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A lot of west Swindon is made up of modern estates full of the sort of bourgeois housing where the yuppies in my last pub visit probably boil potpourri and mock the folks they narrowly escaped after rapidly necking the bottle of ale finally proferred them.  I was avoiding the Village Inn and its type because of these sorts of neighbourhoods (and the denizens), but there was a Tesco Express in the same shopping plaza (I needed to pick up some Halloween candy) and it seemed antisocial to pass by without stopping in.  Besides, maybe it would be worth mocking!

And, yet, this new-build pub was actually not too bad.  Large and prefabricated, yes, but in that cookie-cutter design they had the good sense to make almost every space somewhat intimate while maintaining the fairly open layout of some of the less well-designed caverns I have seen of late.  Each table was in a sort of nook although there might be six of these nooks opening into another area with a tall table.  Small windows were cut in some of the walls so a large group could break into conversationally advantageous subgroups whilst still maintaining contact with the main structural unit of their party.  Well done, and the EPA (floral and just a couple degrees warmer than it should have been) was only £2.

If I had any shame, I would probably feel it about prejudging this one.

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Still suffering from a lot of pressure behind my eyes and a slight fever but without the sick headache from this recurring URI, the trails beckoned and I headed west in search of a new pub.  Since I hit pub #750 a few weeks ago I decided that it was time to focus on quality rather than hitting every one around (not least because I have depleted the stock near work, my commute, and the house so they all require a committed run and this sort of effort deserves a better bar at the turnaround).  The nearest one with a good reputation and a traditional appearance was the Nine Elms so I made that the target for this run.

It does look good, both inside and out but was a bit disappointing with respect to the ale selection.  There were three pumps but one was clipless, the middle one said “not tonight” and the third one had a Buncombe clip but the barrel had blown sometime earlier in the week.  I had a Fosters without complaint and watched a bit of Leeds v Cardiff with the obviously lager-based crowd, but a little English yuppie couple came in and showed quite a bit of disappointment at 1) the lack of Real Ale (a mantra they repeated several times) and 2) the generally below-their-class atmosphere of the house.  I don’t think that sentiment was lost on the other patrons, either;  I mean, it’s a nice enough local but it definitely gets better press than it deserves…or at least misleading press, but if they really felt like getting sniffy I could give them a list of thirty they should go to right off the top of my head.

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Lost on the west side of Swindon, Sunday, I had to admit that the sign speaks the truth:

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Walking to the bus Friday morning I hear an update of Game 6 of the World Series and it takes me a moment to find that strange, seeing as it was on Radio 4 which is not known for sports coverage and furthermore in England where baseball is held in especially low esteem.  Fortunately I had the presence of mind to yank the earphones away from my head before I got any of the details they were about to spill (at the time, I believe, it was the top of the 10th inning just after the Cards tied things up having been down to the last strike). I put myself into baseball exile and avoided emails from friends that would likely follow the Series until Saturday afternoon when, too sick from a sinus infection to go to the Swindon Beer Festival (but not too sick to do some CPP-coding) I fired up the 6th and 7th games (thanks, Pirate Bay) to have my own private double-header running in the background complete with half a crate of beer and some burritos.

Normally, I wouldn’t care about a Series that doesn’t involve Atlanta or a Chicago franchise but the only World Series game I ever attended was St Louis vs Kansas City in Busch Stadium on tickets comped by Augie Busch to liquor store managers in the county; the owners of my store took games four and five hoping to be there when the trophy was raised.  The one I saw was St Louis’ first loss in the Series which they went on to lose in 7; no longer actually working at the liquor store by then, I had moved back to Atlanta to work in a not-quite-reputable business for some, erm, friends who had insisted I take the job a week earlier and drove up (twelve hours each way) to go to this one on the two days off they allowed me the next month.  The Cards seem to be doing better, these days, as am I.

