Archive for the ‘beer’ Tag
Warmest regards to Fatty from Tucson for spotting this beer label (if anyone knows where to get Fat Tire in Swindon or Oxford please get in touch)
It has been a good run — one of nearly 6 years, nearly 1300 different pubs, a few marathons and a bunch of halves (and shorter races), good entertainment, fulfilling work, and a couple of laughs. But, it is over … at this address, anyway: I’ll continue on in much the same vein at the Endless British Pub Crawl (continues) but this site will just be an archive for the first 1292 pubs and memorial to itself and a lot of ill-advised fun that went into gathering the material herein.
I want to do a retrospective of this blog’s 6 years but it deserves better than what you have before you. Them’s the breaks…here it is in tedious detail.
In 2177 days, there have been 2537 posts. Of those, 1292 were specifically for 1st time pub visits, 367 were for last year’s Daily Tipple (with added Haiku), 210 have been for the Chippy Challenge and the Kebab Challenge, and 169 were for the 2012 Yellow Beer Challenge. The remaining 499 involved running, mocking the serious beliefs of others, laughing at the weak, bitching and moaning about one thing or another, obituaries, and other things that serve to strengthen my bona fides of Britishness. According to WordPress, these pages have been visited just over 350,000 times…get a life, losers.
Most frequent pub names so far (and how many of each):
43 Red Lions
24 Crowns
22 Ploughs
19 (tie) Bells, White Harts
15 Greyhounds
14 (tie) Black Horses, King’s Arms, Queen’s Heads
13 (tie) Rose and Crowns, Swans, White Horses
Best names: Five Mile From Anywhere No-Hurry Inn, Far From The Madding Crowd, Cafe Rene, Sally Pussey’s Inn, The Bee’s In The Wall, The Roaring Donkey, Who’d A Thought It
Fuck that place: The Angerstein Hotel, The Woodman Inn, The Black Horse
Personal favourite pub write ups: The Chequers in Cottenham, hangover after a night in the King’s Arms in Ely, handing the puzzle over to the Dog and Duck in Linton (Cambs), the Crown in Penzance (a low-key 25th anniversary), the Glue Pot in Swindon after my first Wildcats Hockey match, the Blackfriar in London (not so much the write up as the architectural details), and the Rose and Crown in Chippenham for the fantastic people watching. Certain there are other decent ones but this list contains the two or three I’m really pleased with.
Other pubs worthy of mention (good or bad):
The Red Lion in Southampton for architecture and Henry V connection
The Hop Inn for the locals’ alternative names
The five Red Lion Run back in 2010
The New Inn, Blists Hill (a historic museum town)
The Goldfinger (accidentally found Ian Fleming’s grave on run to this one)
The Blue Boar, Aldbourne (Dr. Who link)
The Blind Beggar, Whitechapel (Kray Brothers link)
The Red Lion, Aston (a town of ‘tards)
The Brass Monkey, Teignmouth (George W Bush on their sign)
Wernham Hogg’s, Slough (The Office tie-in)
The writing isn’t brilliant but it was never meant to be stunning. I have occasionally stumbled into something I’m happy enough with (to mention here) but never anything I would attach a real name to. Some of those are:
“What a Bunch of Dicks” (September 2011)
“Our Ex-Neighbours” (September 2011, with links to the whole saga)
“Risk Assessment: Proper Use of Bins” (October 2012)
“British Citizenship Exam” (November 2012)
“My Pet Leeches” (September 2013)
“Me and the Queen” (June 2012)
It wasn’t all drinking and knob jokes. Occasionally I ran, sometimes quite a lot (although usually whilst stopping regularly for drinks and to tell inappropriate knob jokes). I even race a bit with some of my favourite racing efforts here:
Grunty Fen 1/2 Marathon and general thoughts on the finisher’s medal (September 2009)
Snowdonia Marathon pub crawl (October 2009)
The River Run — Cantabrigiensis HHH (October 2009)
New Year’s Eve 10K Little Downham (January 2010)
Historical notes on the 30 Pack Marathon (April 2010)
Thame 10K and morning chunders (June 2010)
Florence Marathon (December 2010)
Bupa 10K plus bailout for the London Hash (May 2011)
Run For Heroes 5K or thereabouts (August 2011)
Chippenham Half with a sponsored pub stop (September 2011)
Swindon Half whilst hitting every pub within 1/2 mile (October 2011)
Cricklade Half + 8 mile warm-up (October 2011)
London Marathon pub crawl (April 2012)
Great British Beerathon Like the 30-Pack only smaller and including food (August 2012)
Great Bustard 5 or getting there’s half the fun (July 2013)
Beat the Bore at Night (September 2013)
Malmesbury Carnival 10K done twice to hit some pubs after (August 2014)
Isle of Wight Marathon pub crawl (October 2014)
11:58 My big head notwithstanding, this is the Joe Strummer Subway
In fact, I started the blog for people in the States that already knew about my running idiosyncrasies (i.e., running to get to a bar, drinking heavily there or at one or more other bars, then running home). So, for them the “racing” entries are no surprise nor are some of the other efforts, which I enjoy as much or more. These three Birthday runs are typical:
2010
2013
2014
I also used to ‘hash’ before I found the one true way; my life as a hasher came long after I started drink-running (and drug-running, for that matter) and that it has become just a passing fad baffles some of those folk although I still encourage hash virgins to go to a hash as a kick start to Hashlam. I would, indeed, encourage all of you to go hashing at some point.
