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  • Warsaw – PINTA Warszawa Craft Beer

    Warsaw – PINTA Warszawa Craft Beer

    It’s becoming more challenging for me to find a craft beer bar in Warsaw that I haven’t been to, but I persist in my efforts. Since it’s my first day back in Warsaw I visited my favourite bar in the city first, Hoppiness, and was delighted as ever. After that, I made the short walk to PINTA which I understand opened earlier this year. They’re a brewery who have been trading for some years and were apparently the first Polish brewers to have an international collaboration, with O’Hara’s from Ireland. Things seem to be going well for this bar judging by the reviews, they’re nearly all positive at the moment.

    The beer options are chalked up on the board, although they’re also listed at https://pinta-warszawa.ontap.pl/. The server was helpful and I’ve realised how much of my already very limited Polish that I’ve managed to forget. Not that it mattered much in this instance, the server spoke fluent English. In terms of the beer selection, it was excellent with a range of beer styles and the like, all neatly presented.

    This is the upstairs area of the bar, it’s all quite spacious.

    I went for the Kwas Xy sour from Browar PINTA, the brewery who operate this bar. A decent sour, taste of stone fruit and suitably, well, sour.

    I also went for cod bites and these have to be collected from a little hatch upstairs. A little greasy, but they tasted fine, although I tend to like most things in batter (preferably not vegetables, although they taste better in batter).

    This is a decent enough bar, although it was a little sterile since I visited on a Tuesday early afternoon when I was the only customer. Service wasn’t quite as engaging as Hoppiness, but it was polite and friendly, so that was more than good enough for me (and Hoppiness set very high standards). The bar was spotlessly clean, the environment was comfortable and so all really rather lovely. They also opened a bar in Wrocław in 2018, which reminded me that I haven’t been to that city for a few years. All very on-trend though, I’d like to think that there might be a little chain of these throughout Poland in a few years.

  • Warsaw – Fort Mokotów

    Warsaw – Fort Mokotów

    Mostly photos in this post, but I was intrigued by Fort Mokotów as I’ve had a little look at these forts across the city in the past, including Fort V Włochy. There’s not much at this fort, which was originally constructed in the 1880s and then extended within a few years. These structures were built as part of the Warsaw Fortress to defend the city from attack. This one was used to house Polish radio in the inter-war period, which meant that the Germans sought to destroy it early on during the war (before they sought to destroy everything else in this great city).

    Today, there are a number of restaurants and bars located here alongside numerous offices, but there’s not much else. Interesting though.

  • British Airways (London Heathrow T5 to Warsaw)

    British Airways (London Heathrow T5 to Warsaw)

    For the first time in just over a year, I’ve been able to get the chance to return to Poland, something which I’m more than pleased with. That meant a journey from London’s Heathrow T5 into Warsaw Chopin airport with the hope that I had collected together the correct documents.

    I’ve written about the BA T5 Galleries South Lounge before and so won’t repeat that, as not much has changed recently in terms of its operation. Drinks are still self-service, but food needs to be ordered via a QR code and is brought over by staff. The food delights in the morning included the breakfast option of a bacon roll with hash brown, alongside a fruit salad. The lunch-time options included Vietnamese vegetable curry, chicken jalfrezi with lime & coriander rice, beef keema with rice, mixed leaf salad, five bean salad with feta and a black rice, Quinoa & Edamame salad. I went for the jalfrezi and five bean salad, with the former being excellent and the latter being OK but a little short on feta. I’m always content with the quality of the food, but some people inevitably moan about BA’s offering.

    The lounge was though the busiest that I’ve seen it and that perhaps suggests some sort of normality is definitely returning. A couple of customers were completely rude in their dealing with the staff and although I wanted to say something, I thought that no good could possibly come from that. I was able to get one of the high seats by the power points and remained in the lounge for three hours or so, all very relaxing.

    The gate wasn’t called for ten minutes after it was meant to have been, instead it then switched to ‘please wait’. I guessed that this meant it would be departing from A10, the bus gate.

    And here we are, the bus gates. Boarding was well managed and Group 1 and then Groups 1 to 3 were allowed to board first. I’m in Group 2, as I’m not decadent enough to be in Group 1, but that was enough to get on the bus first.

    The bus was a little over-filled I thought (I didn’t photograph that), not in terms of it being dangerous, it just wasn’t comfortable for those who boarded last.

    And time to board, the aircraft was the A320 G-EUYT, which I’ve never flown on before. And I accept that no-one is really bothered about that, but there we go…. The aircraft was brought into service in February 2014 and it has only been used by British Airways.

