Real Ale, Real Music

As we stumble once again in to the Christmas period here's an end of year review featuring what I consider to be the best pubs I have visited during the past 12 months.... Every year it seems to start earlier. It gets to the end of September, and suddenly the Christmas ephemera starts appearing in the high street and supermarkets, followed not much later by the endless loops of Mariah Carey, Mistletoe and Wine, and Frosty the Snowman ringing in the fresh meat aisle. Meanwhile our pubs and bars are doing their bit. The decs are up, the Christmas music is playing, and the festive jumpers, Santa hats, and false antlers are starting to appear. So far I have seen very few Christmas beers on my travels, with which I have no complaints, but I have no doubt some will appear pretty soon, some probably lingering on the bar to the end of January, long after the end of Christmas, and long after the once a year drinkers have gone back to barracks. And at this time of year, as the year comes to ...

I've been on another trip to that there London, with football to be watched and pubs to be visited. This time we were in the northern reaches of the capital. Here's the story.... It was another early start, with the Grand Central from Halifax and Brighouse to King's Cross, then a 10 minute walk to our Travelodge which allowed us to stretch our legs after the constraints of a three hour train journey with not enough legroom to swing a cat and drop our bags off before walking back to catch our next train. I was with my brother like last time I was in London when we went to Sutton, although this time we were heading in the opposite direction from St Pancras, north on the Thameslink train to see Halifax Town play at Borehamwood, or Boreham Wood, as the club addresses itself. First though, we went to check out some pubs in a part of London I had never been drinking in before. A few minutes after leaving St Pancras on the way north to Borehamwood and St Albans, the first stop is ...

Bradford has been the UK City of Culture for 2025 and so on a wet Friday in November I ventured over there to visit one of the star attractions which I then followed up by visiting a couple of the city's best drinking spots.... It was wet. Very wet. Very similar to my last visit back in September to the North East to catch up with the family and see Town play at Gateshead in what turned out to be torrential conditions which unbelievably continued in farcical fashion with Town coming away victorious. Regular readers of this blog may by now be scratching their heads thinking " I don't remember reading about that ." And you'd be right, I didn't do a blog about it, as it was only a couple of weeks since I'd last written about the area, so in the interests of balance I skipped it. But who knows, maybe one day that watery tale will float to the surface.... So back to this particular wet Friday. I caught the train over to Bradford, the intention then to get a bus...

Another trip away in the cause of football, this time a trip to deepest Surrey which did at least enable us to make a visit to a frequent CAMRA Pub of the Year award winner and one or two other decent pubs. If only the football could have delivered the goods.... The Thameslink train pulled into Carshalton railway station about an hour after leaving St Pancras, dropping us off before continuing on its journey to Brighton. Ah, it's just a commuter town, I'd thought. Indeed it is, being home of many of those, but other claims to fame include the fact that several of the members of Mud, including singer Les Gray, were born here, whilst former Prime Minister John Major and singer Cliff Richard also have local links. With a historic village centre complete with a couple of ponds, Carshalton is also home to the Institute of Refrigeration as well as several good pubs, two of which we managed to call in on a flying visit before going to see FC Halifax Town take on Sutton United a couple...

Welcome to the second part of my recent visit to the Lake District, in which I call in a few familiar haunts in the village of Coniston, plus one or two places that I'd not been to for a number of years.... I resumed my journey on the A590, turning off at the roundabout where it meets the A5092 at Greenodd. This hillside village is a former port and shipbuilding centre which in its heyday in the late 18th and early 19th century exported copper, limestone, and gunpowder, whilst sugar, cotton, and coal were amongst the imports. In more recent times the now-closed Greenodd Brewery was based in the former Ship Inn in the village; they produced a large range of beers and on my one and only visit there a few years ago I had a rather excellent Sunday lunch in what was a pleasant and friendly local. Pubs that remain open in the area, which I came to know when I used to stay at a mate's static at a caravan site nearby, include the White Hart at Bouth, which I called in on my last visit ...