Walking. Gossip. Travel.

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  • London – City of London – Old Bank of England Pub

    London – City of London – Old Bank of England Pub

    London is a strange place at the moment to establish when and where it will get busy. Usually when I’m walking down Fleet Street and this part of the city, pubs would be pretty packed out in the evening. I walked by this pub and thought it looked interesting, but also thought it might be one of those decadent food pubs who hardly wanted someone in there for a quick pint before their train home. But, whilst merrily walking by and already having pre-judged it, I checked CAMRA’s Whatpub and discovered that it was in the Good Beer Guide. So I walked back again, trying to not look like a confused tourist.

    I had guessed the bit about decadent correctly. However, it wasn’t a gastropub at all as I had thought it might be, although their pies are apparently pretty decent. The building was from 1888 until 1975 used by the Bank of England as their Law Courts and then it was for a while used by a building society, before it was used for a much better purpose, as a pub. The building once had gold bullion in its cellars and the Wikipedia page for the building notes that it might have held the Crown Jewels for a time.

    Going back to the pies that I just made reference to, the pub themselves mention that it’s located between where Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovett operated (or allegedly operated since it’s likely entirely made up), noting:

    “It was in the tunnels and vaults below the present building that his victims were butchered before being cooked and sold in the pies to Mrs Lovett’s unsuspecting customers”.

    What a lovely selling point for the pies today…..

    The service was professional and efficient, although it seemed slightly over-staffed, so maybe they had been expecting more customers. It got a little bit busier during my visit, but nothing that was going to be a challenge for the staff to cope with in terms of the numbers.

    It’s a pub run by McMullen brewery, so it had their beers in, which is fair enough for their perspective, but gives less incentive for me to return to try something new.

    Slightly mispoured, but by no great margin as I think this was a lined glass, but the beer range was slightly less riveting. I had half a pint of the AK and half a pint of the Country, which were both well kept and tasted fine, but they were perhaps just a bit routine. The Country had some interesting flavours, not least being biscuity as promised, and I like that clean taste. The prices were actually quite moderate (and looking through the food menu, they were reasonable too given the location), fortunately not matching the decadent surroundings.

    One unfortunate omission is a photograph of the double decker bus that they’ve managed to move into their beer garden. I was going to take a photo from the beer garden after leaving the pub, but it transpired you now need to go through the pub, and I decided against meandering around the building again looking for it. But it’s worth Googling this double decker bus they’ve managed to position into their central London location.

    All in all, I’m pleased I popped into here before my train back to sunny Norwich, certainly a memorable interior and the staff were friendly. Maybe I’ll come back for one of their pies at some point…..

  • GeoGuessr 3 – The Story

    GeoGuessr 3 – The Story

    As I posted yesterday, I’ve decided to restart the GeoGuessr ‘adventures’ that I was going on, as I really rather enjoyed them. In short, it’s using the GeoGuessr web-site to find a random location in the UK and then going there. The reason is to see what stories can be told about any random place in the UK, as I am a little obsessed with random things. The plan was that I’d generate a new location and then plan how I was going to get there and who with.

    Then, something slightly bizarre happened with my first choice. It was located within 0.6 miles away from Paddington railway station, where I needed to go today anyway. I’m taking that as the universe’s message to tell me to get on with these. That’s the uplifting upside, but the downside is that it also means that it’s bloody difficult to tell a story when walking such a short distance, so this is my best effort. Don’t expect War and Peace….

    The starting point I decided on was where I needed to be anyway, which is Paddington railway station. The railway station was first opened in 1838 and the present Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed structure was completed in 1854.

    The GWR trains, but unfortunately the Great Western Railways branding will soon be going to be replaced apparently with Great British Railways, a name with simply no heritage attached to it at all. It sounds like it’s being rebranded in honour of Michael Portillo and his television series. Anyway, I won’t get distracted with politics.

    The not unimpressive station clock. The station is the busiest I’ve seen it in some time, although it was hardly packed with passengers during my visit. Things seem to be slowly returning to some form of normality on the rail network, but there’s still some way to go.

    Paddington wouldn’t be Paddington without the bear….. This is apparently in usual times very hard to get a photo as children want to sit by it, as this is the location where the bear was discovered by the Brown family in the Paddington film. I suspect my friend Liam’s eldest child might be a bit too old to want to see this, but the younger two might well be convinced for it to be included as part of a day trip to London (via McDonald’s, the cable car, the Houses of Parliament and wherever else children want to go, or at least, where I think children should go to learn about beer, history and fast food). Anyway, I digress.

