Ride a Cock Horse in South Shields

Ride a cock horse (to Banbury Cross) is an English nursery rhyme.   To be honest, I had never interpreted it in quite the same way as this bride-to-be in South Shields.  As someone pointed out on twitter, the ‘horse’ looks absolutely terrified. This year’s North Sea Cycle Route trip took us from Dunbar to Middlesbrough.……

Moors the Merrier

One final push to finish Yorkshire for another year, so we decided to make a night of it in Appleton-le-Moors. Before that short visits were made to a couple of good micros, the Cobblers Arms in Filey, followed by the Old Post Office Tavern in Brompton by Sawdon.  It’s not too difficult to guess what……

Waiting for a Train

There’s a Good Beer Guide-listed pub in this picture. The bars symbolise the pain of the ticker and imply that it’s a micropub, closed two days a week and open relatively limited hours on the other days. The Waiting Room is on Whitby station from where steam trains run to Pickering as well as mainline……

Dog Days of May

Things were getting desperate. May looked like being only the second single figure return of Good Beer Guide pubs of the decade. Other well known bloggers were travelling the country notching tick after tick, flaunting their successes like jackdaws adorned with paste jewellery. Meanwhile I was trailing behind like an arthritic badger. All doom, no……

Sicily

“What’s with all the foreign beer posts?” asks a disgruntled Len O’Phobe (who favours Stella and Budweiser himself). Well it’s partly to do with fast running out of new Good Beer Guide pubs to visit until the next edition, though I should have some to report in the near future; but also a simple reflection……

Alt Right on the Night

Now that’s a title that would, until recently, have carried no unsavoury ambiguity. This is all about the beer and Dusseldorf is an extraordinary city from a beer perspective. Virtually all the beer sold there is Altbier. Everyone I know who has drank there has come back enthused. Altbier is a top-fermented style of beer.……

Not about Paris in the Springtime

I suspect even some of the most avid readers of this blog sometimes find it all a bit too niche – all Red Lions and venerable landladies (if you’re very lucky both at the same time). And a few find it not niche enough (cut out the non-league moths etc). So in the spirit of……