It was the start of the new football season, and despite a feeling of concern about our team's prospects for the season, four us had decided to visit our first game, away at Forest Green Rovers, who are based in the small Gloucestershire town of Nailsworth, near Stroud. Following that we were stopping over in Gloucester itself. Here's how the trip unfolded.... Saturday morning started early, with…
I recently revisited one of my favourite towns in the Midlands where there are 5 pubs listed in the 2026 Good Beer Guide within its attractive and fairly compact town centre, making it an ideal spot for a leisurely Saturday afternoon wander.... The journey started out mid-morning in Halifax, which was a bit of a miscalculation on my part as I was catching the Grand Central which was going through…
With a mere two weeks to go before the 2026-27 National League season kicks off a few of our group of Halifax Town supporters went on an away day to discuss our prospects and sample a few beers in a wander around a number of pubs on the fringes of Manchester's Northern Quarter.... We were arriving on a number of different trains, so as I was due to arrive earliest I said I would see everyone in…
CAMRA have brought out a new, words-based, beer scoring system, about which I have my doubts. But alongside that I have just enjoyed what has been almost certainly the best weekend of music in my life. And what's even better is that it was close to home in Halifax. ... Regular readers may have spotted that I often refer to scores in terms of quality for the beers that I have been drinking on my…
This was my first-ever visit to the administrative centre and county town of North Yorkshire, which sits between York and Darlington on the main East Coast railway line. Read on to see what I found.... It was another hot day in yet another spell of above-average temperatures and I had decided to take advantage of Brighouse Railway Station's elevation as replacement for Huddersfield which was…
A few bits and pieces this time around. Lunch at an award-winning pub, some thoughts on the passing of Humphrey Smith, the owner of Samuel Smiths Brewery in Tadcaster, and a return to one of Halifax's most popular pubs a few months into new ownership to see how things are going.... I had visited the Highland Laddie earlier in the year and had decided that when I next visited I would l try some of…
The opening day of a new pub in Manchester provided an excellent excuse to have a wander around what is now another fashionable part of the city, but also one with a rich and fascinating history. And so come and join me and see what I found.... My plans to come to Manchester for a day out were being thwarted at every turn, or so it seemed. The train from Halifax would be half an hour or so longer,…
Keeping on my run of Yorkshire-based blogs, I've just been back to the historic Yorkshire Dales market town of Settle recently where I had a walk around the compact town centre and checked out several of the local hostelries, finding some excellent beer in an unlikely setting.... I had been meaning to re-visit Settle for a while, basically because it's always had one or two pubs in the Good Beer…
A Saturday afternoon wander around the centre of Leeds taking in some familiar old haunts and more recent additions to the city's drinking establishments.... I went to Leeds the other day for a close season catch up over a few beers with some of the lads I go to football with. A trip to Leeds is not unusual for me, but for some of my companions it was a rare visit to a city which for all of us is…
Join me as I take a walk through the warren of streets and narrow alleyways that criss-cross Hull's historic Old Town, during which I visit some of the area's old pubs along the way, many of them having their own fascinating stories.... This was my second visit to Hull this year, having visited one Wednesday back in March with some friends. With it being midweek, one or two of the places I had…
I went on a lovely trip this weekend on as part of the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the opening of the original micro pub in Halifax, the Grayston Unity. We visited two excellent local breweries, first Wishbone in Keighley, followed by Goose Eye near Bingley, travelling by an old Halifax Corporation bus. Here's the story.... The plan for a grand day out had been hatched some time ago,…
I recently got involved in the creation of a special beer to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Grayston Unity in Halifax. Here's the story of the beer from its inception to a pint in the bar.... The idea for a special commemorative beer first cropped in conversation over the bar and a couple of pints at the Grayston Unity early on this year. " What do you think? ", owner…