We saw some good shows and bad shows and some shows. I saw Springsteen in the Atlanta Fox Theatre in the 70’s but Jackie never had so we booked a trip to Maastricht to fix that…and it was awesome. We causght Neil Young in Hyde Park and Paul Simon there as well another year. Two of the best shows were Lloyd Cole in Stroud and George Thorogood in Cambridge, and you can’t go wrong with the BeatHoles.
Tourism ideas:
No trip to Wales is complete without a ride down this highway. (November 2009)
Find out why they refer to Oxford as the City of Dreaming Spires. (September 2010)
You can wait for English Heritage or the National Trust, but the loving family fits their own plaques (like this one to Arthur Stanley Eddington). (August 2011)
If you get to Germany, indulge in the local folklore like the Bremen Musicians. (June 2012)
Nothing is more fun than old buses. (June 2014)
Get out on the street furnishing trail, maybe starting with post boxes. (November 2014)
And, to be serious, here are a few ideas for London.
Recipes and food:
A friend that travels in China sent some delectable menu items to look for but I still haven’t found them in any Chinatown restaurants. On the other hand, you can find the most interesting spices in the Caribbean markets, here.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day so you shouldn’t shy away from complicated recipes like this one. Or, as an alternative you could start your day with one of these.
There were, of course, a lot of booze recipes, but these are worth the efforts involved and better than the pictures would suggest:
Lupini
Cassoulet (one of several versions blogged herein)
Rabbit
Finally, no look back wouldn’t include obits. Mostly, I obitted people I don’t know but knew of but on occasion I actually had a relationship with the deceased (Rest in Peace, y’all):
Vic Chesnutt (December 2009)
Bus Job (October 2010)
Andy Holden (whom I did not know but feel a special connection to, January 2014)
This blog (January 2015, which you are reading right now)
This is the last of
Three hundred sixty-seven
Consecutive haikus.
Alright, then, maybe this one would have been more appropriate:
Woke up this morning.
Got myself a beer. Future’s
Uncertain, end near.
I’m really glad to see the back of the haiku, though. Some amused me, fair enough, but most were uninspired as, indeed, most of the DT entries themselves were. The tyranny of the daily post is not conducive to creativity in many of us (or, at least, in me).
Raw numbers (ignoring today and 31 December 2013):
144 Beers (of which there were 60 bitter; 22 lager; 10 stout; 9 pilsner; 8 mild; 6 each of blonde, golden ale, and porter;5 IPA; 3 dark ale; 2 ‘other’ pale ales; and, 1 each Belgian ale, Belgian brown, brown, dark IPA, dark pilsner, IPA/mild, and weissbier).
21 Ciders
5 Perry
1 Cider/Perry mix
4 Ginger Beer
166 wines (of which there were 122 red, 18 white, 18 rose, 3 Champagne, 3 other sparkling, and 2 port)
24 Booze (6 from Drunken Bunny Liqueurs, most of the mixed drinks experiments from Mr Boston)
The number and volume of Gin and Tonic is highly underrepresented, as was the beer but you had to choose one thing per day.