OH YEAH! The Pirate Bay fixed me up proper another time this weekend…Beavis and Butthead are back on the air in the States.  I noticed they don’t have the “don’t try this at home” disclaimer anymore.  Beavis was touched.  Heh. Heh, heh. [I did mention I was sick all weekend, right?]

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Even with leaving work early on Fridays, the time change this weekend makes this the last non-hashing beer run after work until spring.  Even then, it was already getting a bit dark by the time I was heading down the hill from Old Town toward Wroughton so my plan to take public paths overland to Royal Wootton Bassett would have to wait and I changed in a bus shelter and walked the last few meters to the Carter’s Rest–one of the most superb real ale pubs you will find in the entire country.

There is a beer board on the wall as you walk in with the ten ales on offer at the moment (along with brewery, abv, and price) and another board showing the four or so that are settling, ready to replace the current lot when the keg blows…sublime.  On top of that, there was a Broadoak 7.5% ABV perry on a pump for £2.80.  It tasted like there was no alcohol at all in it and the flavour was delicate, light, clean but with enough of the malic acid and floral hints that make good pears such a nice winter treat; and all evidence of the evening is that the alcohol is definitely there.

The guys around the bar were talking football and it seems to be a Chelsea pub as every other sentence was some shit about John Terry.  Fortunately for me, they started talking about beer and the landlord really seems to know his stuff, the proof not so much in the talk, which was knowledgeable, but in the tasting of the perfectly stored and presented beverages.  He bad-mouthed a stout (or porter?) from Ramsbury called Howl-o-Scream so I figured I would help him empty the barrel.  He was absolutely right that this had a weird aftertaste he characterised as sharp or metallic but that I would paint more as peaty or, well, “painty” as it was sort of astringent like turpentine.  However, all the individual characteristics of this swill were discernible and each would have served another beer well…just not all at once.  It is remarkable–and a credit to the publican–that I drank it to the bottom, savouring the good tones until they overlapped, becoming bad.

One of the best I have been to yet.

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I thought I had exclusive license on all 'Bunny' names, but apparently not

This is a grab bag of stuff from this month, maybe becoming a recurring feature.

The concept of ‘Qualifications’ is a funny one in Britain.  To be qualified to do something doesn’t mean that you have the skills to perform a task, but rather that you have “done a course” at the end of which you have received a certificate (literally, a printed out and endorsed bit of paper) saying that you are thus qualified.  As an example, I am not qualified to use a step ladder in this country and when I ask our facilities personnel at Oxford to borrow one it is denied me due to my lack of qualifications.  It doesn’t matter that I was using 20 foot high ladders to climb into hay lofts in the mid 1960′s, that as part of my jobs in a steel mill and on construction sites I dragged acetylene cylinders up higher ladders still, or that upon landing in Grenada (yes, technically I am a war veteran: the beaches were nice and the live fire was distant) I wasn’t allowed to retrieve my cameras and film until I had hauled enough explosive ordnance to level St George’s for my jarhead and squid colleagues up–you guessed it–a ladder down the ship’s hold.  Nearly 50 years worth of experience, but it is deemed too risky for me to climb three feet up to secure some copper tubing with a zip-tie in England , so I have to put in a work request (and, yet, they turn me loose on high voltage systems and powerful motors–kookoo).

So it is amusing to know that a ‘QUALIFIED‘ plumber installed the drains in the trough urinals at the Oasis gym not only poorly (the solder is sloppy enough for me to feel I can comment on it) but upside down so that a half-inch of piss accumulates (diluted, to be sure, by the occasional burst of water):

I mentioned something about the preponderance of lost kitty articles in the Swindon Advertiser in a post about the Queensfield.  Here are the moggy-and-other-small-pet-related articles from the last few days (Tuesday through Saturday) in the paper, not including the pet supplement in yesterday’s edition:

I mentioned a duck I was roasting, and the recipe is worth trying.  My version slit the skin in a few places, salted the inside and threw crushed pepper on the outside, and stuffed it with ten or eleven crushed garlic cloves and a handful of thyme sprigs.  This was tented under foil and shoved in the oven at 130 C to be turned over hourly, then the temperature was raised to 170 C after 4 hours and it was uncovered until the end of the 5th hour.  Served with some sautéed kale and a little rice, this turned out pretty well.

