Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: UK

  • Berwick-upon-Tweed – Keeping Cool

    Berwick-upon-Tweed – Keeping Cool

    I’m currently in Birmingham, where it is very much too hot. This therefore seems an appropriate time to post this “keeping cool” plaque (clicking on it makes it easier to read) I took a photo of a couple of weeks ago on Bank Hill in Berwick-upon-Tweed.

    In short, this is an ice house and it’s one of the largest that was constructed in Berwick-upon-Tweed to keep fish cool by ensure it remained in ice. Around 1,600 tonnes of ice was needed to fill the ice houses in the town, some of which was collected from the River Tweed during the winter, the rest was from the ‘stanks’, which were specially flooded containers. In really bad years, the town purchased ice from as far away as America and Scandinavia to ensure that the fish, mostly salmon, were kept cool.

    The ice house is Grade II listed and this heritage record notes:

    “This ice house is built into the hillside with a covering of earth acting as an insulating layer. Tapered retaining walls of coursed sandstone with ashlar copings flank the wide approach to the entrance arch with large voissoirs; a modern iron gate has been inserted here.

    The entrance tunnel with barrel vaulted sandstone roof and sandstone rubble walls leads directly to the main chamber; this is 11m long and 7.4m wide with a barrel vaulted roof 7.6m high. Although the tunnel indicates there were at least two doorways, there is currently no surviving evidence of the placement of further doors, which would have acted as an insulating airlock. There are, however, five simple metal hooks on the far end of the tunnel to the right, where bags of straw would have been hung.

    The floor is understood to be cobbled throughout, although the majority was covered with silt at the time of inspection. There is a doorway on either end of the main chamber near the ceiling, however, shadowing is all that remains of the staircases that once led to them. There are small brick partitions projecting from the end wall, presumably relating to its later use as a cellar.”

    I like that this has survived and no-one has converted into a cellar or something, it’s a little bit of the town’s fishing heritage that remains as a reminder of the fishing heritage of Berwick-upon-Tweed. And, given how hot is now, I wouldn’t mind standing next to some ice at the moment…

  • Gateshead – The Tilley Stone

    Gateshead – The Tilley Stone

    This is from a visit I made a couple of weeks ago (my posting out of order does make it all a little confusing) when I was in Gateshead. I did look at visiting a Good Beer Guide pub there, but there is only one which was the Station East and that was shut. So, without too much disappointment, I headed instead to the JD Wetherspoon outlet that is The Tilley Stone. It’s an interesting name, with JD Wetherspoon explaining their pub is named after two coal seams:

    “Tyneside and coal went hand in hand for centuries, with many mines in and around Gateshead. The ‘Five Quarter’ seam was worked at the Derwent and Gateshead Fell pits and the ‘Three Quarter’ at Dunston Colliery. The ‘Tilley’ and ‘Stone’ seams were also worked at Dunston. The wooden staithes at Dunston were built in 1893 for loading coal onto ships and continued to be used until the 1970s. Now restored and a listed monument, they form reputedly the largest wooden structure in Europe and a reminder of the busy days of the ‘Coaly Tyne’.”

    The beer options here were really rather impressive. There’s the pint of Brewdog Punk IPA which came with the chicken wrap, that was of the usual perfectly acceptable standard. In the photo to the left of the Punk IPA is Maximus from Maxim Brewing, a well above average ale. But it was the Raspberry Porter, also from Maxim Brewing, that I thought was particularly notable (it’s the second photo, of the beer on its own). It was a drinkable and creamy stout, with a strong flavour of raspberry running through it, both as an initial hit and as an aftertaste. For a beer that cost me £1 for half a pint, I thought that this was exceptional.

    Just for completeness (and for no other reason really), a photo of the southern fried chicken wrap….. The reviews of this pub are mixed, as they usually are for JD Wetherspoon outlets. Some are judgemental such as “was a decent pub when it first opened. Now it just seems to attract the dregs of society“, but most are about slow service or average food.

    As a pub, this was a sufficiently well-run location for my requirements with several real ales available, as well as numerous craft beers. Service was efficient, the pub was relatively clean and everything seemed organised. Based on this experience, I’d say that this is an omission from the Good Beer Guide, especially as so many JD Wetherspoon outlets are listed.