Location, location, location:
Pretty much the homebody, 221 of the DTs were in our house (43 in Eastcott, the other 178 here in Old Town). My pub visits tend to come in flurries of 4 or 5 on a run (therefore on the same day) and those were underrepresented. Because of some overlapping categories, this list won’t add up to only 365:
221 at home
130 British pubs
4 Bremen Germany pubs
2 pubs in Holland (one of which was also a Coffeeshop)
5 in restaurants
4 outside
1 beer fest
1 Church
1 dog track
As far as towns go, 256 Swindon, 57 Oxford (or very close to work), 5 Bremen, 2 Holland, and the balance explained by the multiple pub visitations, next paragraph/list.
Four Candles, Oxford: 20
Far From the Madding Crowd, Oxford: 6
White Horse, Oxford: 4
Steam Railway Company, Swindon: 4
Greyhound, Besselsleigh: 3
Red Lion, Marston: 3
White Rabbit, Oxford: 3
Savoy, Swindon: 3
Hop Inn, Swindon: 3
Beehive, Swindon: 3
Old Crown, Faringdon: 2
Prince of Wales, Shrivenham: 2
Messenger, Swindon: 2
Clifton, Swindon: 2
76 others.
Oh, Mister Postman
Look and see. Is there porter
In your bag for me?
Name: Hobsons Postman’s Knock
Type: porter
Venue: house
Review/notes: No one sends Christmas cards from the States. We got five in 2009, three in each of 2010-2012, and one last year (which arrived in mid-January this year). We get a few from folks in England, Holland, and Germany and I got a ‘cancer-is-all-clear/no-more-surgery’ letter from the NHS which counts for a lot; but, a stamp and a note from far away would be nice, too. Bah, no one writes anymore.
CORRECTION: One card this year (in the postbox on Jackie’s arrival home, of course) from our Debra…you can always count on Debra:
There’s hardly anyone in the lab now but we are still about ½ staffed when you pass the group office. There were a couple of minor issues to sort this morning but I feel like I had time to work on my camera repair (and could kick myself for not bringing it with me). The weather was mild but windy and I was a bit tired after the 27 mile weekend (more Friday-Sunday than I had been doing in a week since mid-October). Today, it was a minimalist run down the Mesopotamia Walk and through the University Parks, for me:
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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“Is this for Christmas?”
“No, Love, this is the Solstice.
“It’s something for REAL.”
Name: Pecker Wrecker
Type: bitter
Venue: Green Dragon, Market Lavington
Review/notes: I got on the bus to Devizes and sat near the front hoping one of the large-window seats would become free in a few stops only to immediately recognize the couple in the left-most seat were trapped in a moronic conversation with the Tardette to their right. The bus pulled up to the very next stop and a middle-aged dude in biking leathers toting a very large backpack and reeking of campfire smoke (he must have kipped the night on the rail trail below) found his way upstairs. We met as I was moving back a row or two for leg room and he seemed to be thinking the same thing as me: “who let this old freak on the bus?”
The old couple escaped at Wroughton and Mr Natural pounced on the seat only to face the Tardette’s interrogation, which he suffered with great humour (the haiku is made from direct quotes of their conversation). He was heading to Avebury for the celebrations along with countless old hippies and New Age tossers you could see milling about with their billowy garments and self-satisfied countenances.
I like the Solstice well enough but I don’t get any sort of spiritual kick from it. I hadn’t even clocked that it was tonight until this moment on the bus, but during the run through muddy trails to Market Lavington with the Sun blinding me, hung as low as it gets all year this time of day, I kept thinking about how nice it is that the days will now extend a little every day for 6 months. Well, that and the fact that I could get a beer soon.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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There have been days when meeting the 3 mile minimum for the Holiday Run Streak have been daunting (hangovers, bone idleness, actual injuries). Today was a joy, though.
I caught the 9 o’clock to Devizes and headed south into the slimy mud, down one steep ridge and up another and emerging, eventually, in Market Lavington. The timing was actually rubbish, though, as the only pub open before noon is the Green Dragon (no complaints, mind; it was a self-inflicted wound I would have avoided by taking the 10 o’clock bus instead).