Ready to cook...

...it tastes better than it looks.

Between hour one and two of the roast, I went out for a run and stumbled upon this weird looking statue of Diana Dors, Swindon’s gift to middle-aged drag queens:

Swindon is home to the Research Councils, UK, so science research gets occasional coverage in the paper.  It is good to see that funding for researchers at Leeds that I originally reported on is to continue at, I believe, Leicester…not sure, I really only looked at the photos in this article:

The funds were allocated in small bills....

 

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I had a duck in the oven but only needed to turn it once an hour so I reckoned the return run from The Windmill could afford a short break at the Victory, a pub I found listed on one or another beer related sites.  I had my doubts as this turned out to be attached (and within) a business hotel but it was fairly nice inside, they had Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch, go Cards) on tap, and though it was easily as busy as the Windmill and staffed by fewer, as well, the staff was alert and eager to serve the overpriced swill so that I was seated and half through my pint 5 minutes after entering the bar.  That makes a world of difference in civilising the atmosphere and I hope they weren’t too offended by my uncouth appearance.

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After a week-long illness that saw a goitre-like lymph node swell on my jaw on Monday (from Tuesday I looked like, in succession, the Elephant Man, Churchill, and Brando in the Godfather) I was really looking forward to a run and another pub.  Walking into the Windmill at about the 3.5 mile mark to find the bar packed made me think that this place MUST be doing something right; but, I could not possibly say what that something is.  It took fifteen minutes to get served although there were idle employees about, the foul Greene King IPA was obviously tended poorly, it was overpriced, and the food that passed by smelt a bit gamy and looked a bit overcooked.  On top of all that, they seemed a bit put out that they had such good custom.

I believe the crowd probably was there for the televised Man City vs Man United football match, the team names making for the most homoerotic sounding sporting event of the autumn.  I believe this is the only pub on this estate as well, so I guess the punters are playing the cards they have been dealt…fortunately, I don’t have to put any more dosh in the management’s pockets.

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After a brief workout in the gym (can do bench presses and flies, now, but still can’t do anything that involves raising my right arm above eye-level so pull downs and straight presses are out), the road beckoned so I left my stuff at the Oasis and headed north to the Queensfield.  The pub was closed suddenly last month in what I fear was a dispute with the landlord who already had another pub he was refurbishing (on prospect and at his own expense) snatched out from under him, then the pub company placed a caretaker manager in to keep the place open until a permanent replacement is found.  But, I could be wrong and the entire thing was about poor performance…as good as the press can be in this country, they don’t tend to give you a lot of Who – What – Where – When – Why – & How in the Swindon Advertiser (on the other hand, the do average more than 5 lost kitty stories per week).

Good pint of Courage Best and four friendly locals helped the jolly landlord welcome this stranger, and the music was rock, so I have no complaints at all.  As night was approaching, though, I left them with, “the road waits for no man,” and received raised glasses and “later, buddy,” — which I found an unusually American turn-of-phrase — from the gaffer.

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From Hannington the return trip was mostly downhill except for one last encounter with cattle (at least no horny and pissed-off bulls, this time).  I came into Blunsdon about a half hour after leaving the Jolly Tar and soon spotted the Heart in Hand.  The sign was familiar and I realised while shooting the photos that it was similar to the race shirt from a pub race I did in Lawrence, Massachusetts the winter a year before moving to England and that I happened to be wearing at that very moment.  Cool.

