September started on the first of the month (as it so often seems to) with the 2017 Good Beer Guide plonking through my letterbox after what felt like a fifteen year wait (about five days in truth).
After some intensive cross-ticking, I was down from 1,006 to 896 GBG listed pubs, a 110 drop, and desperate to crack on to replenish my numbers........
September Review
It was a more successful month than I'd anticipated, with 29 GBG pubs visited, plus 1 pre-emptive. As they (I) say, "a pub a day keeps the doctor away". The quality of the "pubs" visited wasn't so great this month, but I enjoyed some top days & evenings in places like Berkshire, Barnsley, rural North Yorkshire, Cheshire and Merseyside.
Here are my favourite three pub experiences of the month in no particular order:
1. Sip Club, Stretford
2. Rose & Crown, Hoylandswaine
3. Stamps Bar, Crosby
The Furnace in Hoyland also deserves a special mention.
October Preview
After some intensive cross-ticking, I was down from 1,006 to 896 GBG listed pubs, a 110 drop, and desperate to crack on to replenish my numbers........
September Review
It was a more successful month than I'd anticipated, with 29 GBG pubs visited, plus 1 pre-emptive. As they (I) say, "a pub a day keeps the doctor away". The quality of the "pubs" visited wasn't so great this month, but I enjoyed some top days & evenings in places like Berkshire, Barnsley, rural North Yorkshire, Cheshire and Merseyside.
Here are my favourite three pub experiences of the month in no particular order:
1. Sip Club, Stretford
2. Rose & Crown, Hoylandswaine
3. Stamps Bar, Crosby
The Furnace in Hoyland also deserves a special mention.
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| Daisy the cat asks when I'll be visiting her Farsley home town. |
October Preview
A pretty crazy month is about to start - and I don't mean in a way which is particularly beneficial to BRAPA! But it will be fun.
It all starts healthily enough, tomorrow in fact for leg 8 of my World Tour of Berkshire. We are heading out east again to that Windsory Eton area. A week later, I'm on a stag-do but fear not, for I am best-man, so organising a crawl around Liverpool, which will also take in Birkenhead. Yes, there'll be a couple of re-visits (Cracke, Roscoe Head, perhaps Peter Kavanagh) but 3 or 4 new 'ticks' to keep me going. Then it all gets a bit crazy as work send me to Melbourne for a week - and I don't mean the Derbyshire one where I need a pub tick. I will be, of course, trying to find good pubs, bars and beer on off chance they are pre-emptive if an Aussie GBG gets published in the year 2040 when the convict-landers start brewing real ale. And even on the final Saturday of the month (29th), I'll be recovering from the wedding so am writing that off as a 'recovery day'. However, a pre-Hallowe'en spooky BRAPA chauffeur day with Dad (hopefully dressed as Lurch from Addams Family for effect) is all systems go on Sunday 30th. "You rang Si?"
As for midweeks, I'll be cracking on with my South Yorkshire Tuesday nights for the first two weeks of the month, and perhaps the last week depending on jet-lag. Am aiming to have SY done by the end of 2016 but may fall just short.
So my aim really is just to achieve my minimum 15 pub ticks in Oct, then go crazy in November!
Wish me luck, and I'll be back on Sunday with the review of tomorrow's Berkshire trip.
Si