Category Archives: Pubs

Life, Public Transport, Pubs

Bristol City

We went away for a few days, and my better half suggested Bristol. We’d never been, so it seemed like a good idea; pubs, restaurants, thibngs to see, and not too far to go. Given that parking was going to be expensive, and driving has certainly lost its allure these days, we chose to go by train. A lift to Walsall from a friend one Saturday morning saw us experience the joy of Walsall station, a structure seemingly designed to suck the joy of life from you (and no BOAK building as a comforting sight any more), but it is at least functional, and with a simple layout; something you can’t level at the glitter-rolled turd that is New Street and Grand Central now.

[note: at this point I split off my whining about New St to a separate post]

Anyway, enough whining. On to our train, and the bliss of first class (and without costing the earth, thanks to pre-booking), and around 90 mins later we’re at Temple Meads: a very different matter: Victorian, magnificent, easy to navigate, and within a few minutes, we’re in a cab. Our appartment wasn’t ready, so there’s only one place to go:

The Bag of Nails. Beer, cats, pie, music.
The Bag of Nails. Beer, cats, pie, music.

The Bag of Nails. A few pints in the company of kitties, and a half-mile walk across town past the stunning cathedral to the apartment, before heading out.

Bristol’s a nice city: architecture, pubs, restaurants, and things to see and do, and not remotely up itself, which suits me. We took an open-top bus tour (always a good way to orientate yourself), looked around the amazing ss Great Britain in its dehumidified dry dock, walked over the Clifton suspension bridge and wandered around Clifton, and looked around the Aquarium and cathedral after we’d tired ourselves out walking back and didn’t want to walk too far. Obviously, between those activities, we visited a few pubs too. There’s the usual suspects in chain pubs, chain restaurants, and chain stores, but look about and there’s independent places everywhere.

Coming back was a pain-free experience too: a bus to Temple Meads, train to New St (ugh), and on to Walsall, and a bus saw us home in great time (TM to home in under 3 hours), stress-free.

Pubs, TaphouseTour

Taphouse 2: Hail to the Ale

PubBlog Link
Whatpub Link
Pub Website

Hail to the Ale!
Hail to the Ale!

The second taphouse, keeping us on target!

A bit more involved logistically, but not too hard. A meet in the very crowded Posada in Wolverhampton (it being match day with Wolves at home), then a walk outside to the 6 bus stop, a ride through Whitmore Reans, and a short walk down to the pub at Claregate.

It’s Wolverhampton’s first (and currently only) micropub, just one room, just one toilet, no draught lager.

It’s rather lovely. It’s owned an operated by Morton Brewery, located in Andy’s part of the world, but there’s a good selection of other beers, and it’s got a pleasant, community feel to it.

Ambience 8.25
Beer choice/quality 7.75
Architecture 5.75
Cobs/Pies/Snacks 10
Toilets 8.25

Which means an overall score of 8.

Pubs, TaphouseTour

Taphouse 1: The Fountain, Walsall

PubBlog Link
WhatPub Link
100Pubs Link

Given that The Fountain is an easy one to get to, and well loved by everyone on the 100 pubs tour, it was a ideal start for our taphouse adventure. It is, of course, currently the only pub owned by the Backyard Brewhouse, and serves their excellent beer, as well as a few guests.

The Fountain, taphouse 1 of n
The Fountain, taphouse 1 of n

It scored as Follows:

Ambience 8
Beer choice/quality 8.8
Architecture 6.8
Cobs/Pies/Snacks 9.6
Toilets 9

Which means an overall score of 8.44.

Public Transport, Pubs, TaphouseTour

Taphouse Tour

Following on from last year’s 100 Pubs adventure, we decided on a twist in our ways to drink too much contribute to the pub trade and have a bit of a giggle.

We’ve lowered the count this time, but added a challenge in other ways.

The challenge is Taphouses: that is, a brewery’s primary pub or bar. If the brewery is on site, all the better, but this isn’t always the case.

There’s ground rules.
1. The challenge is a minimum of 10 taphouses.
2. Each participant must drink at least 1 of the home brewery’s beer.
3. A photo of the taphouse must be taken.
4. Any 3 of the originators must be present, as a minimum.
5. Arrival (at least the last mile) should be by public transport, or walking (maybe cycle?)
6. Each taphouse will be scored out of 10 on ambience, beer choice and quality, architecture, pies/cobs/snacks, and toilets. Yes, Andy and me gave in on this one!

Each visit will be recorded here. If it’s a pub I’ve not been to before, it will get an entry on PubBlog too.

Scoring works as follows: each person judges in each category out of 10. The mean of the scores in each category is then published, and then the mean of those is taken (by summing them and dividing by 5) to give an overall score.

Life, Pubs

#100pubs2015: The Finale

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We did it.

The challenge set by Andy was completed last night, with some good company we hit pub number 100 at The Turf Tavern, aka Tinky’s, having already used the original choice of The OC’s very recently, we needed a reachable, nice pub for our final one, and, as it is happily now open again, this filled that role admirably.

We’re planning a new drink-related challenge for 2016- just a few things to check out first, and we’ll also be publishing our findings during the challenge at some point.

Life, Pubs

#100pubs2015: The Home Straight

Despite a hangover (from all of four pints, FFS) on Saturday, I managed to get my errands done in time to get out by bus and meet Andy in Walsall for the start of another push at 100pubs2015. The start was going to be what used to be The Pen and Wig, but it is now The Lounge, and was shut. We considered a diversion to Arbor Lights, but the beer didn’t inspire us, so off the The Wheatsheaf it was, as it fitted our route- Brimingham, via The Bartons Arms. After that, we did a few Birmingham City Centre pubs, which will appear on PubBlog if previously unvisited, and will appear over on Andy’s blog (link above) once he gets a chance to log them.