Inside it was pretty nice with the lead framed windows spilling in plenty of light and the friendly publican and family entertaining a couple of kooky locals while they all planned an away weekend.  That’s a fantastic local for you.  I ordered a Moles but the keg blew and they had another ready to go in five minutes although by then I had settled on something else.  I even got in a line about carnivorous buffalo that one old guy thought were real and I had to correct myself for him (I think the White Horse fiasco affected me more than previously thought).

 

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A long Sunday run up an endless incline was halfway done when I hopped the stile marked, “Beware of Bull.”  Good advice in any occasion, this time they meant an actual 3/4 ton mammal in heat and rage and I dashed across the field and jumped the next fence to find myself in the car park of the Jolly Tar, another old inn in another old village (Hannington).  Walking the last bit to the public bar I passed nautically themed room names like the Cap’n Pugwash (talk about beware of bull).

I sat at the bar and asked if they had the Pilsner on (it is an Arkell’s house) and this seemed to give the barkeep a mild stroke before at long last he half answered and half asked, “no.”  I had 3B’s and watched horrified as the cook put almost every bit of every order in the microwave.  Mounds and mounds of roast were overcooked and ready sliced and the chips looked good and properly cooked, but there were nuke-in-bag mashed potatoes and frozen peas in a bowl with plastic wrap stretched over and carrots in tap water all put into one of the bank of microwaves.  I left depressed.

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Chased by mad dairy cows across the border into Wiltshire, then lost in the gnat filled copse between there and Bishopstone we worked up another powerful thirst so, having found the bus stop, we made tracks to the Royal Oak.

More ale for me, more lager for Jackie (the sunny day and cool, carbonated nectar went perfectly together, she assured me), and we found peace in the beer garden.  This is another nice old inn and they have been regularly recognised for the quality of their locally sourced produce and meats (a group of farmers still in wellies from the delivery were hoisting vessels as we arrived).  This is a little out of the way for us until we get another car but it is definitely on the list for a Sunday lunch after that.

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After putting in a few miles in the hills, it is always a welcome sign to find a ‘Welcome’ sign out in the wilderness, this one pointing the direction to the Rose and Crown.  We hurried downhill and after a detour through the church graveyard and a peak in at the stained glass we found ourselves in the old coaching inn.  Jackie surprised me getting a lager instead of the usual large red wine or double vodka tonic but it had been thirsty work and she still shies away from real ale (too flat and you never know what it might taste like)…’salright, though: more for me!

A friendly place, it seemed full of old (older than me, anyway) eccentrics…more eccentric than me, anyway.  We realised our next bus was more than an hour away, though, so we decided to do the lowland trails to Bishopstone to kill the time.  Drinking up, we bade farewell and offed toward the county line.

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Damn the White Horse, the farmers around this area do some fantastic crop art (this a few hundred meters southeast of Ashbury on Google maps)

We caught the X47 (Ridgeway Rider) to Kingston Lisle and lit off up the hills to the Ridgeway, a path that has been used for millennia.  Another gorgeous day, we tried to get out early to avoid what were sure to be crowds of other tourists who, like us, had the Uffington White Horse on their agendas.

Best view of the Horse we managed

None of us need have bothered, though, as there is no place easily reached on foot from the trail where you can view the damn thing.  Fair enough, knowing what it looks like from space and then standing on the stylized head of the etching is pretty awesome, but the run down to the valley known as the Manger was exhausting and we broke for a picnic once we climbed back up the ancient fortifications of the so-called Uffington Castle.  We watched some kite flyers until we finished our sandwiches and then continued on the Ridgeway to ward off the chill.

Horse head

Not far to the west, we came upon Wayland’s Smithy (which always puts me in mind of Waylon Smithers), an ancient burial site.  You can climb into some of the chambers and get a feel for the site.  There’s not much to see but the site is peaceful and in a pleasant little copse of its own.  We had the return bus to catch and some pubs in Ashbury and Bishopstone to hit before that, so we didn’t linger too long.

