Real Ale, Real Music

A visit to a town in a part of the country I love, but not somewhere I had visited before. But in what was only a stop of a few hours, I found a thriving, bustling place with plenty of history, oh, and a few pubs. Welcome to Penrith.... Much as I like visiting places like Manchester, Newcastle, and even London these days, I always like to mix things up in terms of where I go when visiting places for this blog. And so on the basis I had written plenty about the above this year, I needed to go somewhere different. The fact the National League season had concluded ( bar the promotion final ) and the teams relegated to and promoted in to were either known or at least on the cards already gave me a few options for football/blog tie-ins for next season - subject to the usual mid-winter/mid-week no-nos. Cumbria was a place I hadn't been to for over a year, but with Carlisle now down in the National League for another season the option for that city remained, and if the fixtures don't ...

And just like that, Manchester has yet another new pub, which was good enough reason on a blank Sunday for me to have a wander over there to check it out. Here's what I found when I called there and one or two other places in and around the Northern Quarter..... With very little build-up and seemingly little warning to other than those in the know, a new pub has just opened its doors in Manchester. It's been brought to you by the same people who have the excellent Crown & Kettle on the corner of Oldham Road and Great Ancoats Street, and the smaller Rat & Pigeon on Back Piccadilly to which to be honest I have never really warmed. The Badger , which is on Dale Street, only opened a few days ago, on Friday 1st May, with no less a figure than the mayor of Greater Manchester and ' King of the North ',  Andy Burnham, performing the ribbon-cutting duties. He would have found, as I and the rest of those that have already been can testify, an amazing pub interior seeming...

A final weekend away of the 2025-26 football season saw us heading back down south once again. We had a Friday afternoon wander around a few pubs in the central London suburbs then caught the train to the Surrey town of Woking for an overnight stop before the last game of the season there the following day. Here's how it all unfolded.... The train from Brighouse to Leeds was a few minutes late. The three of us had met at the Station Cafe for breakfast, a long day ahead with plenty of travel and ( almost certainly ) plenty of pints to provide some lubricatation. The train arrived in Leeds only a few minutes before our onward train to London was due to depart, but fortunately it was leaving from a nearby platform and our seats were conveniently in the second carriage we came to. We eased into our seats and a few minutes later we were on our way. Bright sunshine greeted us when we arrived in London, but it was underground first to take the Northern Line to Camden Town. We had a few mi...

A return to sample a few different places in what surely has to be one of the best beer towns in the country . I visited a popular micropub, a newly-opened brewery bar, a traditional pub that is a magnet for real ale afficionados, a lovingly-restored community pub, and an excellent brewery taproom. Here we go.... I had been planning to come back to Stockport for a while. All the word seemed to be it was up and coming, new bars were opening, there was a great vibe about the place, and there was some excellent beer to be had other than the local brew Robinsons. Now don't get me wrong, their beers are fine and they have some good pubs, but their erstwhile hegemony of the local beer market had until recent years rendered the town a fairly dull place to come for a drink unless you wanted to drink Robbo's. But with the cost of running a business in central Manchester escalating over the last few years as the city has grown, it has helped the beer and hospitality scene to grow and flo...