Archive for the ‘Isle of Wight marathon’ Tag
New pubs to the blog count, all on two day trip to IoW
At first glance, October seemed a month of two halves — the first healthy and spry, the last stinking of death and decay. Yet, closer examination reminds me that I’ve been ill more or less constantly since the 10th of the month despite making the Isle of Wight Marathon trip, another cancer surgery (and spillage from the same), and having a busier than usual month at work. The weather has been spectacular, I’m told.
I added 11 pubs to the count entirely on the two-day trip to the Isle of Wight Marathon. Two new ones appeared in Oxford (old ones but with major refurbishments and name changes) but they will have to wait until November. The best of the new additions has to be the Red Lion in Southampton, but you could do a lot worse than The Crab and Lobster Tap (Ventnor), The Traveller’s Joy (Northwood), or most-up-my-alley The Painter’s Arms (Cowes).
The Daily Tipple list accurately represents the beer consumption for the month with a little more than half favouring darker varieties like stout, porter, and mild. Choosing one per day was really the hard part as almost every new pub mentioned above supplied local brews that I have never tried before and the Swindon Beer Fest introduced 7 beers and 3 ciders new to me (and scores more I didn’t get around to):
The Fish and Chips Challenge was in a lull partly due to the ongoing medical problems and partly due to the remoteness of new venues and my ability to reach them. My spreadsheet updates my days-per-fish rate and the minimum number for the year (based on one every 7 days until year-end) after each fish. The average of these two appears to be converging on 124.9 for the year (let’s say 125). I’m going for a pub fish and chip lunch when I finish this post, so this looks like a fairly good prediction.
The G-Had has started to make an impact. In October, the site had more hits than in all months prior combined. It also led to paranoid behaviour by North Wilts HHH when they tried to pretend a run wasn’t going to happen and then came up with a clever (but easy to defeat) trail marking plan to foil the IntifadHHHa. With local attention piqued and health poor, the war became one more of propaganda than contact but a fresh scalp was added courtesy the Isle of Wight HHH.
Also, the subtleties of the Intifad-HHH-a versus a Calip-hhh-ate became a matter of record, over on the G-Had HHH site.
Don’t tell your surgeon,
“I’m just glad to be back from
Sierra Leone.”
Name: Rosemount Reserve Shiraz Grenache
Type: red wine
Venue: house
Review/notes: In the hospital again, getting my boobs lifted or, at least, the left one were the superficial BCC was cut out. The conversation led around to the Isle of Wight Marathon at which point she said that it seemed excessive to run that far. “I just did it to celebrate returning from Sierra Leone.” We laughed and laughed.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
Monthly consolidations/compilations: January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
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During World War Two, a bunch of Free French sailors regularly wreaking havoc on German U-Boats sailed from the port at Cowes and frequented the Painter’s Arms when not at sea. (The Painter’s was a rough pub then as it is now or as the Editor of On the Wight put it “I missed some forking action Friday night“). They approached the landlord and asked if he could come up with some garlic as the English food was dreadful (in their humble opinions). The landlord arranged for a flight dropping off some covert agents on the mainland to return with a couple of bags of garlic which were the basis of what is now, arguably, the Isle of Wight’s most famous crop (they have a huge festival dedicated to the bulbs every summer).
It was this story of garlic that I put the Painter’s on my shortlist of pubs for this trip. I was not disappointed in what I found.
I needed some sugar for my leg cramps from the marathon and got a pint of Strongbow then settled in to listen to the guitarist playing for me and the bartender and a couple of guys shooting pool. He wasn’t half bad, either, but his set was soon finished and I went out to the smokers’ area and found about twenty locals discussing the legal merits of entrapping paedophiles.
I think this is one of my new favourite pubs.
After the Off the Rails, there was a long drought in the pub crawl / marathon that lasted the next 13 miles or so. Near the top of the dreaded long hill into Cowes the Traveller’s Joy emerged on my right and I zipped in for some nourishment finding a large line-up of ales on tap to choose from.
There were a bunch of jokers at the bar who kept me entertained while I polished off a pint of Squirrel (my pronunciation of which amused the landlady no end…which is to say my CORRECT pronunciation of it as ‘skwerl’ like they do it in the Deep South and not ‘skweer-ehr-rel’ like the local protagonists of the Queen’s English would have it).
Anyway, the race was nearly done and a glance at my watch showed me I shouldn’t linger lest I blow my planned four-hour and 26 mile pub crawl finishing time.
At the Horse and Groom, a couple at the bar suggested that I might hit the Off The Rails but I just thought they were insane (for loads of reasons, and fair enough they had loads of reasons to reciprocate). But, down the old rail path near Yarmouth and along the marathon route there it was: an old station converted to a restaurant or, at least, a snack bar.
“Is this place licensed?” I yelled up to some diners on the platform who laughed riotously (as did the race marshalls at the end of the platform). then, to drown out their laughter, I repeated, “no, really, do they serve adult beverages?” and one guy at a table near the entrance said yes. I hopped up on the platform and came in to find the staff unable to comprehend my request for beer until I pointed at the cooler full of lager and said, slowly, “Staropraman.” “You really want a beer, mate?” “Oh, yes please. That would be lovely.”
They were awful nice after that, as I went out, draped my legs off the platform and started to boo runners I had chatted to before and calling others “freaks” and “losers” before returning my bottle and heading out to overtake them, again.