Wayland's Smithy long barrow

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A beautiful day, Friday, marred only by my sense of misdirection.  A quarter-mile from the Fox, I turned away and ran to another village completely.  Some wanderers set me straight and I retraced my steps climbing the long hill back toward Boar’s Hill Road and was eventually rewarded with a gorgeous and huge old coaching inn.

There were several ales on and I got one (but don’t remember what it was) then tried to find my way out to the back garden.  At every turn I found a slightly different level and a small room just large enough for a table for two, populated by three or four pensioners each.  Finally, I gave up and settled into my own cubby away from the obviously well-off old gazes.  The staff were friendly, though.

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After a couple of twelve-hour days this week, I left for a run at 2 pm Friday and worked my way down Abingdon Road into Kennington.  The Tandem emerged on the left on the far side of the village.  I got a lager and by chance plopped down at table 69.

A Hungry Horse pub, which I usually don’t have much luck with, this was a nice old building that I couldn’t decide if it was from the 1930′s or the 1950′s.  The back garden area was right on the rails and next to a pedestrian bridge over the rail.  However it was quiet except for the two or three seconds when a train passed and beyond the rail is a wide meadow leading to the Thames Path.

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The bike is called The Marauder.  Just don’t take a passenger or ride on the motorway.

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Running back from Horspath I spotted the Prince of Wales on the Horspath Road not far from the descent into the Barracks lane footpaths. Already sweating after the brief respite at the Queen’s Head, this seemed a good place to take another break.  A couple of guys were having a smoke outside as I passed and one commented that I could probably use a Coke and I answered, “yeah, or at least something like that.”  He came in after I was half through my lager and started to say something when I cut him off: “good idea, that…a carbonated beverage was just what I needed.”

It looks like a friendly local but we sat there in silence.  I read the paper and saw that Katie Price continues to follow in the footsteps of the great and good like Winston Churchill and Albert Einstein by speaking at the Oxford Union (entrance was members only…damn the luck).

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The run to Horspath was marred by my sense of direction and I turned up a street with a long hill that was two streets too early for the path I planned to run; at least the hill was nice and it looped around beside a golf course and over to the originally planned pathway so no real harm befell me.  A second hill and a dual carriageway crossing then another mile brought me into Horspath, finally, and I soon found the Queen’s Head hidden away in the village.

Inside, there were two rather large fellows and a guy about my age obviously bored with one another and happy for a stranger to come in with so obviously a tale to extract.  I got my beer (a Shotover like I had at the Cricketers a week or two back) and patiently waded through the standards:

>>> “You’ve done all this exercise, now you’re gonna ruin it with that.”  {ENHANCE it…never ruin.}
>>> “You’ve at least got part of this right,” said while hoisting a beer.
>>> “Where’ve you run from, then?”

For once, I’d like to come in like this–sweaty and out of breath and underdressed, maybe with nettle wounds and bits of shrubbery hanging off my clothing, and have people chat about barbecue or 19th-century photographic techniques or anything I actually know something about (anyone who has read about my race experiences knows running is not one of those topics).  Still, with the ‘bus marathoner’ on everyone’s mind, it was a pleasant enough way to kill a quarter hour’s rest.

All-in-all, this was a fun group to hang out with and a very friendly publican (daughter of the landlords); the Queen’s Head is easily one of the ten best–out of 743–I have visited so far.

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Sometime during the Swindon Half Marathon the 100,000th visit to this blog occurred.  That’s really ridiculous: I have a couple of dozen acquaintances that should be interested in some of this stuff, and two or three friends that check in now-and-again but even spread out over nearly three years this is a surprising amount of traffic that has to be attributed to strangers or the strange.  I can only imagine that it must be down to the subject matter because I know the prose isn’t grand; on the other hand, all the articles are short as befits the attention span of typical net users and there is always the threat of puerile humour and nudity so maybe this isn’t so surprising after all.  Just because I don’t have a mature life doesn’t mean you can’t get one (I’m just saying…).