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BRAPA - Back in Dorset Part 7/10 : A Red Herring in Chaldon
After the success of my Mad Monday around the Isle of Purbeck where I found some great pubs, great pints and great folk, it was perhaps inevitable that Tuesday would be something of a come down. I...
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BRAPA - Back in Dorset Part 8/10 : Born Again in Wimborne
As the bus crawled up Wimborne Road through the Winton area of Bournemouth in the evening rush hour traffic, I banged my head against the window in frustration and hummed a sinister tune, proof of my...
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BRAPA Back in Dorset Part 9/10 : One Sausage Away from Gussage / Cheese...
Wednesday dawned all bright and shiny, the fog had lifted early and the sun was shimmering delicately against Poole Harbour like a very blingy local chav lady, of whom the bus station contained many...
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BRAPA - Back in Dorset Part 10/10 : These Taps are Six-a-Penny!
27 pubs into my record breaking 30 pub holiday and time for the final push, as me and Martin (Taylor, not Owl) found ourselves in the kind of obscure pub ticking country (North East Dorset) which would...
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BRAPA - February Review / March Preview (2019)
Life of the pub ticker #152 new Good Beer Guide pubs visited in the month of February, my third highest monthly return ever, and even more impressive considering it was a 28 day month with just the...
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BRAPA - Forest of Proper Bo'Land
These East Lancs barmaids have let themsleves goOw do! Two days to recover from that liver shattering 30 pub holiday in Dorset probably wasn't enough, but when your kind father is offering to drive you...
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BRAPA - Only Fools & Witches : More Tales from East Lancs
Colne's strange Only Fools theme running through their real ale pubs is an interesting quirk of the GBGHalfway through our Saturday, and it was a speedy retreat in the Father-BRAPA-mobile, away from...
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BRAPA - Waiting for the Hammer(smith) to Fall
Freddie definitely on the PrideSeems strange, all these Hull City away days at places like Brentford, QPR, Chelsea and Fulham over the last few years, and never once have I thought to tick the three...
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BRAPA - Stung by the Bees? Bayswater and Ealing Please!
As we left Hammersmith in search of three more BRAPA required pubs in the sometimes unforgiving pub territory of West London, it was fair to say that Father and I didn't quite know where we were...
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BRAPA - Ashbourne Thrilla' : Derbyshire Beginnings
It was a brave new start as 'Cambridgeshire became Derbyshire' (as the Spice Girls so nearly once sang) and it was time to get cracking on a new county.I say 'new' county as though I'd never visited a...
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BRAPA - Rock Around the 'Ock(brook)
Saturday 2nd March and I was half way through my first 'official' BRAPA trip to Derbyshire. The Standing Order Wetherspoons in Derby had been good, the Smiths Tavern in Ashbourne very good, the Old...
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BRAPA - Anything Elsecar to Add?
Elsecar. One of those places in the U.K.with a special place in my black BRAPA heart. It's only a small town. You turn out of the station, you walk down the hill, there are four cracking real ale...
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BRAPA - Feed the Beeston He Will Score : BRAPA Confessional
Confessing my BRAPA sins at the Crown, BeestonMy first Nottinghamshire pub ticks since New Year's Eve 2016 were had on Saturday in Beeston (not to be confused with the terrorist hotspot near L**ds)....
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BRAPA - Norwich Without a Glitch* (Part 1 of 2)
Me at St George's Green, morning after the matchAs soon as the football fixtures were published last June, one of the first things I did was marked a Wednesday night in Norwich as a 'two day off work...
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BRAPA - Norwich Without a Glitch* (Part 2 of 2)
Slow news day in Norwich? BRAPA feature? Yes!Welcome back friends.It was Wednesday night in Norwich and Hull City had just lost 3-2* to the league leaders, no great disgrace, just a shame we can't...
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BRAPA - Matlock, Taking Stock and Two Smoking Beer Barrels
(Adopts Gary Lineker voice ....) "Derbyshire started the day in 14th place in the BRAPA league table, but a six pub victory could see it climb as high as 10th by the end of the day. Your commentary...
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BRAPA - Taking Shelter in Belper on my Drunken Helter Skelter
"When you take the 'beer' out of Belper, what are you left with? An L.P., that's what" as the famous phrase goes across Mid-Derbyshire (which I've probably just made up).But before we get on to that,...
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BRAPA - Derbyshire III : The First Cutthorpe is the Steepest (Pt 1/2)
I'm progressing nicely with Derbyshire at the moment, leading me to wonder whether I could actually finish 'ticking' the county and its mainly wonderful GBG pubs before the 2020 edition drops through...
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BRAPA - Derbyshire III : Beers of a Clowne
As we pulled up at our fourth of six pubs on Saturday past, the group of dangerous looking blokes smoking in the car park under the pub sign provoked a rare BRAPA reaction in both myself and Dad,...
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BRAPA - The Stockton Darlings Ale-Way Adventure (Part 1/2)
Tribute to the late Ruby the Cat, seen here not enjoying her Kelham Island"I thought you were on the wrong train for a minute .... I misread your ticket as STOCKPORT!" says the jolly train guard on...
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