a flash of blue and burst of sunshine. A chain of pylons stretched across the vista, their steely presence adding a sense of mena...

I spent last Saturday afternoon in Hebden Bridge, visiting a few of the pubs and bars. And whilst it was in no way an exhaustive tour, it did provide a snapshot of the town on a typically busy weekend.... Hebden Bridge is situated in the narrowest part of the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, surrounded by steep, wooded hillsides that climb up to the Pennine moors high above. Here the Hebden Water and various streams flow off the moors into the River Calder, a location that has led to serious flooding over the years, most recently on Boxing Day 2015, although various conservation efforts to slow the flow of water off the hills along with work on the river have reduced the threat somewhat. It was the local abundance of water and the wool from the sheep who roamed the local hillsides which led to the growth of weaving in the cottages in hilltop settlements like Heptonstall when Hebden Bridge was nothing but a cluster of cottages beside the old pack horse bridge which still crosses the Heb...