Real Ale, Real Music

A midweek afternoon visit to Manchester taking in some amazing art with a pint or two in one or two of the city's pubs that I don't get too very often.... I was in Manchester the other Wednesday afternoon to catch David Hockney's immersive art show Bigger & Closer (Not Smaller & Far Away) which had been getting some very positive reviews over the previous few weeks. The show was on at Factory International, a new venue to me on the former Granada Studios site on Water Street, off Liverpool Road on the far side of Deansgate. And as a bonus, as with my visit earlier in the month, this gave me another opportunity to try out some of the pubs in a part of the city I don't get to very often. I was running a little late due to a few slight delays on the train over to Manchester. I eventually arrived at Victoria and reckoned that if I got a move on I could fit in a couple of pubs and be able to make it to the 4.30 show that was the time on my ticket. It was a cold grey...

I have been to Todmorden a few times over the years in these blogs but with an increasingly broadening pub and bar scene it was worth another visit to this small town in the Calder Valley which straddles the historic boundary between Yorkshire and Lancashire.... On the face of it, it has not been a good few weeks for the 16,000 or so inhabitants of Tod, as it is known locally. In December, a damaged culvert and water main conspired to close the A646 for several weeks, thus cutting off the town's only road link east into Yorkshire and resulting in a long and time-consuming detour via Littleborough in Greater Manchester over long and winding moorland roads, with the main road only re-opening in the past few days. Then earlier this month one of the town's major employers in the town, Weir Minerals, announced plans to close their site here with the loss of 250 jobs. And so as the train from Halifax pulled in to the town's railway station, I was uncertain what sort of atmosphere...

Last week I returned to the North East for the first time for a few months and had a great couple of days visiting some fine pubs, drinking some excellent beer, and enjoying some decent football. Here's the story.... I was looking forward to getting back to Newcastle as it gave me the chance to visit some old favourite pubs that I had missed on previous visits, as well as hopefully witnessing Halifax Town pick up some points against old rivals Gateshead. It was a sunny morning and I'd got the train from Halifax, changed at Leeds and all was going well until we arrived at York, where we were told after a few minutes delay that this journey to Newcastle was terminating due to a broken down train between Northallerton and Darlington, which meant that currently no trains were going north. Never mind, a pint of Silverheart IPA from Yorkshire Heart brewery at the York Tap did provide some welcome consolation (NBSS 3) as we waited for an announcement that the trains were running agai...

My first trip out of the new year, in which I spent a cold afternoon out and about in Manchester. Not surprisingly a few pubs were involved, including one that has only recently opened.... If I have a spare few hours, fancy a trip out, but have nowhere specific to go in mind, I will tend to take myself over to Manchester. It's 40 minutes or so on the train from Halifax, and there are enough places to visit so that there is always an opportunity to mix things up so you can go to somewhere different than on your last visit. And sometimes there may be a new place to check out, which was the case the other day, and that then prompted a visit to some other places in the same part of town that I don't get to all that often. It was a bright, sunny, but bitterly cold afternoon when I arrived at Halifax railway station. The train was on time for once, and we whizzed along the Calder Valley, the hills, the towns, and villages bathed in a cold wintry sunlight. I'd booked a ticket to O...

It isn't often that I've managed to get away on a pre-Christmas break, but that is what I did recently when I paid a first extended visit to one of our most beautiful and underrated cities, a place that had been on my to-do list for some time.... It wasn't my first trip to Lincoln, having been here a few times for football and once many years ago on a coach trip to the Christmas market here. But this was the first time I had booked a trip specifically so that I could have a wander around this historic city and try some of its many pubs. Having belatedly acknowledged my Lincolnshire connections from my paternal grandmother who was born in the county, I have decided I will make a least one visit to the county each year ( this was actually my second ). And so here I was on the train, a journey involving 3 changes on the way that took just shy of 3 hours from Halifax, the landscape flatter and ever more expansive as we got into Lincolnshire before the suburbs of the city starte...