9.4 miles out, with a beer break in Market Lavington
5.8 miles back after beer break in Great Cheverell
I thought I could kill a little time by inspecting the pubs on offer for another day and the Churchill in Littleton Panell looked worthy. The Owl in Little Cheverell was turned into a private residence a year or so ago to the dismay of the old fellow I spoke with there and the Bridge downhill from the Churchill got a recommendation from a kind gentleman I met at the Bell in Great Cheverell which I wandered up to just as it opened.
To be honest, the 9.4 miles run up to then had been like forced labour but the longer than planned (and greater fluid volume than planned) stop at the Bell recharged me. Although I thought I had restarted the GPS I arrived back in Devizes with no additional miles. This was easy enough to manually map (5.8 miles) and the voice recorder — which I failed to turn off, as well, upon leaving — showed this last leg to be 40 minutes long. There was a bit of sunshine and mostly good surfaces to run and I made the most of the opportunity…plus, I was afraid the chippy in Devizes would close at 2 and I really hankered for a bit of cod.
Good run, pleasant company, fine ales, and a treat at the end. Not a bad way to start the longest night of the year.
Friday pre-Christmas:
The best early escape day.
Back at it Monday.
Name: Hooky Mild
Type: mild
Venue: Greyhound, Besselsleigh
Review/notes: With work all day last Sunday in my pocket, I took off at lunchtime for a run to get some fish and chips then head on home to Swindon. The route was cold but I was soon drenched in sweat from the muddy hill climb and by the time I rolled into the Greyhound I just wanted my beverage and then to duck outdoors to strip down and put on my dry kit. With steam pouring off me in the sunny garden I should have been the most appreciative taster on the planet but, unusually for Hook Norton and milds in general, this was thin and reedy. Better runs planned for tomorrow, but this is today.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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Only one full week
And two more days after that
Til Xmas pig out.
Name: Full Sail Wassail
Type: dark ale
Venue: Four Candles, Oxford
Review/notes: 6% abv and bitter but with a fruity finish. Stuck waiting for the next bus as a delay made the last one packed to the gills (expecting two at once, soon, and can see them from this window).
Today’s run while waiting for users to finish with instruments (have to shut down the lab over the weekend) was 3.9 miles looping up Marston Ferry Road. Brrr.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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John Lydon (piss drunk),
Sheldonian Theatre,
Oxford Monday night.
Name: Adnams Yuletide
Type: bitter
Venue: Four Candles, Oxford
Review/notes: Dirty and repetitive and alcoholic: butter salesman and former Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten spoke at the Sheldonian Theatre (designed by Christopher Wren, a fabulous venue). If you’ve seen him on tele twice (or more) then you’ve heard everything he said tonight, but it was still fun…in the way getting stuck in a bar conversation with a thoroughly lubricated old cunt can be once you resign yourself to it (meet me down the pub sometime if you’d like to test this theory).
The beer was likewise earthy, derivative (of other Adnams ales), and strong. A winter warmer for standing on a cold train station platform.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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Thirteen of the Daily Tipples were in the beer category with 12 pub visits (6 of which were Wetherspoons, 5 of those were the Four Candles). The highlight of the month had to be tasting the finished batch of Two Cures, though, with the worst experience of the bunch the very disappointing trip to The Lighthouse:
.
The Chippy Challenge dragged until the last week of the month but there were some spectacular examples (Crispy Cod and Robinson’s Traditional Fish and Chips) and some crimes against cuisine (Marmaris and WingLoon House):
.
The GHadHHH had two minor trails this month, one each versus the Oxford and Moonrakers hashes, both night efforts. More importantly was the treatise on IntifadHHHa and CalipHHHate differences in this confusing era of global Hashlam and its various pretenders.
Pub count: this month only added 8 more pubs to the total and all of them came on runs. Started the calendar year with 1197 and the blog year (19 January) with 1201 so it is shaping up to the weakest effort of the 6 years so far but at 1280 I hope to hit 1300 before the end of 2014.
The Bishop’s Finger:
A.K.A. “The Nun’s Delight.”
No, really…it is.
