Wexford Wanderings

These weekend trips are getting shorter. This one was 36 hours in Ireland. Team Wexford hired a car at Belfast International Airport and headed south for breakfast at The Old Borough, a Wetherspoons in Swords, a prosperous looking place outside Dublin. The cask beer here was Copper Coast, a 4.3% Red Ale from Dungarven Brewing.……

Silly Walks in Eindhoven.

48 hours in Eindhoven. 4 football games, 4 bars and a tunnel of Silly Walks. Eindhoven is a largely modern, prosperous Dutch city that owes much of its development to the once huge Philips factory, as reflected here in the excellent Drinkers Pub. Philips was founded in the city in 1891 and is arguably most……

Good Beer Guide Histories No 4: Oldham

The people of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, are used to having it tough. From the hard conditions of the coal mines and cotton mills to the subsequent post-industrial decline, things have rarely been easy. Much of the major industry has gone but as you drive off the motorway into town, many of the striking buildings……

The Wonder of Warslow

My Good Beer Guide trips south have been limited in the last few months but Saturday saw a foray into the fringes of the Peak District. The highlight was a new entry, the Greyhound at Warslow, Staffordshire. If you put Warslow into Wiki, there are two photos. One is of the pub, the other the……

Blaming the Sun in Athens

A decade ago if I’d said go to Greece for the beer, you would have laughed cruelly in my face, bought me a pint of Listerine and told me to hand back my life membership and souvenir engraved CAMRA shin pads. Now it’s true. Ten years ago there were six micro-breweries – and none at……

Prestwich Papers

The 2023 Good Beer Guide unveiled three new entries in Prestwich, a district of Manchester that rarely enjoys such riches. Indeed it has had only had nine other unique entries in fifty years. Who better to guide us round them than Quosh, that legendary professional Mancunian. If you want to know where George Best built……

The Pub Tickers AGM

Held in a secret location to avoid being overrun by hordes of hysterical fans, I can now reveal that the first Good Beer Guide Pub Tickers AGM took place on 30 December in the lavish bridal suite of the Ibis Budget Hotel, Chesterfield. It was an inspired choice as the title pic illustrates. There were……

Festive Gdańsk

Well the Hanseatic League won’t tick itself will it? Stretching across seven modern day countries, this medieval trading alliance helped create many of northern Europe’s most spectacular cities. Gdańsk, in Poland’s Baltic north, certainly falls into that category. Plus it’s a great addition to this year’s other Hansa ticks (Wismar and Lubeck). The Old Town……

Cyprus: Part 2 The North

The 1969-1974 war in Cyprus saw an estimated 150,000 Greek Cypriots displaced to the south and around 60,000 Turkish Cypriots displaced to the north. A hard border was established in 1974 and remains to this day. In 1983 the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was recognised by Turkey alone. The capital’s airport lies abandoned and……

Cyprus: A Game of Two Halves, Part 1

In my ignorance I hadn’t fully appreciated just how close Cyprus is to Syria. So I turned to an authoritative source, The Children’s Atlas of the World. There are childhood memories of grainy black and white tv images of the coup that saw the distinctive figure of Archbishop Makarios flee the island, then the war……