    The Great Western Railway War Memorial which was unveiled on Armistice Day in 1922 by Viscount Churchill, who later became the longest serving chairman of GWR. There’s a page just about the war memorial on Wikipedia.

    It’s possible to leave the railway station from the rear, which gives access to some underground platforms, and also to the Grand Union canal, which I thought I’d meander along for a bit.

    I’d never noticed these heritage photos of the railway before.

    I like this one in particular, with the planks visible that were helpfully placed to allow residents to get to their front door during the construction of the underground. It doesn’t look ideal and I can think of some friends who would likely fall straight off those planks into the abyss below.

    This is the Darcie & May Green, a barge designed by Sir Peter Blake which is used as a restaurant or bistro type arrangement.

    This whole area is quite vibrant and I’ve never been to this part of London before, so it’s new to me.

    A bridge over the Grand Union Canal, which is 137 miles long (the canal, not the bridge) and stretches from Birmingham to London.

    There were two sculptures here by Sean Henry, and I’ve seen one of his works before in Holland Park. The two figures look at each other along a long strip of paving, which looks like it rather gets in the way of the nearby restaurant’s seating. A good talking point though.

    There was a lot of bubbling at this point of the canal which seemed odd.

    A sign explained what was going on……

    Not a “wildlife jacuzzi”, but I like that phrase.

    This all felt a little continental, or it would have done if the weather wasn’t quite overcast. There were families having picnics and the more wealthy (or more frivolous families) were dining on board the restaurant boats that are moored up here.

    The area is known as Little Venice and as the sign suggests, it’s not clear whether this name was thought up by Robert Browning or Lord Byron. At that point I left the canal and walked a short distance along Westbourne Terrace Road.

    This property on Westbourne Terrace Road has a plaque noting that the author Margery Allingham (1904-1966) lived here between 1916 and 1926.

    The area around here was all a bit, well, roady, for my liking.

    And here we are at the destination already and I slightly risked life and limb to get this photo. It’s the best that I can get under the circumstances, although the underground sign on the right isn’t quite visible. It’s near enough to the spot of the random location that GeoGuessr served up though, so I was content with the state of affairs I had managed to deliver.

    The entrance to the Royal Oak underground station and I’m actually not sure I’ve ever got on or off here before, which must be one of the very few underground stations within Zones 1-4 I can write that about. Based on that, this destination was a little bit of a voyage of discovery, albeit quite a small voyage.

    The station is located on the Circle Line and also on the Hammersmith & City Line, having first opened on Monday 30 October 1871.

    The station was named after the nearby pub the Royal Oak, but a little annoyingly for the rail company, that then changed its name and it’s now known as the Porchester. Today, the station is a two platform affair with a central staircase going to the main station hall. However, when it was first built there were three platforms, something long gone due to a reconfiguration required for the mainline services into Paddington.

    Not much of particular note, but this is the underground’s station central platform. This could have become a more important transportation location recently when there were plans to move the coach station from its cramped and inadequate accommodation at Victoria into a larger purpose-built site. The neighbours didn’t seem delighted and it’s also not really that well linked into the city centre, so I’m not sure that it was ever that good an idea.

    The closeness of Paddington is evident here, the six railway lines which run into and out of the mainline station.

    And so that was that. OK, it rather lacks the depth of excitement that the two previous GeoGuessr expeditions had. I also couldn’t find any nearby pubs that didn’t seem to be gastropubs mainly serving food, so I couldn’t pop into anywhere obvious for a quick drink.

    I’m not entirely sure that this mini expedition gave me any new outlooks on life either, but at least it was an easy adventure to organise, even though it wasn’t particularly adventurous. But, it at least gets my little series of GeoGuessr meanders back up and running.

    Anyway, the next thing to do was to generate a new location for GeoGuessr 4. And I managed to get a location near Banbridge which is in Northern Ireland. Under the rules we’d set for previous ones, we were rejecting Northern Ireland for the moment (due to the difficulty in getting there in a weekend).

    So, this is the second location. I know exactly where this is (not through the image above, but by scrolling about) but I’m fairly sure that no-one else will. As a clue, it’s 2 hours 58 minutes from Norwich by car, or 16 hours by public transport, involving five bus journeys. This could be quite an adventure to get there….. How lovely.