  • London – Islington (Borough of) – Grave of Joseph Grimaldi

    London – Islington (Borough of) – Grave of Joseph Grimaldi

    I came across this grave by chance at the weekend in what is now known as Joseph Grimaldi Park, but which was once the burial ground of St. James’s Church. For anyone interested in visiting, it’s about a ten minute walk from King’s Cross St Pancras railway station, just walk along Pentonville Road.

    Here’s the church from 100 years ago, but that’s now gone (demolished in the 1980s) and the churchyard has been turned into a park which seemed to be a sea of litter when I visited. A few graves remain, most notably that of Joseph Grimaldi who is considered to be one of the people who has most influenced the clown and their performance methods. There is also an artwork in the park where apparently if you dance, then it’ll play some music or something. I didn’t fancy giving that a go to be honest….

    At least the renaming of the former churchyard in honour of Joseph Grimaldi means that his grave isn’t forgotten, although sadly many of the other graves here have now become rather neglected.

  • London – Hackney (Borough of) – Brewdog Dalston

    London – Hackney (Borough of) – Brewdog Dalston

    This is Brewdog Dalston and my visit here on Sunday evening means that I’ve now been to every location that this chain operates in London. Richard was down again for another one of his decadent business trips, so I dragged him along with me. This bar is Brewdog’s first vegan only outlet, which I thought made it quite an innovative and intriguing place to visit to see how that played out.

    It wasn’t busy in the bar, let’s just say that. The welcome was friendly and prompt and we could sit anywhere in this nicely air conditioned interior.

    This is the downstairs bar, which wasn’t needed during our visit.

    The decor is, as usual, quirky which is part of Brewdog’s style. It’s hard for chains to pull that off without it feeling formulaic, but there is an on-trend feel to the arrangement which isn’t forced.

    Richard wasn’t thrilled with the vegan menu, but I had eaten which meant I didn’t have any challenges in this regard.

    I went through five different beers, all served as thirds as I’m not that decadent to buy things in pints or halves. The second image above is the Made For Us by Yonder Brewing and that was my favourite drink of the evening. I’m now very much into sours and this was certainly that, but it had such a rich raspberry taste, aroma and feel that it packed quite a powerful first punch. In the background, there was violet, meaning that the aftertaste was effectively Parma Violets. That combination worked very well for me, a merging of two very different flavours and this is a drink that I’d merrily have again (despite my tendency to always want to try new beers).

    The service was always polite, but it lacked the engagement that we’ve seen from some other Brewdogs in the city. No real conversation about the beer or attempts to make recommendations, but, as I’ve noted before, some Brewdog outlets set the bar so high that it’s hard for others to match them. Nothing negative though, we were always made welcome and the bar environment was clean, comfortable and relaxed.

    The reviews are all pretty positive, although there are a few complaints that it’s not clear that the bar is vegan only. They take bookings for Wings Wednesday which I can see adds to the confusion, as they offer a vegan version of unlimited chicken wings. Other complaints include:

    “Not welcome here! Dalston is about independent businesses and this is just some more chain homogenised rubbish with no vibe.”

    I’ve met very few pub owners who go with this line of logic, although I’m sure that there are some. Like the rather lovely craft beer bar in Newcastle that I went to a couple of weeks ago next to a Wetherspoons, the large chain can drive customers to their smaller neighbours. Brewdog can set the stage for other craft beer bars to open and improve the options available in the locality. An area can become known for having excellent craft beer which benefits those who like chains and those who like independents. I like both types, they offer different experiences and one isn’t always better than the other, but they can work together really rather well.

    It’s handy that we visited when we did, as the bar announced yesterday that it was temporarily closing. I think a combination of Covid factors have caused that, it has also meant I can’t visit the Birmingham Brewdog this week as that’s closed as well. Challenging times for the hospitality industry….. Anyway, the vegan only situation didn’t negatively impact on the beer range and I liked that some real thought had gone into the food menu to ensure it was still a destination that people would go and get food at. Something of a shame that my tour of Brewdog bars in London has come to an end, hopefully they’ll open some more.

  • Birmingham – A Diversity Monument by Luke Perry

    Birmingham – A Diversity Monument by Luke Perry

    This rather lovely sculpture has only been in Victoria Square in Birmingham for a couple of weeks and the signage notes that it has been commissioned for a television series which will be launched later this year. There are 25 different steel figures who are together all pulling the city of Birmingham’s crest, a different way of looking at diversity and inclusion. It was designed by Luke Perry and the steel fabrication was completed at a metalworks factory in Cradley Heath.