    I had a seat in the emergency exit row which I like because of the slight extra space, but dislike that my bag has to be in the overhead lockers. For the first time I’ve seen though, a member of cabin crew was guarding the lockers by the emergency exits so that customers could ensure that their bags were placed there and not half way down the plane. Although I boarded early and this didn’t make any difference to me, it did speed up boarding later on.

    The flight was full and I’m not sure that there were any empty seats. The customer next to me arrived towards the end of boarding and started to put his bag on the floor. I was standing up as I was in the aisle seat and let him in, thoughtfully asking him if he wanted to put that bag in the overhead locker. He replied “no” and in my very British way I added “are you sure, it might be easier?” to which he replied “no” again so I sat back down. The customer at the window seat, who seemed perfectly friendly, was more direct and said only slightly gruffly “that bag needs to go in the overhead locker”, at which point I had to stand up again as that more direct approach worked.

    The aircraft was meant to take off at 15:15 and arrive at 18:50, but we took off late due to a delay in the baggage being loaded. We eventually took off at 15:47, but time was made up en route and we arrived at 18:46 (can I add that I didn’t sit and measure that, I took that information from Flight Radar). As an aside, the crew weren’t handing out wipes for customers to clean their seat area as they’ve done over the last year, I’m not sure whether that’s by omission or whether that has been scrapped.

    The on-board catering and I’m happy with this, it annoyed me when they removed it. There’s the option to buy additional items, but I noticed only a handful of people did so. Crisps and water is sufficient for me though, it wasn’t a long flight.

    The fare cost me £30 each way, which I have to say continues to offer excellent value for money, especially given that BA funded lounge access for me before the flight. The crew were friendly, the aircraft was spotlessly clean and the pilots were professional with timely announcements. I have nothing really to fault BA on, I thought that this was a well managed service.

    For those interested, anyone going to Poland at the moment needs to fill in a locator form and have their Covid pass ready, with both being checked. The Brexit arrangements mean that British travellers are inevitably now sent to a different area which all takes longer and passports are now stamped. Some idiotic British passenger (I admit to be judgemental as she was being rude) was lucky to be allowed in as she was complaining that she was being asked where she was staying and why was only she being asked? The member of the Polish Border Guard was calm and helpful, not mentioning that it was because she hadn’t bothered to fill in a locator form. This whole process only took around five minutes though and with that, I was back in Poland. How very lovely.

  • Keighley – The Livery Rooms

    Keighley – The Livery Rooms

    I wasn’t going to write about the Wetherspoons in Keighley, hence no photo of the front of the pub. But I’m in a good mood (although I’m not sure what relevance that is to anything…..) and it’ll help me remember that I’ve been here….

    Firstly, the building itself, I’ll copy the history of the pub from JD Wetherspoon’s own web-site:

    “At the end of the 19th century, ‘first-class, sprung carriages pulled by grays or bays’ were available for hire from the livery stables which stood next to and partly on the site of this Wetherspoon pub. North Street was laid out in 1786, but was not developed until the 1880s, when it was widened and the first of the large imposing buildings was constructed. In the 1890s, this site was partly occupied by a cabman’s shelter at the front and the town hall livery stables at the rear. The stables’ offices were converted into the Regent cinema in 1920, later to become a bingo hall.”

    This is Keighley in 1900 and the Livery Rooms is located where it says ‘hall’ and there’s pretty much nothing else left today other than the free library. The public baths have gone, the Mechanics’ Institute has gone and the streets at the top left of the map have all been swept away.

    Anyway, back to the modern day. I went for a half pint of Broomstick Bitter from Moorhouse’s Brewery, which was well kept, at the appropriate temperature (my friend Nathan always likes me to point that out) and had a perfectly pleasant taste. Service was friendly, although I was inwardly moderately annoyed as there were two of us at the bar when the barman came along and I mentioned the other customer was first, so he correctly served him. After that, he then went to serve someone who had just arrived at the bar, but I was pleased that this new potential interloper at the bar told the barman he wasn’t next, so I was served in turn.

    The pub was unclean and the staff were ignoring the issue, which I mention solely because I routinely note how clean pubs and bars are, so it seems reasonable to mention the reverse. The carpet was flooded with litter and tables weren’t routinely cleared, although the pub was arguably over-staffed. This ties in with the reviews on-line, which are a fair bit below the average I’d expect for a JD Wetherspoon pub, so there are probably some problems here. Anyway, I should have better things to write about than the relative performance of different JD Wetherspoon outlets. Although I probably don’t since I’m writing this. But, I digress.