  • London – Southwark (Borough of) – Hawkes Cidery (Wasted Apples)

    London – Southwark (Borough of) – Hawkes Cidery (Wasted Apples)

    I’ve written about Hawkes Cidery on the Bermondsey Beer Mile before, but I hadn’t noticed this warning about food waste before. Every second the UK wastes enough apples to create 3.5 pints of cider and that certainly does feel like a crime….

  • London – Camden (Borough of) – The Hardy Tree

    London – Camden (Borough of) – The Hardy Tree

    This ash tree is located in St. Pancras Old Church, located just a short walk away from St. Pancras railway station. And the railway is relevant here as in the 1860s a new line was needed which ploughed straight through the middle of the church’s graveyard. A decision was made to carefully move all of the bodies to another location, but that meant there were a big heap of gravestones that needed to be dealt with.

    The task of dealing with this problem was given to Arthur Blomfield (1829-1899) who was a leading architect who designed and modernised countless churches and other buildings. Blomfield really didn’t want to deal with the moving of the bodies (which all ended up together in a large hole), or indeed the moving of the gravestones either, so he gave that little task to his assistant Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Fortunately, Hardy is now better known for his literary achievements later on in his life rather than moving bodies and gravestones around.

    Since Hardy’s time, the tree has become bigger and started to almost take on the gravestones as part of its own growth. The stones have been preserved, but they will likely never be moved from their location, which brings an interesting question about whether it was a useful preservation. It has though become a little bit of a tourist attraction and there’s now fencing around the area to stop people even getting up as close as the iron railings around the tree.

    I think it’s quite majestic, putting aside the caveat that I like gravestones to be accessible and readable. I note that there are quite a number of tombs in the current graveyard and although I don’t know, I suspect that these were moved with rather more care than the individual gravestones were. Wealth can be a very useful thing, even in death.

    This whole burial ground has had a slightly traumatic history as not only have many of the bodies been removed for the railway, many were also removed in the early nineteenth century by body-snatchers wanting to sell cadavers to medical schools.

  • GeoGuessr – Starting Again…..

    GeoGuessr – Starting Again…..

    One of the little side projects that I greatly enjoyed was randomly selecting locations using GeoGuessr and then going to them. When Nathan and I were doing this, our rule was that we would use the United Kingdom map and then go to wherever the random location was in England or Wales. If it selected somewhere in Scotland, we would skip to the next round, but if we got Scotland again, we’d go as that was what fate was telling us.

    Due to a new arrival, Nathan isn’t doing any more GeoGuessr adventures and so I’ve found some new willing (and probably unwilling and slightly sceptical, but there we go) participants as I can’t let this little project fade away. The joy is to try and tell a story of the journey to a location and be open to whatever experiences come along, and we had a fair few on the two trips we did make, the first to St. Osyth’s and the second to Rugeley. I will select a random location and will then have to pick someone who has the time to go there with me from my little panel of friends. What could possibly go wrong…..

    I consider it bad luck to fix this adventure, so I have to go wherever it says. I have scrapped the third location that we had lined up for early 2020 (before Covid-19 hit), primarily as I can’t remember where it was and that’s not ideal. That means I have just selected a brand new location, and it’s above, click on the image to see it in more detail.

    And, yes, that’s a bloody London Underground sign. I’m in London and I’ve managed to get a location in London. Fate is telling me something, although I don’t know what it is. I didn’t know where the location above was, and congratulations to anyone reading this who does know from just that image, but I was able to move about the map to find out. Given where it is, I might as well just do that tomorrow and I’ll try and add a craft beer bar in to the arrangement as well.

    How exciting! (well I think it is)

  • UEFA Euro 2020

    UEFA Euro 2020

    I don’t burden my limited readership with many posts about football, but even I got some slight excitement when I was at Wembley seeing the preparations for the UEFA Euro 2020 championships (I was there anyway, I hadn’t gone specially….). There were also some people being interviewed which were attracting a crowd, but I didn’t know who they were, so that riveting football chat of mine doesn’t add much to this post.

    Anyway, I might get into the spirit of the whole thing and watch the occasional match at a pub. As long as it’s got decent craft beer….. There was though a real vibe around Wembley at the moment that I haven’t noted on my previous visits, so the excitement must be in the air.

  • London – Islington (Borough of) – Horseshoe

    London – Islington (Borough of) – Horseshoe

    The Horseshoe on Clerkenwell Close in London has, accordingly to CAMRA, been a pub since at least 1748. It’s a corner pub that was operated by Courage and although I didn’t realise at the time I was there how long it had been trading, it did feel like it had a real sense of history.

