We docked at Barcelona this morning, and the ship won't be leaving until 10.30pm tonight. Despite warmings of rain, the weather today has so far been warm and sunny. Mrs PBT's and I caught the shuttle bus into town earlier this morning, although we didn't stay long, having been t … | Continue reading
Mrs PBT's and I are on the Queen Anne, which is currently moored in Vigo, so just a quick post to test the waters, and, to take advantage of the data connection. I haven't taken the laptop out of its bag yet, mainly because Eileen thinks I'm being antisocial rather than chatting … | Continue reading
With just three days to go before we set sail on our latest voyage, it's been a case of all hands to the pump to get everything packed and ready to go. As with previous cruises, Mrs PBT seems determined to take as much as she can along, including the proverbial kitchen sink. What … | Continue reading
Those of you who thought we'd seen the last of Salisbury are going to be disappointed, although some of you might relish a final look at the city. But before returning one last time to the second largest settlement in Wiltshire I first want to tell you about a real gem of a pub I … | Continue reading
After leaving the Wig & Quill behind, along with piegate, I should have continued along New Street to check out the New Inn, the Hall & Woodhouse pub that I’d originally intended eating in. The pub was further along New Street, so it would have made sense to call in their first. … | Continue reading
Continuing the account of my recent visit to Salisbury, you left me, in the previous post, at the legendary Wyndham Arms, the original home of the Hop Back brewery. Capacity constraints at the pub led to the brewery relocating to an industrial unit in Downton, just to the south o … | Continue reading
As many of you will probably have gathered, I've been spending some of the free time between my part time job and family commitments along with working on house and garden projects. Every now and then I like to take a trip out somewhere further afield, although the furthest I've … | Continue reading
Earlier in the week I finally finished reading Cask - the story of Britain’s Unique Beer Culture. Researched and written by top beer writer Des de Moor, and published by CAMRA Books – hardly surprising, given its subject matter, Des’s book sets out to be the definitive work on th … | Continue reading
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been posting much recently. There’s a reason for this as I’ve been tied up with other things, mainly outdoor activities revolving around our garden. After such a wet start to the year, like many other gardeners, I’m behind with numerous acti … | Continue reading
In this second installment about the pubs, I was happy to regard as a “local,” we start off with the house move I referred to in the previous post. That relocation took place in 1985 and was a move from the county town of Kent to Tonbridge a smaller market town in the south west … | Continue reading
Back in February I reviewed one of the best books I have read about pubs, for a long, long time. This followed The Local – A History of the English Pub, researched and written by historian Paul Jennings, finding its way into my Christmas stocking. Author, Paul Jennings is a histo … | Continue reading
I've been meaning to write a post on this particular topic for quite some time now, and whilst I encounter its effects more often than I would like, for some reason I keep putting off trying to get to grips with it. It’s high time then that I broached the subject and came clean, … | Continue reading
Last Friday I made my second visit to the coast this month, to the appropriately named Bexhill-on-Sea. I’d spent a considerable amount of time the previous evening, mulling over where to go on my Pub Friday day out. The intention was to visit a pub on CAMRA’s National Historic Pu … | Continue reading
It’s been over two months since my last cross-country ramble, and to say I was getting itchy feet would be an understatement. Incessant rain and waterlogged fields, both of which would have made cross-country walking perhaps not quite impossible, but certainly down right miserabl … | Continue reading
So, just a couple of posts after my disclosure that I wasn’t a massive fan of Cellar Head beers, news broke that the company, had ceased trading, with immediate effect, and would be going into administration. Founders Chris & Julia McKenzie posted the news on social media, thanki … | Continue reading
I’ve been having a bit of a clear out of my beer stash recently, and as reported in a previous pot unearthed a bottle of Sam Smith’s Yorkshire Stingo. I also uncovered another of Humphrey’s beers, in the form of a bottle of Winter Welcome which, despite being nearly six months pa … | Continue reading