Name: Bishop’s Finger
Type: bitter
Venue: house
Review/notes: There’s a pub in Canterbury called the Bishop’s Finger and is known locally as the Nun’s Delight, so the haiku for the day is accurate enough. Shepherd’s Neame makes good beer, and this is some of it…I poured the glass to get through the write-ups for yesterday’s adventures and to prep me for the daily run, a simple loop through the Okus and Wichelstowe:
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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After the E-VIII-R postbox, the Mug House was the other target of my day out in Worcester. 700 years ago, it was the alehouse for the Church of St John Baptist and the church cemetery has, in the interim, expanded around the joint. Today, it was rammed with customers dining and drinking and steaming up the place but I really could have spent weeks in the low ceilinged rooms I explored before escaping to the tables by the graveyard.
The landlady has the letters FBII after her name above the door, an honorary that may not be as prestigious as, say, Fellow of the Royal Society or Fellow of (insert science or engineering society of your choice, here), still serves to endorse the high standards of this busy house. Oh, and if you’re lucky the winner of the 2014 Grand National may join you for a drink (but may not get his round in, with those unwieldy hooves).
I looked at my maps on the train and reckoned I would find where I was going easily enough without help of GPS or a compass or even the position of the sun (obscured as it was behind the clouds that rolled in as the train rolled north to Worcester). This is the sort of running I tend to do: fearless of getting lost or, more to the point, so prepared to get lost and find something new or unexpected that getting lost has become the norm, a welcome companion as the countryside and towns are explored.
So it was that I found the Alma which I knew from planning this trip last week was out of the planned way. However, I had already used my willpower running past a seemingly endless linear array of fine looking boozers and the stop to refer to the map forced my capitulation.
Several pumps called me as I reached the bar but I’ve been on a jag for porters, stouts, and milds lately and the Banks’ (apostrophe catastrophe notwithstanding) Mild got the call. The half dozen old guys (that had gone silent at the American accent emanating from this sweaty bloke) at the bar seemed to approve and went back to their conversation about jackasses that spend too much on fine wines. I wandered about for a minute or two admiring the Christmas décor and the pub carpet pattern similar to our dining room, then settled in with the ancients…the other, even more ancient ancients if I am being perfectly honest.
An almost endless stream of dudes with their young sons (in football kit) came through for pints and then disappeared off to my right (I was in the front window facing the bar). Perhaps to the garden, perhaps another room. Everyone there was on friendly terms and even I felt at home before my glass was half done. Everyone wished me well on the day without ever asking once about what the day entailed. Spectacular.
A postbox, chippy,
Seven hundred year old pub,
A run and some beer.
Name: Cameron’s Gold Bullion
Type: golden ale
Venue: Mug House, Claines
Review/notes: With Jackie working I had Saturday free so I chose a run location within 2 hours transport of the house and went for some tourism. Worcester is a Cathedral city and by all endorsements it has one of the finer Cathedrals going. There’s also a bit of Sir Edward Elgar and English Civil War tourism to do and the town is absolutely lovely set in the Malverns on the banks of the River Severn and with the Worcester and Birmingham Canal cutting through it (which is both navigable and has a tow path both hike- and run-able). Further notes on the trek are up on the blog or coming soon, but for the sake of this as the 2014-15 Holiday Run Streak entry let me note that there was an accidental detour to a fine local pub, a stop at a rare postbox, a snack from an ideal chippy, this stop at an ancient ale house, some mud and muck on the way to the canal, a grand little music pub, and a quick pint at a pensioners’ fly trap near the station.
On my run, today, I had a mild, a strong cider, and a lager but the stand out beverage was this Cameron’s golden ale, sipped on a bench in the cemetery grounds in the cool (but by no means cold), damp air of this perfect late fall day.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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Pieced back together
Machines on the Razor’s Edge
For the holiday.
Name: Fireside Ale
Type: bitter
Venue: Red Lion, Marston
Review/notes: A misty morning and nippy noon combined for a languorous Lion lunch lope.
Alliteration aside, it is the day before my Thanksgiving break (the holiday will be the last thing I squeeze out of my American pustule) and I dashed around to put critically ill instruments into induced comas while making mildly sick ones usable for a couple of days.
The Fireside was quite nice…chestnut in colour and walnut in flavour (bitter, astringent, and a bit varnish-y like I like).
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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The theme for today:
A Remembrance of Things Past…
Lager madeleine.