Almost too soon after the New Inn, the race cruised up on the Horse and Groom, a huge house that I made the mistake of entering form the first entrance I could find and then walking half the length of a football pitch to get to the bar. It was hot and humid and my glasses fogged over but I was greeted by a very friendly bartender who, while much busier than the one at the Sportsman’s was actually able to serve the crowd ahead of me and chat with us all while doing it. Soon, I was out front, heckling the passing marathoners.
And, the beer was good (Scrum, from the photo I snapped).
A few miles up from the Sportsman’s, I had made up a lot of my lost ground when the New Inn appeared on the right and the race route continued on leaving me with a choice. It would have been rude not to stop, though.
The two guys at the bar were efficiency incarnate and completely nonplussed by an American showing up from the island marathon demanding drink. I soon had a Ramsbury Best Bitter and crowds of other customers wishing me well on the rest of the run. Nice house.
I have two choices to describe the bartender at the Sportsman’s Rest, AFTER pointing out that she is incompetent. She, additionally, is either stupid or an asshole. I think it is marginally less rude to call her an asshole. Here’s how I came to that conclusion.
A crowd dining together were at the bar when I arrived from the Isle of Wight Marathon, sweating and wearing a race number. They left the bar to read the specials board so that only one fellow was ahead of me who placed an unnecessarily complicated drink ordered (some wussy drinks like a lager with a splash of soda and some fruit concentrate). He suggested she take my order first as I might want to get back to the race. She nodded then went ahead to clumsily prepare his, oh, let’s call them ‘drinks’ and slowly count his change.
Turning to me just as a fat bloke in tweed pushed his head through a window out toward the dining area and shouted for service, she then turned away and left me to serve this dickhead. In the meantime, the diners crowded around and after she finally finished his order, she started taking theirs. Even they — and they’re British and prone to pushing ahead despite their false fetishization of the queue — suggested maybe I was there ahead of them and might want to get back to the race.
After running the credit card for their order she finally started my pint giving me something similar to a glass of beer but with an inch and a half of head which I downed in a little less than a minute out near the road. The folks standing there seemed like they might be nice but I had more than burnt up my allocated time watching this little passive aggressive one-act play.
What a tool-ette.
DT #xxx, dd mmm 2014
The most important
Pint of the day is the first
Before the race starts.
Name: Theakston’s Mild
Type: mild
Venue: Isle of Wight Community Club, Cowes
Review/notes: From my co-competitors’ reactions, you’d think that none of these people had ever run a marathon drunk before. Theakston’s Mild is a perfect nutritional supplement for the alcoholic endurance athlete: carbs, minerals, and fluids.
[DT =Daily Tipple, explained in DT #000 here]
Monthly consolidations/compilations: January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
First, my thanks go out to the organisers and volunteers for allowing me to participate in their little pub crawl. The venue was great and the small field lent itself to social interaction throughout.
I arrived early from my hotel in Shanklin due to a scheduling anomaly and once I registered I walked back to Cowes quayside to find a pre-race pint. But, no one had a license to serve before 11 am so I walked back up to the Sport Club grounds and waited out their opening time. They were serving tea, coffee and snacks but I decided to leave it till 11 to ask for a beer. And, with that purchase, my esteem was either raised or dashed depending on the co-participant’s attitude. Strange: it was like I had gone much farther from England than the 20 minute ferry ride.
At the starting gate, I stripped off my disposable old clothes (sweats that have become threadbare) and cranked up the GPS in my phone a few minutes before the start, taking my place in the crowd. I didn’t do the excessive pre-scouting of pubs that I have in the past; rather, I planned on stopping at every licensed facility I came across, bar none.
The first was the Sportsman’s Rest, a nice little pub with a rude and completely incompetent bartender (hence my long layover–more than ten minutes here). Next up, we passed (or, THEY passed) the New Inn which was much more efficient and completely nonplussed by my stop. Not much farther along the way the Horse and Groom loomed and after service I stepped out to heckle my compatriots for the first time.
We turned onto an old rail bed and soon we came up on the old station for Yarmouth, or part of Yarmouth, which is now the Off The Rails bar and restaurant. I yelled up to some diners on the platform, “is this place licensed?” then, to drown out their laughter, I repeated, “no, really, do they serve adult beverages?” Served by bemused staff, once again, I went back out and heckled the other runners while I enjoyed my bottle on the platform.
There was a long stretch after that along the riverside and through quiet lanes back almost all the way to Cowes (with no new pubs, although we passed the Sportsman’s and the New Inn again) then the path split off and we started up a long and (at that stage in the game) steep incline that housed, off to the right and nearly at the top, the Traveler’s Joy. It was a truly welcome respite, indeed.
With something less than 2 miles left, I eschewed further interaction with my compatriots (for the most part) and focused on finishing in under four hours. Which I did (just barely). It was then I realised how nackered I actually was. I’ve had worse leg cramps, mind, but these came all at once despite my aforementioned carb, nutrient and fluid regimen.
Spectacular organisation in this race, really, and the small and friendly field and the lovely refreshments I found along the way were just a bonus. If I were going to repeat a marathon, this would be one of my top choices. But, now I am qualified for the Ultramarathons I have planned for next year.
Heh -heh…special drinks, indeed
The Endless British Pub Crawl 