It was my birthday on Saturday. It wasn't a significant birthday but it's not far off being one, although for the time being at least, that's as far as I’m prepared to go on the subject. The Bailey family decided it would be nice to celebrate the old man’s special day, but where … | Continue reading
Last Wednesday evening, I was relaxing after a busy few days at work, and sitting down to watch, what for me is a rare spot of television. The programme I was about to watch was the first episode in a new series of Race Around the World. For those who might have been asleep, or o … | Continue reading
Here is another short post for your delectation and delight, and whilst it appears to be yet another article about a pub breakfast (spoiler alert, it is), it was second time lucky on Sunday morning, as far as the Ivy House, at the far end of Tonbridge High Street was concerned. T … | Continue reading
What I’m going to write about now is a very special beer, in fact it’s so special that it’s the stuff of legends. Named after an 18th century slang word for strong or old ale, Samuel Smith’s Yorkshire Stingo is a bottle conditioned ale that is fermented in Yorkshire stone squares … | Continue reading
Easter Monday, and after a weekend of digging, digging and more digging I felt the urge to escape, so I that’s what I did. The previous evening I’d been looking at pubs on CAMRA’s National Heritage list, in order to tick one off, and whilst one of them, the Earl of Clarendon at S … | Continue reading
We’ve reached the final part of the other Friday’s amazing tour around some of the Black Country’s finest pubs, and we pick up the story from outside Sedgley’s Beacon Hotel, where Stafford Paul and I said farewell to Retired Martin. A short walk back to the A459 then ensued, foll … | Continue reading
Having set the scene for our Black Country Walkabout, it’s now time for the main event, which of course was visiting the five, classic Black Country pubs, as originally earmarked by me, then verified and approved by Stafford Paul, local expert, and Pub Man extraordinaire. Paul ha … | Continue reading
Last Friday's visit to the Black Country was something of a first for me although, spoiler alert, I had been to the region once before. That was only briefly when, as a student I visited the Lamp Tavern in Dudley, with a friend from university, who lived in nearby Staffordshire. … | Continue reading
It’s strange, although possibly just a fact of life, but in the space of just a couple of days I’ve gone from having nothing to write about, to having a real abundance. As anticipated, Friday’s visit to the Black Country, postponed from last August due to me contracting COVID, ha … | Continue reading
Yes, you did read that headline correctly, and I wasn’t talking about Southwold’s finest, after leaving a letter out of their name. Instead, I’m talking about water, yes plain, unadulterated and some might day boring water, even though without this molecule there would be no life … | Continue reading
As I gazed out over the rain-soaked landscape, last Tuesday, I was left wondering whether it’ would ever stop raining. As we move from winter into early spring, it’s hard to recall a wetter period of weather, even though prolonged spells of wet weather probably aren’t that unusua … | Continue reading
It's a rarity for me to sign up to any subscription service, even one that is promoting beer, but last summer, a certain one really caught my eye. Before revealing which one, it’s worth noting that there has been a dramatic decline in the number of beer subscription services, wit … | Continue reading
It’s information overload at the moment, certainly as far as stories from the world of brewing are concerned, but with a common thread running through the majority of these announcements (over-capacity, set against a declining beer market), I’m going to take a step back and ask t … | Continue reading
A few weeks ago, the lad and I enjoyed a first class cooked breakfast, at the Little Brown Jug at Chiddingstone Causeway. The food was so good that I took to my keyboard and started bashing out a piece about our experience. I hadn’t written much before deciding to check out what … | Continue reading
Friday was the first day of March and also the first day of spring, but the weather was anything but spring like with heavy torrential rain, driven by a strong and very biting north westerly wind. March can often be a very changeable month, and an old saying claims that March com … | Continue reading
Last Friday, in the company of a half dozen or so members of West Kent CAMRA branch, plus one small dog, I visited the Dovecote Inn, situated in the tiny hamlet of Capel. Travelling by bus, we took the 205 Autocar service from Tonbridge, and then alighted at Five Oak Green – a sm … | Continue reading