Name: Arkell’s Centennial
Type: bitter
Venue: Clifton Inn, Swindon
Review/notes: As mentioned before, the holiday season demands exertion and I have picked up the gauntlet with a 3+ mile-per-day pledge. Today, I reckoned I should try out the Runner (formerly the Running Horse before a refurbishment but not different enough to count as a ‘new pub’ for the blog’s purposes).
Looking down the taps I felt that the only one I had not previously included in the Daily Tipple would be the 1843 Craft Lager. I knew I had tried this a few times in the past, but convinced myself it had not yet been a DT. That is, until the first scent and sip…doh! I had this after my surprise surgery a few months ago…a reasonable memory to blot out or the first signs of dementia? Okay…maybe not the first.
I watched a guy hustle a kid (literally, a ten-year-old) at the billiards table then chatted with him for a minute about it before heading out.
I only had £2 on me so if I was going to put the DT SNAFU right I would have to pick up something at an off-license or settle for a half pint somewhere. While sorting my thoughts by the carousel horse on the wall of the Runner, I realised the Clifton was on my way. Result!
Today’s route
The Centennial really called me and it’s rich flavours took me back to Colorado, drinking Fat Tire at altitude. It is a temporary offering from Arkell’s and I’m really glad I managed to get a drop or two of it.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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DT #326, 22 November 2014 (Brewers’ Blizzard)
Back to the running
With 8.8 miles, three pubs,
And a great chippy.
Name: Brewers’ Blizzard
Type: bitter
Venue: The Bear, Melksham
Review/notes: It’s the Saturday before American Thanksgiving (the only holiday I really like) which kicks off the Holiday Season for us. Drinking and eating too much must be tempered by a bit of strenuous activity, so I am pledging to run at least 3 miles until the Saturday after New Years. Today, I got up early with Jackie (who had to work) and caught the bus to Semington whence I ran to Melksham (my first visit) then looping back to Seend. I finished at the Bell having just left the Brewery Inn in Seend Cleve and a wonderful chippy in Bowerhill. Mud was everywhere.
In Melksham, I arrived too early for the chippies and other pubs, so I hit the Bear, a Wetherspoons so I knew it would be open, serving at the bar, and cheap. The Brewers’ Blizzard was awesome–floral, alternately sweet and bitter, and with a varnish-y finish. Definitely could have chosen worse,
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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Busy week ahead:
After the weekend just passed
Work will be a breeze.
Name: Malmesbury Westport
Type: porter
Recipe: Untied a rolled pork loin roast and rubbed with cumin, oregano, and paprika then stuffed it with full strength red chilli slices and garlic before rerolling and covering with more chillies, garlic, and lemon grass. Wrapped tightly in four layers of foil, the roast was dumped in a 120 C oven for 8 hours to be finished or charred on the BBQ.
Boiled some potatoes then smashed with butter, salt, pepper, and parmigiano reggiano.
Made a chinese style slaw of shredded cabbage, grated carrot and celery with coriander (cilantro), rice wine vinegar, toasted sesame oil, brown sugar, seeded and de-membraned chillies, and yoghurt.
Venue: Hop Inn, Swindon
Review/notes: While the food cooked or infused, I tidied the rough cut of the carpet in the Drunken Bunny Pub, tacked down the edges, and started moving the furnishings about.
The Public Bar/Dining Room lost the Singapore buffet and gained our minimalist bar and a tall bookcase for a net gain of about four square feet but with the move of the table away from the window seems much greater increase.
The living room is such an odd shape and so cavernous that the shift of the heavy-but-low sideboard/buffet into it (and the tall shelves out) that we doubted the wisdom of the move but it opens a lot of wall space for our far-too-many pictures to go up.
So…nearly a year in we may be getting the ground floor in order.
The porter was spectacular — dark coffee and chocolate and bitter and tart and a perfect break in the midst of the day’s activities.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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For four pounds forty
You’d think they could top up the
Fucking (almost) pint
Name: Krušovice
Type: lager
Venue: The Lighthouse, Oxford
Review/notes: Czech lager from the Heineken stable. Nothing special but priced as if it were.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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Cleaned last in July
Mass spec users argue for
Fortnightly cleaning.
