Beer-related travel, at home and abroad, exploring and indulging my passion for beer.
Before we start, I promise there is no AI involved in the drafting of this post, just good old-fashioned, hard slog on the keyboard. That is apart from me using the CAMRA pub website, for useful and relevant facts, figures and other relevant information, intended to convey a visual images) of the pubs concerned. I therefore trust that readers will find, what is in effect, a guide to five of…
I mentioned in the previous post, that I was off to Frome , the following weekend. It was for a one-day visit to this pleasant, Somerset town, on a visit that would be the first for me. The trip had been a long time in the planning, involving several changes of dates between inception, and the event actually changing place, but the one constant was we would be visiting a number of pubs in the town…
It's been quite a hectic week at least by my standards, whatever they're measured against these days, where I accomplished quite a lot both on the home front, and the work front. It seems that the never-ending heat wave is exactly what it says, “Never ending,” and last Sunday weather wise was pretty much the same as it is today another, Sunday , and one where the sun is beating down making the…
Wrexham Lager’s name and brewery have been revived, and the story is a rather fascinating one. The revival began in 2011 , when the Roberts family brought the historic brand back to life after its original brewery closed in 2000 and production ceased entirely in 2002 . The historic Wrexham Lager name was rescued, the brewery rebuilt, and production restarted using original recipes. But what about…
You left our party departing the GBG-listed Rose and heading along to Elgoods brewery for the commencement of the tour. Elgood’s brewery overlooks the river Nene and has an imposing Georgian façade. The building started life as a granary and a mill before being converted into a brewery in the late 1700s. The brewery was acquired by the Elgood family in 1878, and the company is still controlled by…
I mentioned in the previous post about unearthing a “treasure trove” of pub and brewery-related material, which I was sure would prove of interest to blog readers - once I’d knocked it into some sort of shape. I added that much these writings was out of date, and thus no longer relevant to a modern audience, but I’m pleased to report that with a bit of tweaking quite a chunk of these ancient…
So, what should I write about next on the blog? A question I often ask myself at the beginning of the month. The FIFA World Cup has been and gone, and the less said about FIFA, the better, but as the years roll by, it does look increasingly unlikely that I shall witness the national side lift the trophy for only the second time. I’m fortunate to have witnessed England winning the World Cup, sixty…
Brewer’s Fayre, Beefeater, and several other Whitbread restaurant brands are all set to close permanently in early September , with final trading dates confirmed below. The following article gives a breakdown of the reasons behind the closure decision, along with a number of key dates. Basically, Whitbread is shutting all of its stand-alone restaurant brands as part of a major restructuring…
Apologies if this post looks somewhat familiar, as this isn't the first time that it's seen the light of day. I'm re-publishing the article, with the odd tweak here and there, because the last week in July is when one of the world's best beer festivals takes place. I'm talking about Annafest ; a folk festival, that attracts around 500,000 visitors each year over the course of the 10-day event.…
The sharp eyed amongst you, will almost certainly have noticed a distinct change in style with my most recent post. Some might be thinking this isn’t Paul’s normal style, and others might be wondering why this sudden change? You would of course, be right, and the answer lies with Microsoft Copilot , a generative artificial intelligence chatbot. Now that might not mean a lot to some of you, and it…
There’s something quietly satisfying about meeting an old friend in a familiar corner of Kent. A couple of weeks ago, my friend - now living out on the eastern side of the county - and I arranged one of our semi-regular catch-ups. We settled on Lenham, a village almost perfectly placed between us, and one with just enough pubs to make an afternoon disappear very pleasantly. I opted for public…
Despite three intense heatwaves in rapid succession, it’s been nice and cool at our factory. This is because we’ve spent a small fortune over the years installing air-conditioning throughout the premises. So much so that it’s almost a pleasure calling in at the office – almost, but not quite! I had to call in last Saturday morning though, to oversee an outdoor project, that involved having our…