    I liked the key messages of the sculpture, namely “No-one is here without a struggle” and “We all came here from somewhere”. I’m rather engaged with this sculpture as although the message behind the artwork is clear, individuals can interpret it as they wish as everyone has their own struggles and challenges. Apparently this is a temporary artwork, but I hope that it goes somewhere else in the public realm so that it can be seen for a longer period of time.

    There are more artworks from Luke Perry’s company, Industrial Heritage Stronghold at https://www.ihsartworks.com/.

  • Birmingham – Colmore

    Birmingham – Colmore

    There aren’t, unfortunately, that many Good Beer Guide listed pubs in the centre of Birmingham that I haven’t already visited. I’ll explore some others instead (there is a world of decent pubs not listed in the Good Beer Guide after all), and perhaps go further afield, but I haven’t been to this one before, formerly the Birmingham Tap.

    There’s a grand bar and there are QR codes at the table so that customers can see what’s available. I visited on the first “Freedom Day” and they’re taking orders at the bar again rather than offering table service, although I suspect they’d offer it on request as the staff seemed very keen to engage. The beers are mostly from Thornbridge Brewery, which is rather lovely as I rate them highly and have visited their taproom.

    The interior has been renovated to a high standard in what was formerly a branch of Lloyds Bank.

    I decided to go initially for two half pints, this is the Lord Marples which is a drinkable bitter with some hints of toffee.

    Quite a nice little quiff arrangement on the Green Mountain and I enjoyed this, refreshing, rich and with a suitably fruit finish to it.

    Since I liked the pub so much, I decided to order another half, this time the McConnel’s, which I thought was a really decent stout that was creamy, rich and there was some coffee in there as well (in flavour, they didn’t dump an espresso in). There’s meant to be raspberry in there as well, but I was struggling to pull that flavour out, which is likely a defect of mine rather than the beer.

    As for the service in the pub, it was conversational, engaging and warm. I liked how they told me that McConnel’s was a bit of a curse, as they’ve put it on twice over the last year and then the lockdown came the week after on both occasions. Apparently it wasn’t poured down the drain as a staff member was able to have it, although he is now no longer drinking it, which is understandable give too much of a good thing and all that. All of the staff members were welcoming and there’s a nice community feel to this place. There’s a food menu which is mostly based around pizzas, and I might well meander back at some point to try that.

    All told, I very much liked this pub and I’m pleased that the Good Beer Guide sent me here. Understandably, it’s well reviewed on-line, although someone was annoyed they were charged £12 for a large gin & tonic and a pint of beer. That seems perfectly reasonable for pub standards, and I can see why they were a little annoyed (but polite) in their response.

    Anyway, another early contender to be my favourite pub of the year   🙂

  • Birmingham – ibis Styles Birmingham Centre

    Birmingham – ibis Styles Birmingham Centre

    I was a little nervous of visiting this hotel, given how much I had to complain about in the terrible Ibis Styles Seven Kings hotel in London over the weekend. Incidentally, the promised communication from the general manager from there unsurprisingly didn’t happen, but that’s no surprise. Anyway, moving on from that disaster, I was hoping not to find another problem hotel. There comes a point where it would become clear that the problem was me, not the hotel.

    As a TLDR, this hotel in Birmingham is much better. The welcome at reception was authentic, smooth and efficient, with the welcome drink proffered without my asking for it. Lots of information about the hotel and the staff member was conversational, so my first impressions were positive.

    The rooms here all appear to be the same size, but reception mistakenly gave me a room they’d made up for a family.

    I fixed that. The room has some faults, but it’s a few years old and I suspect it’ll get renovated in the next few years. The windows don’t open, which I don’t like, but there are vents which mitigate the problem somewhat. There aren’t power points by the bed, but that’s a legacy of when the hotel was designed. It was otherwise clean and it has a desk, which I consider to be an essential in a hotel room (unlike the designers of the Ibis Styles Seven Kings, which I feel I might keep mentioning).

    The main light was flickering, but I reported that they had a bit of a broken bulb to reception and they had it fixed by the time I came back. The air conditioning is also central, with no way for the customer to cool or heat the room, which is absolutely not ideal either, but the temperature has been OK for me.