Name: Summerskills Ninja Beer
Type: bitter
Venue: Four Candles, Oxford
Review/notes: Spent largest part of the day dismantling ion optics and removing insulating build-up from electrodes (and conducting sputtered gold from insulators). Had one of the D.Phil. students do the same to the source optics which were about 2 months overdue for this, but the part I worked on was quite a surprise (albeit almost two years since it was last out of the instrument). Tedium, but detailed tedium…closest thing to watch making I’m likely to approach.
The beer was flowery and tart and worthy of a repeat visit although unless I visit Plymouth (pubs near the brewery are the only ones to regularly stock this) I’ll probably never see it again.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
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DT #313, 9 November 2014 (Wychwood Ginger Beard)
A beautiful day
Then, ‘King of Marvin Gardens‘
Ended abruptly.
Name: Wychwood Ginger Beard
Type: ginger beer
Venue: house
Review/notes: Back from a short run just as Jackie returned from a Sunday shift, we tried out some new bottles we recently stocked the fridge with and settled into a movie (with a recording glitch 15 minutes in). My bevvie was the Wychwood Ginger Beard which I opened eagerly but found to be frightfully similar to flavoured malt liquor (an abomination popular in the 1970s back home and which I swore off of back then). The taste of cheap beer fronted and finished each swallow with the ginger tasting more like a chemical dose.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
Monthly consolidations/compilations: January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
The Endless British Pub Crawl 
Warmest regards to Fatty from Tucson for spotting this beer label (if anyone knows where to get Fat Tire in Swindon or Oxford please get in touch)
It has been a good run — one of nearly 6 years, nearly 1300 different pubs, a few marathons and a bunch of halves (and shorter races), good entertainment, fulfilling work, and a couple of laughs. But, it is over … at this address, anyway: I’ll continue on in much the same vein at the Endless British Pub Crawl (continues) but this site will just be an archive for the first 1292 pubs and memorial to itself and a lot of ill-advised fun that went into gathering the material herein.
I want to do a retrospective of this blog’s 6 years but it deserves better than what you have before you. Them’s the breaks…here it is in tedious detail.
In 2177 days, there have been 2537 posts. Of those, 1292 were specifically for 1st time pub visits, 367 were for last year’s Daily Tipple (with added Haiku), 210 have been for the Chippy Challenge and the Kebab Challenge, and 169 were for the 2012 Yellow Beer Challenge. The remaining 499 involved running, mocking the serious beliefs of others, laughing at the weak, bitching and moaning about one thing or another, obituaries, and other things that serve to strengthen my bona fides of Britishness. According to WordPress, these pages have been visited just over 350,000 times…get a life, losers.
Most frequent pub names so far (and how many of each):
43 Red Lions
24 Crowns
22 Ploughs
19 (tie) Bells, White Harts
15 Greyhounds
14 (tie) Black Horses, King’s Arms, Queen’s Heads
13 (tie) Rose and Crowns, Swans, White Horses
Best names: Five Mile From Anywhere No-Hurry Inn, Far From The Madding Crowd, Cafe Rene, Sally Pussey’s Inn, The Bee’s In The Wall, The Roaring Donkey, Who’d A Thought It
Fuck that place: The Angerstein Hotel, The Woodman Inn, The Black Horse
Personal favourite pub write ups: The Chequers in Cottenham, hangover after a night in the King’s Arms in Ely, handing the puzzle over to the Dog and Duck in Linton (Cambs), the Crown in Penzance (a low-key 25th anniversary), the Glue Pot in Swindon after my first Wildcats Hockey match, the Blackfriar in London (not so much the write up as the architectural details), and the Rose and Crown in Chippenham for the fantastic people watching. Certain there are other decent ones but this list contains the two or three I’m really pleased with.