    This illustration is of a boxing contest that took place in the pub in the nineteenth century and the historical record is littered with events that have taken place here over the centuries. I also quite liked the advert placed by the pub in 1858 advertising for a head barman, with the comment that the applicant must be “a respectable young man whose character will bear the strictest investigation”. Entire books could be written about the history of this pub and I find it slightly magical that it has remained trading for so long.

    The bar today.

    The Brewdog Pale Ale had just run out (although luckily for Des, they had just poured his), so I went for the only real ale that was available, the Seafarers English Ale. The barman warned me that it might be off as a customer had just complained about it and I appreciated the warning and the chance to try it. It’s a tricky position to be in as a customer, as I felt a pressure to judge the pub’s beer keeping ability. But I remembered that a newspaper had called me a “real ale aficionado” a few weeks ago, so I felt ready and able to judge. Unfortunately, I had just eaten my body weight in chicken wings with a harsh sauce, so I suspect my taste buds were pretty much destroyed. I mentioned this to the barman who said, entirely fairly, that this was a bit of good luck. As far as I was concerned, the beer did have a distinctive taste, but I was content it wasn’t off.

    It took me a little while to realise that the television screen was showing the pub’s beer garden rather than some episode of Eastenders or the like. The barman was conversational and welcoming, although it was a shame (for the pub) that it was so quiet inside. I liked the character of the place, this felt like a community pub that someone new to the area could go to and be made to feel welcome. Quite clearly a pub that has a loyal following of customers, it still seemed an environment that wouldn’t scare anyone off.

    The pub is well reviewed, but there are of course some negative ones. One person gave the pub two stars out of five on Google with no comments, leading to what I think is a marvellous response from the pub of:

    “Many thanks for your insightful review. It’s always a pleasure to get a review like this so we know how we have gone wrong and how to fix it. Looking at some of your recent reviews here on Google , it does seem like you have visited many places in the last 24 hours, well done for fitting us in, it seems like everywhere you went you had a bad time, that’s a shame…Happy Christmas, and keep spreading that Christmas cheer.”

    A perfect response as far as I’m concerned, and someone else did the same of leaving two stars and no comment, with the pub on this occasion noting:

    “Many thanks for your very interesting and insightful comments. Luckily we are not the only establishment that manages to be blessed with your almost poetic words of wisdom in your reviews. Many thanks.

    I like that the pub doesn’t take itself too seriously. Although this isn’t a pub that has the greatest selection of craft beer or real ales, it does have a certain charm and genuineness to it. It hasn’t been modernised to death, so I really quite liked it.

  • London – Islington (Borough of) – The Jerusalem Tavern

    London – Islington (Borough of) – The Jerusalem Tavern

    This pub in Britton Street in Clerkenwell was suggested by Des and it was another one of his very good choices. I knew that St. Peter’s Brewery in Bungay had their own pub in London, although I’ve never understood quite why they choose there particularly, and I had meant to visit it at some stage. But I have a long list of places that I want to visit and I’d forgotten where in London it was, so this all worked out rather well. It’s also in the Good Beer Guide as well, so that’s another box ticked (not that I necessarily want my life to be a series of ticks, but there we go).

    As an aside, Rob and I walked by the Brewery last year on one of our little meanders near Bungay. Rereading that post back, where there’s a photo of the brewery, I even noted that I wanted to go to this pub in Farringdon (even though I had forgotten where it was in the intervening few months).

    The pub was busy outside and it wasn’t clear that we’d be able to get a seat inside as it’s not that spacious. Fortunately (well, fortunately for us, perhaps considerably less so for the pub), they were quiet inside and so there was a choice of tables available. They’re running with three different beers on draft from St. Peter’s, although unfortunately nothing dark at the moment, along with numerous other options. They were also doing a pint, scampi and chips for £10 which seemed like quite a decent meal deal arrangement.

    CAMRA’s Whatpub gives some background to the slightly confusing (to me) history of the pub, which they note was opened by St. Peter’s Brewery in 1996. The building was constructed as a shop with a residence above in the early eighteenth century (the pub itself has a date of “anno 1720” on the front) and it has today a Victorian wooden shop-front (visible in the photo above) from the same period, although I’m unsure where that was recovered from.

    Here’s a photo of the shop from 1961, after a long period of it being used as offices and as a shop. I like its current usage the best….

