Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: UK

GeoGuessr 2 – Birmingham (Bacchus Bar)

I quite like Nicholson’s pubs, not necessarily for the food element, but because they have some interesting and historic buildings amongst their estate. This one in Birmingham was recommended by Nathan because of its notable cellar bar location and quirky interior, although the most historic that they can claim is that “it’s located on one of the oldest streets in Birmingham”.

The pub was busy and it’s certainly something a little different.

The bar area is at one end of the pub and it’s not really entirely adequate in terms of its size or location, made worse as they’d shut half of it. It’s so small that it’s a little hard to even queue, as it’s challenging for departing customers to make their way back out to the main area. But, I can imagine it’d be expensive to change this now, with the staff serving customers in turn and efficiently, so it didn’t prove to be a problem.

More internal decoration. One element became evident to me for the first time when visiting the pub, which is that Nicholson’s pubs all have a speciality, whether it be sausages, fish or pies for example. However, I can’t quite see how the menu differed at this pub, which specialised in fish, compared to any other Nicholson’s outlet, so it all felt just a little fake. Nathan was busy deciding that some of the paintings on the walls looked like members of the Beatles, although I wasn’t personally entirely convinced.

I do recommend the Nicholson’s app, which Nathan has finally managed to download onto his Nokia 3310. Today’s little offer, for me at least, was the £1 Sipsmith chocolate orange gin and tonic. The staff at the bar were friendly and helpful, although this offer did proof challenging for the staff member as she had never done one. It’s also, to be fair, a fiddly drink with numerous elements and it’s also served warm. However, she carefully looked at the brand standards chart and delivered the product efficiently, albeit after a few minutes. Another customer though asked me how I got this drink for one pound, since he’d just spent considerably more on it.

And here it is, my first ever hot gin and tonic. This was certainly improved by the strong orange flavour, and smell, released by the warmth of the drink and I can imagine this is a rather lovely alcoholic option to end the evening with.

Anyway, onto TripAdvisor.

“After investigating this, I must offer my sincerest apologies. You are 100% correct with your review of us. On Monday, we had an extremely quiet day. My team were completing detailed cleaning throughout the day and they neglected you as a dining guests. This is not an excuse as it certainly should not have happened. I am really sorry for this poor service. It is not indicative of the service we offer and if you look at all of our reviews through Trip Advisor and Google, we generally get it spot on.”

The pub is well reviewed on TripAdvisor, but I thought that this was a really professional response from the management, recognising a problem and apologising for it. That would reassure me, rather than the bland responses given by some companies such as Greene King who offer some generic piffle in reply to many reviews.

“A barmaid stole from my father, she claimed that her gave her a £5 note when he only had £10s in his wallet, he hadn’t long been to a cashpoint. Obviously only a small amount but still enough to annoy us and ensure that none of us come back again. It’s a shame because it is one of the nicest looking bars in Birmingham, they maybe need to hire less desperate/smarter staff.”

And another example of why TripAdvisor is letting venues down. This transpired to be a false allegation, but yet posters can still make these allegations at will.

“The glass your friends gin was served in was a 12oz highball glass. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter how many crystal cut gin glasses we order, people feel it is their right to steal them, which then has an impact on our lovely guests we usally get in. We do try to keep them ordered, but they are very expensive and they just disappear. Its a cruel world.”

And I feel sorry for the pub with this, I don’t like how people feel that it’s fine to pinch stuff.

All in all, a perfectly acceptable pub with friendly and engaging service. It was busy when we went, but that’s not exactly a surprise given it was the Saturday late afternoon before Christmas in a large city centre location. The atmosphere was vibrant, but laid-back, in the pub and I did like the efforts made with the decor to ensure that it wasn’t just a dingy cellar bar.

December 27, 2019
GeoGuessr 2 – Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (Debtors’ Prison Door)

To add a little history to our GeoGuessr trip, we went for a short while to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, a location that I visited a few months ago.

This prison door is from the long since demolished debtors’ prison which was located on the High Street in the city. A panel, which itself looks old, on the door reads:

“This debtors’ prison door stood in High Street, Birmingham, depriving many a poor creature of liberty. Note the bars thro’ which charitable passers-by dropped coins to the inmates”.

The door dates from the eighteenth or nineteenth century, but there’s a disappointing lack of information about the exhibit and how it came to be in the museum. A book from the mid-nineteenth century described what it would have been like in the prison:

“The debtors’ prison consists of two parts; one occupied by poor debtors who have lodging free, and the county allowance of bread. The other by master debtors who pay two shillings and sixpence per week each, for their beds, and supply themselves with coals, candles, furniture for their rooms, and every other requisite. Eatables of all sorts are admitted. Ale is limited to one quart per day, or a pint of wine to each man, spirits of all kinds are prohibited. The debtors are locked up at nine o’clock in winter, and half-past nine in summer, but have access to each other’s rooms.”