Other pubs worthy of mention (good or bad):
The Red Lion in Southampton for architecture and Henry V connection
The Hop Inn for the locals’ alternative names
The five Red Lion Run back in 2010
The New Inn, Blists Hill (a historic museum town)
The Goldfinger (accidentally found Ian Fleming’s grave on run to this one)
The Blue Boar, Aldbourne (Dr. Who link)
The Blind Beggar, Whitechapel (Kray Brothers link)
The Red Lion, Aston (a town of ‘tards)
The Brass Monkey, Teignmouth (George W Bush on their sign)
Wernham Hogg’s, Slough (The Office tie-in)
The writing isn’t brilliant but it was never meant to be stunning. I have occasionally stumbled into something I’m happy enough with (to mention here) but never anything I would attach a real name to. Some of those are:
“What a Bunch of Dicks” (September 2011)
“Our Ex-Neighbours” (September 2011, with links to the whole saga)
“Risk Assessment: Proper Use of Bins” (October 2012)
“British Citizenship Exam” (November 2012)
“My Pet Leeches” (September 2013)
“Me and the Queen” (June 2012)
It wasn’t all drinking and knob jokes. Occasionally I ran, sometimes quite a lot (although usually whilst stopping regularly for drinks and to tell inappropriate knob jokes). I even race a bit with some of my favourite racing efforts here:
Grunty Fen 1/2 Marathon and general thoughts on the finisher’s medal (September 2009)
Snowdonia Marathon pub crawl (October 2009)
The River Run — Cantabrigiensis HHH (October 2009)
New Year’s Eve 10K Little Downham (January 2010)
Historical notes on the 30 Pack Marathon (April 2010)
Thame 10K and morning chunders (June 2010)
Florence Marathon (December 2010)
Bupa 10K plus bailout for the London Hash (May 2011)
Run For Heroes 5K or thereabouts (August 2011)
Chippenham Half with a sponsored pub stop (September 2011)
Swindon Half whilst hitting every pub within 1/2 mile (October 2011)
Cricklade Half + 8 mile warm-up (October 2011)
London Marathon pub crawl (April 2012)
Great British Beerathon Like the 30-Pack only smaller and including food (August 2012)
Great Bustard 5 or getting there’s half the fun (July 2013)
Beat the Bore at Night (September 2013)
Malmesbury Carnival 10K done twice to hit some pubs after (August 2014)
Isle of Wight Marathon pub crawl (October 2014)
11:58 My big head notwithstanding, this is the Joe Strummer Subway
In fact, I started the blog for people in the States that already knew about my running idiosyncrasies (i.e., running to get to a bar, drinking heavily there or at one or more other bars, then running home). So, for them the “racing” entries are no surprise nor are some of the other efforts, which I enjoy as much or more. These three Birthday runs are typical:
2010
2013
2014
I also used to ‘hash’ before I found the one true way; my life as a hasher came long after I started drink-running (and drug-running, for that matter) and that it has become just a passing fad baffles some of those folk although I still encourage hash virgins to go to a hash as a kick start to Hashlam. I would, indeed, encourage all of you to go hashing at some point.
We saw some good shows and bad shows and some shows. I saw Springsteen in the Atlanta Fox Theatre in the 70’s but Jackie never had so we booked a trip to Maastricht to fix that…and it was awesome. We causght Neil Young in Hyde Park and Paul Simon there as well another year. Two of the best shows were Lloyd Cole in Stroud and George Thorogood in Cambridge, and you can’t go wrong with the BeatHoles.
Tourism ideas:
No trip to Wales is complete without a ride down this highway. (November 2009)
Find out why they refer to Oxford as the City of Dreaming Spires. (September 2010)
You can wait for English Heritage or the National Trust, but the loving family fits their own plaques (like this one to Arthur Stanley Eddington). (August 2011)
If you get to Germany, indulge in the local folklore like the Bremen Musicians. (June 2012)
Nothing is more fun than old buses. (June 2014)
Get out on the street furnishing trail, maybe starting with post boxes. (November 2014)
And, to be serious, here are a few ideas for London.
Recipes and food:
A friend that travels in China sent some delectable menu items to look for but I still haven’t found them in any Chinatown restaurants. On the other hand, you can find the most interesting spices in the Caribbean markets, here.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day so you shouldn’t shy away from complicated recipes like this one. Or, as an alternative you could start your day with one of these.
There were, of course, a lot of booze recipes, but these are worth the efforts involved and better than the pictures would suggest:
Lupini
Cassoulet (one of several versions blogged herein)
Rabbit
Finally, no look back wouldn’t include obits. Mostly, I obitted people I don’t know but knew of but on occasion I actually had a relationship with the deceased (Rest in Peace, y’all):
Vic Chesnutt (December 2009)
Bus Job (October 2010)
Andy Holden (whom I did not know but feel a special connection to, January 2014)
This blog (January 2015, which you are reading right now)
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