A visit to a town in a part of the country I love, but not somewhere I had visited before. But in what was only a stop of a few hours, I found a thriving, bustling place with plenty of history, oh, and a few pubs. Welcome to Penrith.... Much as I like visiting places like Manchester, Newcastle, and even London these days, I always like to mix things up in terms of where I go when visiting places…
And just like that, Manchester has yet another new pub, which was good enough reason on a blank Sunday for me to have a wander over there to check it out. Here's what I found when I called there and one or two other places in and around the Northern Quarter..... With very little build-up and seemingly little warning to other than those in the know, a new pub has just opened its doors in…
A final weekend away of the 2025-26 football season saw us heading back down south once again. We had a Friday afternoon wander around a few pubs in the central London suburbs then caught the train to the Surrey town of Woking for an overnight stop before the last game of the season there the following day. Here's how it all unfolded.... The train from Brighouse to Leeds was a few minutes late.…
A return to sample a few different places in what surely has to be one of the best beer towns in the country . I visited a popular micropub, a newly-opened brewery bar, a traditional pub that is a magnet for real ale afficionados, a lovingly-restored community pub, and an excellent brewery taproom. Here we go.... I had been planning to come back to Stockport for a while. All the word seemed to be…
It was the annual Good Friday Day Out which this year saw a group of us visit, for the first time on this long-established event, the North Yorkshire town of Harrogate where we enjoyed a tour around some of the town's finest pubs and bars.... Our well-established Good Friday Day Out is a tradition that started in the West Yorkshire town of Brighouse a good few years before I moved there 25 years…
Following my trip to Hartlepool last time out, I've been back in the North East, checking out a few places I'd not visited in ages, plus a few old favourites. Here's where I went.... The last time I'd visited Newcastle was almost 6 months ago to the day, back in September when I combined a visit to see the family with watching FC Halifax Town's game at Gateshead. A few of us had come up on the…
Another football away trip, this time to Teesside, which gave us the opportunity to pay another visit to a fantastic and famous little micro pub in Hartlepool. Here's how the day unfolded.... It was an early start. I was meeting our Mick and Gaz for the 8.16 from Halifax to Leeds for the first leg of our journey to Hartlepool where FC Halifax Town were hoping to maintain their push for the…
This was my first-ever visit to this proud city at the western end of the West Midlands where I only managed to visit two pubs in what I found was a very welcoming place, but what good pubs they were.... It was bright sunshine and blue skies all the way as I travelled from Halifax via Manchester to Wolverhampton, a journey that took around two and a half hours in total, and this continued to be…
Another post from Manchester where, with my original plans for the day thwarted, I spend an afternoon roaming the city centre and dodging the showers as the weather turns increasingly wet. In doing so I check out a new bar, and visit several other familiar and less familiar places along the way.... I'd stayed overnight in Manchester after the previous night's gig and awoke to a bright sunny…
I've been back over the Pennines and revisited a few old favourite haunts followed by a gig in a new venue on a typically wet Manchester evening. I had a good evening overall, although unfortunately one of the places turned out to be an unexpected let down.... The spots of rain started to appear on the window as soon as my train slipped through the Pennines, somewhere between Walsden and…
A few thoughts on a fairly local and relatively small, independent family brewery who are well known to cask beer drinkers throughout the country for one of their beers, whilst closer to home they have once again been selling off some of their pubs.... As regular readers of this blog may recall, I was conducting some field research in Leeds the other week, and in the resultant write-up I referred…
The first football trip away of 2026 which once again took me to a new town and a new ground, with an excellent night in a busy historic part of the capital following on. Here's what happened.... It was an early start. The taxi dropped me off at Halifax railway station just before 7.30, and not much later my brother joined me after walking there from home. Our train arrived, a couple of minutes…
Welcome to this latest blog, in which I celebrate the return of a couple of historic city pubs under new ownership and direction, and lament the apparent passing of one of Leeds' best-known and long-established pubs.... It was another weekend where trains that would normally be going through Huddersfield from west of the Pennines were being re-routed via the Calder Valley, this time due to ongoing…