Real Ale, Real Music

No, it's not some simian vagabond, or a mythical beast from years gone by. It is actually a private members club situated in a village in a heavily-wooded valley to the south of Huddersfield. And it's rather good, as I discovered when I paid it a visit recently. I have also been catching up with some of the pubs in the town centre.... Armitage Bridge is a village a mile or two to the south of Huddersfield in an off-shoot of the Holme Valley, situated between the villages of Berry Brow, Netherton, and South Crosland in an area that has traditionally been known as Big Valley. It is home to the former woollen mill of John Brooke and Sons, reputedly the oldest family business in the country, having been founded in 1541. The site of the mill is now the home of the Yorkshire Technology and Office Park. The village church is St Pauls, whilst the local cricket club is a well-established member of the Huddersfield Cricket League. You can approach from Lockwood as I did by following the ...

A trip out to an area to the west of Huddersfield where the skies are big and the views are spectacular, with some good pubs there to offer a warm welcome, plus a look at the small brewery that runs a couple of these pubs.... I had a wander out the other day,  driving up to Meltham, a small town of around 8,000 people nestling beneath the brooding Pennine moors, approximately 5 miles west of Huddersfield. The area has been occupied since pre-historic times and the village of Agbrigg, which eventually became known as Meltham, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. The settlement grew up like so many others based around the woollen industry, with sheep and water a plenty in the area. The huge Meltham Mills complex was built by Jonas Brook, expanded in the early 1800's and the switch was made from producing wool to cotton, which was not so common in the Yorkshire mills. At its height the Mills employed over a thousand people. A co-operative society was set up in the town in 1827 and...

A sunny Saturday in Manchester once again, as blue skies welcomed a few of us as we caught up for an old works reunion. And as you would expect both beer and conversation were flowing, whilst unfortunately darker events were apparently unfolding elsewhere in the city centre.... We were enjoying a relatively settled and sunny period in what has been a disappointing summer, and as I boarded a very busy Manchester-bound train at Brighouse station, I have to say that the weather was extremely pleasant. This was another weekend where, due to ongoing work at Huddersfield station, there were more trains running through what seems to be a static embodiment of the rail replacement bus. And so instead of the one train an hour running to Manchester, us locals were being treated to up to 3 an hour, with locations to more exotic places not usually on the timetable like Liverpool, Newcastle, and Saltburn available.  I usually have a catch up with some of the old work guys once or twice a year, b...

I have recently been a visitor to this small West Yorkshire town which enabled me to check out the state of play with the local pubs, with one visit involving a farewell drink with an old friend from the town who is heading North to pastures new. Our catch-up reminded me of some of the places we used to get to when a group of us from the town would set off walking.... I'd got a WhatsApp? message the other day day from a new group which had been set up by an old friend, someone I hadn't seen for a few years. The message was inviting a group of us to join him for a farewell drink at the Drop in Elland, as he and his wife were moving up to Scotland. And whilst given the short notice ( three days ) it was not surprising that several of the invitees had prior commitments and were unable to make an appearance, there were a couple of us that could. Not a simple journey on public transport, but that said I'd discovered that there was a daytime bus service that ran on a Saturday be...

I recently paid a first-ever visit to Burton-on-Trent, famous for being one of the spiritual homes of the British brewing industry, just as one of the stalwarts from the town announced it is exiting from brewing altogether.... As far as I can recall, I had never been to Burton-on-Trent before, the nearest I'd been was driving past the town on the A38, with the nearby site of the Marstons brewery with its clouds of steam rising into the sky a splendid spectacle. I have to say though that given Burton's pre-eminence in the history of the brewing industry, the fact that this was the first visit to the town for a beer writer is an admission of a serious omission, a dereliction of duty some might say.  The original settlement that is now known as Burton-upon-Trent, or Burton-on-Trent or just plain Burton grew up around an abbey which had been established near the river, although the Romans had been here earlier. The town was granted a charter to hold a market by King John in 1200, a...