    The drinks selection was though inadequate, a choice of Bud and Corona is not much use to me and there should be a nod towards something local. By chance, a guest asked when I was there if they had any real ale and the polite staff member sent them to the pub next door. The hotel should offer bottled real ale here, this is in my view an omission which is easily fixed.

    I like these and I wouldn’t have expected those early times to be so quiet. I don’t like a breakfast with ambience, I like one with no people, so I went down at 07:15.

    The breakfast area, which is partly served by staff and partly self-service. Now that “Freedom Day” has gone by, I wonder how long these staffed sections will remain, but it was all efficient and well managed.

    And there we go. All fine and everything at the appropriate temperature, with the environment being spotlessly clean. Those pain au chocolate are generic, but I quite liked them with the above average machine coffee that they had. Incidentally, the breakfast is included and that used to be the case at more Ibis Styles, but Accor seems to have removed that as a requirement from the brand which is a shame.

    Unfortunately, the hotel has below average reviews, which is a shame given the friendliness of the staff. The problem is evident when looking at the detailed scores on Google, the location gets 4.8/5, the service gets 4.6/5 and the rooms 2.9/5, so it’s clear that a refurbishment would be better sooner rather than later. Problems seem to be mostly be about air conditioning, a lack of openable windows and slow wi-fi (it is quite slow as I checked) which with the exception of the latter they are likely to be difficult to fix now. There are very few negative reviews about the staff, so at least customers feel welcome and that’s important.

    I’m still here for a couple more days, but I’m not expecting any debacles, which means this is a hotel that I’m perfectly happy in. I got this as part of the Accor ‘three nights for the price of two, with free breakfast’ offer at the beginning of the year, although it’s the only one that the chain didn’t ultimately cancel due to some of their hotels still being closed. Anyway, it’s a relief not to have two bad hotels in a row (not that I get many hotels that I consider bad anyway).

  • Chiltern Railways : London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill

    Chiltern Railways : London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill

    I can’t recall travelling with Chiltern Railways before, but they offered a £12 fare to get from London Marylebone to Birmingham Snow Hill, which seemed excellent value to me. Marylebone Railway Station is a fascinating location and one I rarely go to, and it nearly closed entirely in 1986 and was saved only at the last minute. It opened late for a mainline railway station, starting service in 1899 and it was 100 years before another entirely new station of its size was to be built again. It’s compact compared to the other London mainline railway stations, which means that there’s a limited amount of seating and facilities.

    I sat down to check Facebook for the eighth time in an hour, just as the platform number was called, number 4, which was around twenty minutes before the train departed.

    It’s the train on the right and I’m not much into trains or train spotting, but for anyone interested, it’s a Class 168 Clubman diesel. This route between London and Birmingham hasn’t been electrified and it’s a route that was nearly lost in parts, but like Marylebone, it has managed to survive.

    The train was never that busy, so I had my bank of four seats to myself for the entire journey.

    Nicely functional seats, with a pull-out section of the table for laptops and two power points. All comfortable and practical for anyone who wants to get work done. There was a ticket check from a friendly and cheerful guard midway through the journey, although he said he had no scanner to check my digital ticket and so he wouldn’t need to verify it. That seems to be a slight flaw in the ticket checking process, but there we go……

    I wasn’t in a rush, so I was happy to stay on the train for a little longer getting things done if there was a delay. This came to pass as the train in front of ours broke down and we were delayed for 20 minutes at Banbury. This meant that I was getting hopeful of a 30-minute delay so that I would get half my fare back. Unfortunately (for me), the train’s delay was limited to 20 minutes and, as Chiltern don’t operate compensation for 15 minute delays, I didn’t have a Delay Repay claim to make this time.

    And here we are safely in Birmingham Snow Hill. There’s a theme in this post of things nearly being shut down, but with this railway station it was closed in 1972 and demolished in 1977. It was then realised that this was something of a mistake and a new railway station, which was smaller and less architecturally interesting, was built and opened in 1987.

    I had a look at the Birmingham Daily Post from 13 March 1970, when there was some excitement that there would be four tower blocks on the site of the station that they were demolishing, as well as two hotels and a cinema. They were looking at using the rail tunnels to be used by buses instead to help city transit. A completely idiotic decision, as was clear given they had to rebuild the railway station not much more than a decade later.