Usual target is 5 pubs per trip, so we were pleased to see off 7 in this trip, leaving us at 99 completed. Now we have to pick pub 100, and try to reassemble as many of our companions on some of the trips together as possible for a final episode between now and Dec 31.

Pubs

#100pubsin2015: Walsall phase 1

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As we’re sadly behind schedule on 100pubs, we’ve had a concerted effort of late, and now we’re getting close to the halfway point, with an epic effort yesterday in Walsall. You can see the individual pubs here. Yesterday’s exercise had a few guests joining us, a tactical avoidance of the Walsall nazi fuckwit march, and a mere sociable gallon of beer, something I’ve not managed for some time. There’s still enough pubs in town for at least one more trip though…

Pubs

At a Crossroads

I was greeted by the sad news yesterday that the Four Crosses in Shelfield has been boarded up, and, if rumour is to be believed, the landlord kicked out at short notice.

As my review linked above is quite old, I need to point out this was the only pub in Shelfield, the Spring Cottage now being a Co-op store, so now there’s no pubs in the area, the nearest now being The Horse & Jockey in Walsall Wood.

Also worth noting is that the pub is listed as an Asset of Community Value, but also that is has a long-standing planning application in force. Perhaps the ACV has the same clout as local listing?

Apparently local councillors are going to enquire:

tweet-crosses

but I have a bad feeling about this, and it’s going to be

General, Life, Pubs, Rants

Shout

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The 80s Tears for Fears song Shout contains the line

These are the things I can do without

and that came true last Friday. Warning: middle-aged whinge content approaching.

I’d already arranged to meet a friend in a local pub, when my neighbours suggested a meal out. I’d got plenty of time, so we trotted (well, walked) off to a local pub. The food and beer was fine, but one thing *really* grated: the volume.

The music wasn’t the problem. What was the problem was a group of people, clustered around the bar (Grrr!) seemingly unable to conduct a conversation at normal volume: even the act of moving out of my way so I could get to the PDQ machine was accompanied by a needless cacophony of shouts (to which I muttered “for fucks sake” under my breath (hopefully)), and something about the acoustics of the room made it impossible to hold a conversation ourselves (though, as we’re all distinctly middle-aged, it could be the start of our hearing deteriorating in a noisy environment).

This was repeated later when I met my friend in another pub, but also with a band playing. Loud.

I really don’t mind music in pubs; or indeed bands in pubs. In fact, I love music in pubs, if it’s decent, but why always so loud? The loud music, of course, then creates the shouting if it wasn’t there already.

This thing really feeds into my perfect pub post: and it’s worth noting that the pubs I really like often have no music, like this one, this one or this one, or music you can converse over, like this one and this one and, again referring to my critera, the old model of multi-room pubs (before they all got knocked into one space) really helps here: it may have been an answer to the smoking issue too (as many pubs had a smoke room back in the day).

This is starting to sound like a grumpy old man’s desire for quiet pubs with no life to them (last Sunday, I visibly winced when one heavily refreshed customer suggested my local needed loud music on the jukebox to “liven it up” (on a Sunday evening, FFS)), but I’ll address that in two ways. First of all, I know I’m not alone, and secondly, having been in this place at work-chucking-out on a Friday, with it rammed to the point of standing room only, and felt the buzz in the place, which, frankly, was infectious, but still been able to talk to my companion, because people were talking, I can honestly say that at times I crave a bit of life to a pub.

So then: am I just getting old (though, in truth, I’ve hated over-loud pubs since my teens), or getting (even more) boring? I know Andy will agree here, but he’s older than me (and possibly, if the two of us are present, this post may become hypocritical…), and others may not, and I suppose here there’s a point to be made that pubs are, well, public spaces, so have to accommodate different tastes.

General, Pubs

Pub Closures

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I’ve been (again) thinking of pub closures lately; this has mostly been prompted by the reports from Andy that the Pyle Cock is to close next year (as reported here) and picked up by WV11 here. The Pyle Cock has long been one of my favourite pubs, one that I don’t visit enough, because it’s 2 bus rides away.

There’s an interesting post here (and the comments are worth a read too) from The Pub Curmudgeon. My views don’t entirely align with his (or the linked report) (he’s of the view that the smoking ban has had a large effect, I agree it has had an effect, but not as large as some think, and the linked article dismisses PubCo behaviour to some degree), but it does make the point that pub closures are a complex matter: it is not just beer pricing (via taxation), competition (from supermarkets) or the smoking ban: all of these factors have a role to play, as does social change- as the comments point out, increased car commuting (and greater distances to commute), and a change in working patterns also play a part. It’s noticeable in large cities with more people travelling by public transport, pubs continue to thrive, but again, it’s not that simple.

Good pubs thrive, and taking the Pyle Cock as an example, it’s difficult to see why it is closing: it was for sale for a time, and has now been sold to a developer. That suggests a PubCo taking the option to cash in on real estate, but anecdotal reports suggest the pub was not busy in general, though the current landlord has been given notice, rather than quitting himself, it would seem, so perhaps it was making *enough* money: the beer was always good and the atmosphere was fantastic, old traditional pub.

Oddly, just up the road, the ever lovely Vine
 is thriving and busy, with a new, young landlord and fantastic beer, and I’m told the nearby Dog and Partridge is fine too. It’s hard to see, though, what is so very different that makes the Pyle Cock unsustainable. It remains a fact that good pubs, even those not serving food can do well, and I’ve recently been in a very traditional backstreet pub with no real ale or food that seemed to be very busy (including with smokers, outside on a cold day), which makes me wonder exactly what the factors are that close pubs?