    A not very clear photo of the front part of the pub, which is quirky and different in its design, all adding to the atmosphere. The stand-out drink for me, despite some relatively low reviews on Untappd, was the citrus beer from St. Peter’s, a nice fruit flavour which was simple and as far as I’m concerned is a perfect way of getting five a day. This was previously known as Grapefruit Beer, but that perhaps put people off, hence the name change. I thought the citrus was more refreshing than sharp, so an admirable beer.

    The pub is well reviewed on-line and I like the current table service set-up, although that’s been rather forced out of necessity, with the staff member being able to helpfully remind me what beers they had after I managed to forget by the time it came to order a second drink….. They have had a little difficulty with some of their residential neighbours, which might be why they call last orders at near to 22:00. But, anyway, I liked this pub, relaxed, uncrowded, comfortable and a reminder of the joys of Suffolk where St. Peter’s Brewery is located.

  • London – Lambeth (Borough of) – Brewdog Brixton

    London – Lambeth (Borough of) – Brewdog Brixton

    I’ve been merrily working my way around all the Brewdogs in London and just as I thought I was about to finish that task at Brixton, I discover that Brewdog have a pub near Tower Bridge and have now opened a new bar in Ealing. This journey might take longer than I had anticipated, but I am trying to remain committed.

    I turned up at this Brewdog with a mess of a reservation, of my own making. I arrived an hour early, was far too hot and I had realised I had accidentally booked the limitless cauliflower wings rather than the limitless chicken wings. Fortunately, someone who appeared to be the manager was very forgiving and was able to resolve all the little issues that I had caused before I was even seated (and I walked in the wrong door as well to add to the situation). I’m sure cauliflower wings are probably lovely, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for in a visit.

    The bar wasn’t busy, so I could sit anywhere. It’s a slightly smaller outlet than I had expected for Brewdog, a little more compact than the Norwich one (which doesn’t help many people reading this if they haven’t visited Norwich Brewdog). I’m not sure how well all this fits into Brixton either, which has a character very much of its own.

    The view looking towards the front of the bar.

    The beer fridge and bar area, with a relatively limited selection of cans for a Brewdog.

    This was a delight, the Blackcurrant Trifle from Mad Scientist brewery in Budapest. It’s an imperial pastry gose and the manager at the bar wasn’t wrong when he said it hits you at the back of the throat with the tartness and acidity. But, it’s a beautiful beer and a beer style that I’m starting to enjoy more, I’m liking those sharp flavours. This style of beer was once very popular in Germany and is making something of a comeback, so that’s another reason I’ll have to visit Germany soon.

    The first plate of chicken wings arrived. Unlike when we visited the Norwich bar a few weeks ago, the wings were pretty much on demand here. That was aided by there being nearly no customers, a situation that certainly helped on chicken wing delivery times. They’re not the easiest thing to eat without covering the nearby area with sauce, but they’re always tender and that blue cheese sauce is a little decadent treat. Credit to Brewdog for opening up these bars at the moment, it must be marginal as to whether they’re actually making any money with the number of customers who are out, but hopefully the good times will roll again soon enough.

    And then the Tonkoatko from Brew York arrived, which is an outstanding imperial stout. A common comment on this beer is that it’s like a liquid Bounty bar, because of the chocolate and coconut tastes. A rich mouthfeel and punchy aftertastes of Bounty ingredients, whilst also retaining a sweetness despite it being an 8.5% imperial stout, this was another magnificent beer from Brew York. I’m going to York in a few weeks I will have to investigate their tap room.

    The chicken wings kept coming……

    The engagement from Brewdog staff is very often excellent and this bar was just as friendly as the Canary Wharf branch that we visited a few days ago. Everything was clean, organised and laid-back, a comfortable atmosphere and the best bar that I’m aware of in Brixton. How very lovely.

  • London – Bromley (Borough of) – Charles Darwin Mural

    London – Bromley (Borough of) – Charles Darwin Mural

    It’s a long time since I’ve been to Bromley and I’ve never seen this mural dedicated to Charles Darwin and his work, but it’s an impressive sight. It’s been placed here as Darwin lived for forty years a few miles away, in the Down House in Downe. Darwin might not have strong links to Bromley itself beyond that, but it’s known that he visited the town many times.

    Until 2008, there was a mural dedicated to the life of HG Wells here, with the Darwin one being painted here in 2008 by Bruce Williams. He isn’t entirely forgotten though, and he appears in this mural as well (Wells I mean, not Bruce Williams), on the left hand side. In many ways, it’s a shame that the Wells mural was lost (this wasn’t vandalism, just that the wall needed replastering anyway), as he was born just a few metres away from this location.