    Anyway, I was very impressed by Chiltern Railways as they delivered a cheap fare, a comfortable train, friendly staff, updates when there was a delay and there were no issues. All rather lovely and it’s a convenient way of getting between London and Birmingham. It’s not clear what will happen after HS2 opens, but I assume that this service will continue in the same form.

  • London – Islington (Borough of) – Brewhouse & Kitchen – Islington/Angel

    London – Islington (Borough of) – Brewhouse & Kitchen – Islington/Angel

    This chain has 24 locations across the country, but I’ve never managed to visit a Brewhouse & Kitchen before. The concept is that they brew their own beer and customers are welcome to just have a drink, but there is also a substantial food menu as well.

    I deliberately waited until just after 14:00 as I thought it might be busy on a Sunday lunchtime in this part of London. As is evident from the above photo, it wasn’t. I was welcomed immediately on entry and the staff member was helpful and friendly. I didn’t quite understand the ordering system, but it transpired I had chosen the one table without a QR code to the ordering process, something I worked out eventually. The drinks were brought over soon afterwards which meant the system worked well after I had understood it.

    There was some effort to make the decor interesting and a little quirky. I always felt comfortable in the pub, it was clean and there were signs saying which tables had been sanitised.

    The menu, although not many customers were ordering food. Actually, there weren’t many customers to order food.

    What could possibly go wrong…..

    On another matter not related to nine-pint dispense at the table, this is one of those pub chains which is encouraging the shift to flexible working and people visiting pub environments during the day. They offer unlimited soft drinks such as coffee and coke for £10 per day.

    I went for two half pints, one of Myddleton Tropical IPA and one of Hotblack Desiato. They were both fine, the former had a refreshing tropical taste and the latter had a rich chocolate taste. Neither had quite the depth of flavour to make them exceptional, but they were reasonably priced and entirely acceptable. Given these are brewed in-house, it’s not a bad standard at all.

    This location is well reviewed on sites such as Google and TripAdvisor, with the beer tasting they offer seeming to be popular and I thought that’s a rather good idea for a pub such as this. Anyway, I thought that this was a perfectly pleasant visit with friendly staff and a choice of various different beers. I shall look out for others in the chain.

  • Berwick-upon-Tweed – Pilot Inn

    Berwick-upon-Tweed – Pilot Inn

    This is from the last day of the trip to walk St. Cuthbert’s Way, it’s just taking me a little time to catch up with everything. There was just Steve, Susanna, Gordon and I left at this stage, with the situation of course being that we couldn’t go to a pub unless it was in the Good Beer Guide. I walked us to the Pilot Inn, even though it wasn’t the nearest pub to get to, but fortunately the others didn’t complain.

    CAMRA note that the interior is traditional and they’re not lying. This visit was from a couple of weeks ago when the football was on, I don’t think that the flags are normally there.

    The interior hasn’t been knocked about and it’s quirky, old-fashioned and I really like it. When customers come in they see a corridor area ahead of them, a saloon bar to the left and the former public bar to the right. It took us a while to be noticed, but I think that the staff member was in the beer garden serving customers there.

    There’s some old nautical stuff on display, all adding to the pub’s theme.

    There were three real ales available, none of which were particularly innovative, but at least there was a choice.

    I went for the Strongarm from Camerons Brewery which is apparently their “flagship beer”. I dread to think what their weaker beers are like. Anyway, it was OK and it was well-kept, but it was a little lacking in depth. Although if it’s a session beer, I suppose it’s all fine and it was well kept and at the appropriate temperature.

    There’s a no swearing policy at the pub. There’s a large beer garden that we spent some time in waiting for our collective trains and we were never rushed by the staff. As an environment, this is really very inviting and there’s a community feel to the whole arrangement. For someone new to the area, I suspect they’d get a friendly welcome here from the staff and other customers. Getting to the beer garden is slightly complex and seems to involve walking through the pub’s kitchen, but that’s the way others were going, so it wasn’t just me.

    The exterior of the pub is interesting as well, as the side wall looks like there was a property here that’s been demolished. I accept that the beers here weren’t riveting, but the building interior is interesting, the welcome is authentic, there’s a choice of real ale and I’m glad that it’s in the Good Beer Guide. Some pubs shouldn’t modernise their buildings and this is one of them, I liked the heritage feel of the interior and I’m glad it has survived in the way that it has.