    Although on the subject of reviews, I noted this:

    “Manger, I am appalled with your service, my daughter and her friends came for tea as they haven’t seen each other since March because of lockdown and you seem to think it’s okay to say they can’t sit in and eat a meal because they are underage.”

    I’ve heard this before when a group of kids come in and try and get served, even if it’s soft drinks, as if it’s somehow not a pub but a McDonald’s. Slightly odder when the parent goes on-line and gives a low rate because the “manger” is following licensing rules….

    I liked this review:

    “We decided to go in at 11.45 as they were closing soon. Just before midnight ovbiously last orders was shouted. I said i’m not getting another as I had about a 1/4 of a pint left. I think we’d had 3 pints whilst there. Straight after within minutes the shift manager Natalie started shouting can you drink up please as she walked past with another staff member Jake. Both looked very stressed out. I merely said ‘Don’t we get 20 minutes drinking up time?’ Which was replied with a very curt no. The next think the friend I hadn’t seen for years started shouting ‘Let’s start a revolution.’ Jake angrily said to the shift manageress ‘Barr them!!!’ I couldn’t believe this, that kid when he first started there a couple of years ago was a star and I told him you’ve ace with the customers. But that night he was a very angry young man. I told my friend to shut up and led him out quickly giving him a bollocking cos they will bar you and that’s my fav pub”

    I’m with the pub as soon as I saw “started shouting”….. But I’m like that, I can’t be dealing with raucous behaviour in pubs.

    What I can’t complain about is being charged £1 for half a pint of decent real ale, so that was very lovely. Friendly staff, but all a bit rickety at the edges and given the times in which we live, the pub should have been at least a bit cleaner.. The pub opened in 2004, but the chain spent £830,000 under two years ago to modernise the venue and that really wasn’t evident and it’s a shame the pub was in a state given that investment. As an aside, it would be remiss of me (even though it wasn’t the pub’s fault) not to mention for the sake of the historic record the horrendous event that received national attention in 2009……

  • Haworth – Mill Hey Brew House

    Haworth – Mill Hey Brew House

    I was tempted into this venue by the name, as anything called a Brew House sounds suitable exciting and worth a visit.

    I was a little disappointed at this point as there were no decent keg options although there were a couple of cask options, the Saltaire Blonde and the Chinook Blonde from Goose Eye Brewery.

    It was spotlessly clean, although I don’t think that it had been burdened by many customers earlier on during the day.

    The Chinook Blonde which is made in nearby Keighley and didn’t meet my expectations. The beer wasn’t good and I think was on the turn, but it remained just about drinkable for me not to send back. It was becoming evident why there were nearly no customers and an examination of their Untappd check-ins showed that there was rarely anything of particular note here in terms of the beer.

    I’m not really sure what customer base this venue is hoping for, but it perhaps needs to rebrand a little and it’s hard to understand their motives as their web-site has been closed. I liked the friendliness of the service, but with no food being served and no beer of note, there’s little that I could say stood out for me here. I understand that beers were brewed here by Mill Hey brewery, but it looks like they’re no longer trading, or at least there’s nothing suggesting that they are. All really a bit bland.

  • National Express : London Victoria Coach Station to Bradford

    National Express : London Victoria Coach Station to Bradford

    I’m posting out of order again (as in not in date order, I’m not being any more controversial than usual) as this was my National Express journey from London to get to the LDWA groups’ weekend being held in Haworth.

    This is the National Express coach that departed from Gate 14 at the always cramped Victoria coach station in London. I was the first to board, not least as I was keen to get to my emergency exit row seat to get about an extra 2.5 centimetres of space. There was a friendly welcome from the drivers, who were switching around at Milton Keynes or somewhere similar given the distance.

    Here we are after having boarded, with the coach being clean and comfortable. National Express seem to be one of the companies who are doing their best to keep their transport clean given the current health crisis.

    And then we sat there for a while….. The driver made an announcement at the departure time that the coach was going to wait on a delayed coach given that there were connecting passengers. He had been told by the control room that the passengers were at the coach station and would be boarding soon, but after numerous delays the driver came on about 15 minutes after departure time and said “control said that we can go without the other passengers”.

    That put us 15 minutes behind, but London was busy and the coach crawled out of the capital slowly and clearly getting behind schedule. I’m surprised that National Express make these schedules so optimistic, as there was nothing that the driver could have done and I’d have thought it’s better to err on the side of caution and expect delays rather than to expect the coach driver to storm the vehicle up the M1. The coach was meant to take just over five hours to get from London to Bradford, but it transpired to be nearer to seven hours by the time that it got there.

