Real Ale, Real Music

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 ...

A first visit to the Lake District for a while and in amongst returning to some old favourite pubs and re-visiting a couple of places I'd not been in for years, I managed to check out a couple of Good Beer Guide-listed entries that were new to me. Here's my thoughts on those.... I try to visit the Lakes every year as it is a place that is close to my heart, having had many happy times there over the years walking on the fells with friends and, particularly more recently, on numerous less active visits. But when I checked back to see when I had last been there it was over two years ago, so I was well overdue a visit, particularly as on that trip in September 2023 it had rained more or less non-stop. I drove up on a showery Saturday morning ( which I thought after last time didn't bode well! ) having decided to call at the two new places on the way to Coniston, where I normally stay, and get them out of the way. I'd left mid-morning and made good progress as I headed up t...