Exactly a week ago, I was in Tonbridge mid-morning, having left my car at one of the local garages, for a re-gas of the air-conditioning system, of all things. It was Mrs PBT’s idea to address the issue of the failing air-conditioning, even though she is not a regular occupant in the passenger seat, but with a week or more into the third heatwave of the summer, I had to admit that the prospect of…
In the previous post, you left me at the Royal Standard, where I’d just received an update to the itinerary, from the CAMRA group I was travelling with. Consequently, I drank up and made my way towards the Jenny Lind . The pub was only a couple of streets away, which meant I actually arrived at this well-known Hastings establishment in advance of my companions. The group’s arrival, coincided with…
At the start of 2026, I made an all too brief visit to the historic, seaside town of Hastings , a settlement situated on the sunny south-east coast of Sussex and famed for a battle that took place 960 years ago. The Battle of Hastings took place between the Anglo-Saxon forces of Harold Godwinson , and the French- speaking invaders, of Duke William of Normandy. Both Harold and William had a claim…
I’m getting behind with my posts again, although I shan’t bore you with what’s been keeping me from blogging. I’m part way through a write up of last Fridays’ day at the seaside, aka a day out in Hastings with West Kent CAMRA , but with six pubs involved, there’s a fair amount of detail to plod through. Instead, I want to reflect briefly on the passing at the age of 81, of Humphrey Smith, the…
A recent comment, on Retired Martin’s blog, about sitting next to someone on a plane, whose country is at war, reminded me of a polar opposite experience that occurred on our not so recent, cruise to Norway. Martin mentioned about being seated next to a Ukrainian national, whereas my experience involved a person representing the other side in the appalling conflict that is continuing between two…
The Greyhound at Charcott isn’t the nearest pub to where I work, although it is the second closest. It’s a 10–15-minute stroll away, with a choice of two routes, one of which means keeping one’s wits about oneself due to the way drivers treat a country lane, as a racetrack. That road is known as Camp Hill, and I imagine here that the name refers to a former gypsy encampment, rather than the former…
Pub visits have been somewhat curtailed over the past week, for a variety of reasons, most of which have been family related. There’s also been quite a lot of boring, DIY – home improvement projects going on, nothing major, but still time-consuming and not the stuff that people will necessarily want to read about. On the plus side though, there are a number of out of town * events on the horizon,…
Well, it’s good to be back in harness once more, if that’s the right word, but the issues I had in trying to access my Blogger account , were enough to try the patience of a saint. In the end, the problem boiled down to a conflict between my username and my chosen password, where just one digit was incorrect. I’d spotted it, but wasn’t sure how to rectify the problem, and when, after numerous…
This isn’t a new blog post, although it is a sightly re-jigged one, and my prime purpose in publishing it is to check that my numerous attempts to access my Blogger Dashboard have been successful. In effect it’s a test post, based on a Word document I produced last summer, relating to the Beer & Pubs Forum visit to the Hampshire town of Farnham. As it’s a test piece, I make no apologies if some of…
It's a case of two steps forward, and one step back at the moment, but the main thing is I'm moving in the right direction. The good news - the two steps forward, is my desktop has been repaired, and is now back up and running, faster and more efficiently than it was before it gave up the ghost, and crashed. It's a while ago now, but looking back that incident occurred around Easter time, and was…
I'm going to Shoreham for the day this Saturday , I told Mrs PBT's, little thinking that my good lady wife was thinking that I meant the seaside town of Shoreham, in West Sussex. I quickly put her right, and explained that I was off to the much smaller and much less well-known Kentish settlement of Shoreham, a delightful village in the idyllic setting of the Darent Valley , which runs in a…
I mentioned, in the previous post that in my quest to track down a drop of cask Doom Bar, the beer that was the subject matter of the article, I had called in at the one Tonbridge pub where I thought I'd be guaranteed of finding a pint of this once legendary Cornish brew. The pub in question was the Station House, a pub that in its heyday, had been known as the South Eastern, the name coming from…
"Never say never" , no, this is not another article about the former Hilden Manor, Beefeater restaurant, that recently reopened under the above title, instead it's more of a post in which yours truly ends up eating a rather large slice of humble pie! To cut a long story short, the article boils down to a beer that many drinkers are familiar with, and a brand that had been the best-selling cask ale…