    The coach was quiet until Milton Keynes, when it became pretty packed. It was still comfortable enough though and the air vents and power worked as expected, so the temperature was appropriate. The driver did make regular announcements about the delay, so he did what he could and kept everyone informed.

    I was getting picked up at Bradford Interchange to get a lift to YHA Haworth, but it transpired that it was better for me to get off at Leeds and my lift picked me up from there instead. That was handy as it gave me chance to walk to a Head of Steam that I haven’t visited before, but meant I didn’t get to go on the coach all the way to Bradford, and incidentally nor did nearly anyone else and this seemed primarily a service used by customers going to Leeds.

    I would have preferred to get the train from London to Keighley, which is the nearest railway station to Haworth, but that would have cost at least £70 which was just too decadent. This coach journey cost £10 and that seems pretty decent value to me.

  • London – Islington (Borough of) – Travelodge Farringdon

    London – Islington (Borough of) – Travelodge Farringdon

    Not to be confused with the Travelodge King’s Cross Royal Scot, which is located about a two-minute walk down the road, I’ve stayed at this hotel for £24.99 per night over the last two Sundays. It’s about a ten-minute walk from London King’s Cross and a little further from Farringdon station. That situation was particularly ideal as my train into London was arriving at King’s Cross, avoiding me needing to cross London in the late evening. I like walking, but there are no shortages of buses going down the road for anyone with luggage or accessibility issues.

    The double room which was spacious as it had a separate seating area and it was clean, although the carpet in places looked like they’d picked it up out of a skip. Plenty of teas and coffees, a modern looking television (although I didn’t turn it on) and a working air conditioning unit which I think is really quite impressive for a budget chain such as Travelodge. It was easy to control the temperature and I was pleased to make the room nice and cold, with no real noise disturbances internally or externally that couldn’t be expected from a central London location.

    The view from my room, with those windows to the right being the corridor, it wasn’t possible to look into the rooms of other guests. It wasn’t herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain in terms of the view, but I’ve had worse.

    I didn’t realise at the time, but last Sunday I had booked a single room, whereas for the same price this week I had a double room. This size room was fine for me though, but I preferred the larger amount of space.

    Anyway, a perfectly decent hotel with friendly staff, a clean environment and a need for some refurbishment, although I think that this process is now underway. Really though for £24.99 in central London, it’d be hard to expect anything more (well, I suppose they could have given me a Twix, but that’s not something I expected in a Travelodge) so I was really quite pleased with the whole arrangement on both visits.

  • Northern Rail and LNER : Keighley to London King’s Cross

    Northern Rail and LNER : Keighley to London King’s Cross

    After what I thought was a successful LDWA groups’ weekend I meandered down the hill into Keighley to get the train back to London. Here’s the delightful railway station, with the main entrance to the centre of the building (which is entirely logical), but the gateway to the right leads to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, a heritage line which goes from Keighley to Oxenhope via towns such as Haworth. There has been some talk of trying to bring the line back into commuter use, since it is entirely complete and linked into the current network, but no real progress had been made on that.

    I went to the ticket office to collect my ticket from the machine, but there was a queue and so I asked the man at the empty ticket desk if I could collect it there. He helpfully answered:

    “Well, we can do that, but we prefer not to”.

    Really bloody helpful. Anyway, he did print out the ticket and seemed otherwise friendly, but the failing here is the operator Northern not putting in enough ticket machines (I only saw one).

    This station was built in 1883 and replaced a previous station constructed in 1847 which was a short distance away over the road.

    My ticket was to leave Keighley at 17:33 and get into Leeds at 18:05, before going from Leeds at 18:15 and arriving into King’s Cross at 20:28. I’m quite risk averse when travelling so arrived into Keighley railway station early and saw an earlier train arrive which was going into Leeds. I decided I’d go and ask the train guard if I could get on the earlier one to prevent a misconnect (although the real reason is that I wanted to ensure I got a seat on the London train). He answered:

    “Yes and no”.

    I love precision. He said that if I had got on and not asked, the answer was no and I’d be charged a penalty fare. However, he thanked me for asking him and said that I could board and I had his permission to use that service. That caused a slight commotion later on when revenue protection got on, but the guard was true to his word and confirmed my ticket was valid.

    Anyway, they’re clearly very hot on fare avoidance on Northern, they seem to regularly check tickets and I’d advise definitely checking with a guard before doing anything slightly different…..