Despite claiming that I would finish reading the 18th Century, classic novel, The History of Tom Jones on last autumn's Mediterranean cruise, I never managed to complete the book. My excuses were, there were too many other distractions, alongside complaints from Mrs PBT’s, that h … | Continue reading
I’ve written elsewhere about the funeral I attended at Mortlake Crematorium last Friday, and I had it in my mind that Mortlake represented a stretch of the River Thames in London that I hadn’t been to before. I’d visited Kew, Richmond, Hammersmith, and Twickenham, but had no reco … | Continue reading
They say that only the good die young, and this was definitely the case with the recent sad passing of Bryan Betts aka Beer Viking. Bryan left this world, unexpectedly, and far too soon, following a brief, but particularly virulent illness on 2nd February. He was just a few month … | Continue reading
Without looking back through the archives, I’m not quite sure which number we’ve reached in the occasional series that takes a look back at the Old Family Brewers of Britain, but I’m guessing the forthcoming article is No. 12. As with Fremlin’s of Maidstone, East London brewers, … | Continue reading
Anyone who has been following this blog recently might be forgiven for thinking I’m becoming somewhat obsessed with the pubs that lie along the A26 road south of Tunbridge Wells. So we have the Boar’s Head Inn, just to the north of Crowborough and the Cooper’s Arms slightly to th … | Continue reading
After escaping from the field and its flock of sinister-looking sheep, that seemed intent on preventing me from finishing last Saturday’s walk, I reached the busy, A26 main road and continued north for a couple of hundred yards. This brought me to the Nevill Crest & Gun, an attra … | Continue reading
On Tuesday evening, after dinner, I made a spontaneous and quite uncharacteristic decision to visit a local pub for a couple of hours. The pub in question was the Nelson Arms, Tonbridge’s premier, traditional alehouse, and one of the three runners up in CAMRA’s Pub of the Year co … | Continue reading
On Saturday, I pulled on my trusty hiking boots for the first time since last Spring and headed back out on the Tunbridge Wells Circular Walk. Last year I’d set myself the relatively easy task of completing this 28 mile walk which, as its name suggests, encompasses the town of Tu … | Continue reading
The second half of January has been rather hectic, especially on the work front, featuring a supplier audit, followed by a major re-certification audit. The latter took place over two days and was conducted by three auditors from three different countries, on behalf of our notifi … | Continue reading
The Dark and Delicious Winter Beer Festival, held at the Cooper’s Arms, Crowborough, is an annual event hosted by the pub at the end of each January, and normally features a dozen or so strong, “winter ales”, most of them on the dark side, although not exclusively so. This year’s … | Continue reading
With the Marston’s Brewery at Burton-on-Trent currently in the news for all the wrong reasons, it’s worth taking a look back at the time I visited the brewery on what was my first ever brewery trip. I wrote this post several years ago, but for some reason never published it. I’ve … | Continue reading
In a move that will cause dismay, sadness and possibly even anger amongst beer connoisseurs, brewing giant Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company - CMBC, have announced the retirement of the four remaining union sets at Marston’s Burton-on-Trent brewery. The reason behind this decis … | Continue reading
In the post before last, you left me, sitting in Maidstone’s Rifle Volunteers pub, contemplating a visit to another pub on my Pub Fridays list. The place in question was the Cellar's Alehouse, situated on the other side of the river Medway, opposite Maidstone West station. I’d be … | Continue reading
If you read my most recent post, you may have noticed me mentioning the Swan on the Green, in the tiny village of West Peckham. You may also recall me mentioning there had been some recent developments concerning the pub, which could possibly impact on its future. Regular readers … | Continue reading
Just over a year ago I came up with the idea of “Pub Friday.” This was a list of pubs I could visit conveniently on a Friday, a day free of both work and domestic commitments, when I’ve got the whole day free to do as I please. The pubs on my list are those in relatively hard to … | Continue reading
The recent Dark Beer Weekend, held at the Nelson Arms in Tonbridge, was a roaring success, with over a dozen dark beers on sale, on a rotating basis. The beers ranged from dark milds old ales, porters, stouts, milk stouts, and even an imperial stout. The selection included a numb … | Continue reading