Go West for Cask Beer in County Fermanagh

78 miles west of Belfast’s heaving fleshpots and multiple murals lies the quiet village of Lisbellaw, 5 miles outside Enniskillen in County Fermanagh’s Lake District. Go West On the main street at the Dog and Duck a treat for beer lovers awaits – the most westerly sightings of hard to find Irish cask beers. The……

Belfast Taps

Belfast has given its name to a type of sink (and I don’t mean the Titanic Museum) but, as everyone knows, every sink needs taps. Brewery taps may have become a familiar part of the beer drinking scene in many areas of the UK but not, until recently, in Northern Ireland. Up until 2022 it……

The Club on the Tyne is All Fine

The first rowing club to feature in the Good Beer Guide is really, well, oar-some. Tyne Amateur Rowing Club is a striking modern building, elevated with balcony views across the famous river. The club itself dates back to 1852 whilst the new club house was built in 2016. It has up to four beers on……

Thessing up in Greece

An hour from the North Macedonian border but in a different time zone lies Thessaloniki, Greece’s 2nd largest city. 320k people live in the municipality but over a million in the greater urban area. It’s an ancient place that spent five centuries as part of the Ottoman Empire, becoming part of Greece in 1912. From……

Scooping in Skopje

Off to Skopje for the latest mission, the modest sized but big hearted capital of Northern Macedonia, a former Yugoslav republic with a population of 1.8m. A landlocked nation bordered by 5 countries, it altered its name in 2019 from Macedonia, a source of tension with neighbouring Greece, who consider the wider region of Macedonia……

The Pub Named After Scotland’s Greatest Ever Footballer

It was a long time coming but a pub named after Scottish football’s only World Cup winner (so far*) opened in Glasgow last year. Fittingly, the player concerned, now 69 years old, was there to cut the ribbon. What a playing record to look back on: 8 Serie A titles, 4 Italian Cups and 1……

Andorra-ble

A day in Andorra to report, which is about 125 miles north of Barcelona and a similar distance south of Toulouse. This tiny, mountainous state – 181 square miles with a population of 79,000 – has no airport or rail links so our group booked a car there, then endured a bladder bursting three and……

The Queen of the South

Dumfries is known as the Queen of the South because of the quality of its cask beers. This little known fact once again withstood the closest scrutiny on a recent day trip. For a town of only 33,000 people it sure has plenty of the good stuff on the pumps. That is also the reason……

Celebrating 50 Years of Scottish Pubs in the Good Beer Guide

CAMRA celebrated 50 years of the Good Beer Guide in 2023 but it was a year later that pubs in Scotland made their first appearance. The Glasgow and West of Scotland branch was founded in 1974 and held its first meeting in Renfrewshire – at the Golf Inn, Bishopton – because there was no cask……

Living by Numbers 2023

It has become customary in the blogging world to post an annual report. These vary in content and scale though none are as exhaustive as the lifestyle analysis formerly recorded every year by Nicholas Felton. My 2023 submission to the official pub auditors shows that 393 new Good Beer Guide entries were visited, the most……