    This meant that I got into Leeds a good hour before my train to London departed and I was pleased to discover the train actually departed from Leeds, so this would be the first stop.

    Around 30 minutes before the departure time, the Intercity train slides into the platform.

    I then stood outside the train door for ten minutes waiting to be let in. I spend a lot of my time standing outside the doors of public transport.

    Full marks though to LNER for actually having logical carriage letters. Sometimes they’re something similar to A, Z, H, 5, 9, G, P and my ticket says carriage C. This time though I was in carriage E and that was easy to find, not least as I had plenty of time waiting for the doors to be opened.

    And here we go, I boarded first at my end of the carriage and got my reserved seat at a table. A nice guy mentioned that he had a seat next to me on the table for four, but he’d sit opposite so that we had more space and we could both use the power points (which are annoyingly two for every table of four). We were both going from Leeds to King’s Cross and no-one else sat at the table during the journey, so it was comfortable. Incidentally, I’d have problems getting a suitable seat if I hadn’t of caught that earlier train, so I was pleased I had boarded an earlier service.

    The seating reservations had gone wrong though and was effectively just suspended, which seems to happen on nearly every service that I’m on. Other customers, especially those boarding later on, were getting quite distressed at the whole situation with groups broken up and no on-board train staff were seemingly available to help. If LNER can’t cope with seat reservations they’d just be better off scrapping them, but I think even their managers would agree that this sort of thing is low down their list of priorities.

    There were a couple in the four seats opposite us who pretended that the other two seats at their table were taken, which I thought was pretty unimpressive and another case in point of how the current set-up just adds stress to customers rather than making it a smooth experience.

    The ‘let’s eat at your seat’ service which I was surprised to see was working. That is until it broke at Peterborough and an announcement was made that the service was now being withdrawn for the rest of the journey.

    We arrived into London King’s Cross on time, but there were no ticket checks on the train and the gates were left open.

    A slightly blurry photo, but I didn’t want to spend too long outside King’s Cross at night with my phone trying to take photos…. I was entirely happy with the journey for my purposes, with the trains on time and as I boarded early I got my seat reservation at a table and with access to power. Other customers had a less exciting experience split up from their friends and family despite having seat reservations and this whole set-up has to be improved by the rail network if they want to increase usage. Perhaps it needs to be as radical as if the rail company can’t provide the seat booked by the customer then it has to refund the entire ticket in a similar manner to delay repay.

  • Good Beer Guide 2022

    Good Beer Guide 2022

    The Good Beer Guide 2022 edition is now out and the CAMRA app has been updated, so I can see which of my favourite pubs have made a reappearance. My delight is mostly reserved to see that the brilliant Hop and Vine is back in, although I’d have refused to have acknowledged that the book even existed if it hadn’t….. (I admit to copying much of this text from last year, but I did check the Hop & Vine first!)

    Here’s the list of Good Beer Guide pubs that I’ve visited….

    Anyway, the new copy is available at https://amzn.to/3269OCx:

  • Haworth – The Fleece Inn

    Haworth – The Fleece Inn

    Whilst taking part in the LDWA groups’ weekend, I got chance to visit the only Good Beer Guide listed pub in Haworth, the Fleece Inn. I discovered, with some slight annoyance, that it involved walking up a hill…..

    The service was warm and the staff had the problem that the pub was full and they couldn’t seat any more diners, so they had disappoint walk-up guests. I wasn’t eating (since the LDWA weekend had no shortage of food) and I was fortunate enough to get the only table remaining which was quite handy. I was confused by the arrows on the floor and I watched other customers get equally muddled up, so I’m not entirely sure they’ve thought it through. I did see one customer follow the arrows, the other fifty or so didn’t.

    This is a Timothy Taylor pub and the beer options were all from their brewery. There are usually four choices, but the one that I would have gone for had just run out, so I went for the Knowle Spring which was entirely average and quite bland, although well-kept. The one that I had wanted was the Havercake, named in honour of Captain Tom who was brought up in nearby Keighley.

    The food looked of a very good quality and it was reasonably priced, so I can see why it was so busy on a Saturday lunchtime. The pub also has rooms available for overnight guests, so it serves breakfast for its B&B guests as well as walk-in customers. Certainly nothing wrong with the service, I felt very welcome throughout and I liked the immediate greeting from the team member behind the bar. As for the beer, the quality was limited by being from the Timothy Taylor brewery, which is just down the road, which isn’t really as exciting as I’d ideally like. Certainly a nice environment and I suspect it’s a really reliable place to go for food which seems well-run.