Real Ale, Real Music

This was my first-ever visit to this proud city at the western end of the West Midlands where I only managed to visit two pubs in what I found was a very welcoming place, but what good pubs they were.... It was bright sunshine and blue skies all the way as I travelled from Halifax via Manchester to Wolverhampton, a journey that took around two and a half hours in total, and this continued to be the case as I had a look around this city of around 263,700 inhabitants, the third largest in the West Midlands after Birmingham and Coventry. I arrived at the city's modern railway station, which has one of the highest bridges across a railway line I have come across! Back on terra firma I walked out on to the concourse and got my bearings. One of the pubs on my list seemed to be close by, but I decided to leave that until last and head off to two others which were more in the city centre and get them done first. The city's name is a derivation of the Anglo-Saxon for Wulfrūn's high ...

Another post from Manchester where, with my original plans for the day thwarted, I spend an afternoon roaming the city centre and dodging the showers as the weather turns increasingly wet. In doing so I check out a new bar, and visit several other familiar and less familiar places along the way.... I'd stayed overnight in Manchester after the previous night's gig and awoke to a bright sunny morning. I got myself up and wandered out of the Travelodge around half past 9 and headed round the corner to Koffee Pot on Oldham Street for some breakfast. It was already quite busy there but I soon got sorted out with a table and shortly afterwards I was tucking into a Scottish breakfast they called the Big Yin, the usual fried breakfast with the addition of haggis, square sausage, and potato scone. Over what was a delicious but very filling breakfast, washed down with a couple of mugs of Builders Brew tea, I formulated my plans for the rest of the day.  I fancied going to Stockport, whi...

I've been back over the Pennines and revisited a few old favourite haunts followed by a gig in a new venue on a typically wet Manchester evening. I had a good evening overall, although unfortunately one of the places turned out to be an unexpected let down.... The spots of rain started to appear on the window as soon as my train slipped through the Pennines, somewhere between Walsden and Littleborough. By the time we arrived in Rochdale, little streams were flowing down the glass, meeting each other, coalescing, and changing course as the train rocked and railed along the track. We arrived in Victoria, and I decided to stay dry,  at least for now, at least on the outside, by heading to the Victoria Tap for a Welcome to Manchester pint. The small bar was quite busy with a mid-afternoon crowd but I got served pretty quickly. I went for a pint of a beer from a new brewery to me, Coleys, who are based nearby in the Weaste area of Salford, just off Eccles New Road. Their website descr...

A few thoughts on a fairly local and relatively small, independent family brewery who are well known to cask beer drinkers throughout the country for one of their beers, whilst closer to home they have once again been selling off some of their pubs.... As regular readers of this blog may recall, I was conducting some field research in Leeds the other week, and in the resultant write-up I referred to the  Town Hall Tavern on Westgate which has been run by Taylors Brewery for the past few years as their pied-a-terre in the city, but as I noted it was closed and up for sale when I walked past. Coincidentally, I had also recently picked up a copy of Alesman , the excellent magazine produced by Keighley & Craven CAMRA in which there was an interesting article by the editor on Taylors, whose brewery is of course situated in the town. In it it was mentioned that not only was the Town Hall Tavern up for sale, but also Taylors' only pub in Harrogate, the Inn at Cheltenham Parade, plus...

The first football trip away of 2026 which once again took me to a new town and a new ground, with an excellent night in a busy historic part of the capital following on. Here's what happened.... It was an early start. The taxi dropped me off at Halifax railway station just before 7.30, and not much later my brother joined me after walking there from home. Our train arrived, a couple of minutes late, and soon we were starting our long journey, first to London, and then on to the Hampshire town of Aldershot where FC Halifax Town were playing this afternoon. For a change we were going via Manchester and then into Euston, as this was a weekend of engineering works on the East Coast line south of Peterborough. We duly arrived in Euston, a delay at Rugby having scuppered the chance of a pint in London. We headed down to Southwark where we had booked early check-in at our Travelodge, whìch was handily close to the tube station. Bags dropped off, we went back to Waterloo, from where we ca...