December 24, 2019
GeoGuessr 2 – Birmingham (Head of Steam)

This is the fourth Head of Steam that I’ve visited this year and none of them have failed to deliver an excellent experience, with the Liverpool location being one of my favourite pubs. The others I’ve visited have been in Hull and Sheffield, so I was looking forwards to visiting this one in Birmingham.

The entrance area to the bar, which is also listed in the Good Beer Guide (the entire bar I mean, not just the entrance area).

A couple of options from Northern Monk.

Some of the beers available, although the choice also spanned another bar as well. There wasn’t a blackboard or screen with the choices on, which would have been useful. The set-up in the Head of Steam in Liverpool is better, with screens displaying the options, as well as long printed beer lists.

Nathan noticed these two beers from Siren Craft Brew, which weren’t cheap, but were absolutely essential purchases. They were the Caribbean White Chocolate Cake Tropical White Stout and the Death by Caribbean Chocolate Cake Imperial Tropical Stout. The former was nearing perfection, a depth of taste, clean flavours and it would have been harder to make a drink taste more like cake. The latter beer, the imperial stout, hit perfection as far as I was concerned. It was rich with tastes of vanilla, sugar, chocolate and decadence, entirely lovely.

We were contemplating where to eat but noticed that the bar offered pizza and dessert for £10 on Sundays, so given the quality of the drinks that we had, there seemed no point rushing off. The meat feast pizza was well presented, although slightly aggressively cooked on the edges and the dough was also slightly lumped up in the middle. But, it was all cooked well, the toppings had flavour to them and it was perfectly reasonable value for money.

I wasn’t sure, given how much pizza I’d had, that I wanted dessert, but I had already opted for the ice cream sundae. I think that was about as much I could have managed and it met my requirements for something light.

All in all, this is an excellent bar and the service was welcoming and engaging throughout, with Nathan making a friend at the bar after she eyed up his shirt. Social butterfly I tell you….. The bar was busy and we were fortunate to get the last table, although I was marginally surprised to see that there wasn’t an area just for those customers wanting to eat food, so they might have lost some diners. The atmosphere in the bar was though relaxed and there was some football showing, but not in a way that intruded on the overall ambience of the location.

Anyway, just for a little meander onto TripAdvisor:

“Very average, but very expensive. Possibly the most expensive bar in Central Birmingham, with nothing luxurious in there.”

I’m not quite sure how a bar with this many beers can be described as average, nor how a customer could have missed so many high-end beers, along with more traditional options.

“Thanks for your review, unfortunately is very unlikely you would have been allowed entry to this or any venue after racially abusing the door team. In any event the venue operates to a legally enforceable capacity which has nothing to do with the perceived level of custom but on the number of heads in the building. It is often the case that we have to hold guests at the door at peak times. It is often the case that a persons reaction is a direct indication of how they are likely to conduct themselves once they enter the venue.”

Most of the negative reviews of this bar recently appear to have come from the same group, complaining about the door staff. I liked the bar’s response above, as that last line about reactions is very true, if the door company are decent they will work out to let the nice people in and keep the aggressive and rude ones out……

“There were 4 of us in a group having left work very late and we tried to get served. Despite us being together, albeit we had subdivided into two groups of two for the evening for our orders, one of the female bar staff refused to serve two of us “as we were the wrong side of her serving zone” – we are talking centimeters here! – absolutely ridiculous. As someone who organised many social events for a large organisation I’ve been sure to spread the word on this ludicrous bar staff behaviour – may be it is company policy, but is one that need to be consigned to the 1800s.”

This review makes me like the Head of Steam even more. I like pubs where the staff serve just one section of the bar each, it means they are more likely to know who to serve next and it ensures things are kept calmer and more organised.

Anyway, all in all, this was a very lovely visit, although I was pleased we had come on a more relaxed Sunday than trying to visit on a busy Saturday night, which I might have enjoyed a little less.

December 24, 2019
GeoGuessr 2 – Birmingham (Pint Shop)

The Pint Shop is listed in Good Beer Guide and has an excellent reputation on-line, so this seemed an ideal place to start the pub testing for the day. It’s a small chain of two bars, with the other being in Cambridge, with the third location in Oxford having closed in February 2019.

This blackboard is outstanding in a number of ways, (i) it’s clearly presented, (ii) there are two of them, (iii) they’re in places where customers won’t block them and (iv) the choice is excellent. The number of dark options on there is exciting, some more commonplace choices and some more unique ones as well. The service was friendly, engaging and knowledgeable, one of those places where the staff actually seemed to want to be there.

Davenports is a local Birmingham brewery and this is a striking pump front, It Ent Terry’s chocolate orange porter. Quite full-bodied, but the chocolate orange flavour is nowhere near strong enough, although the porter itself had a pleasant taste. The pricing was reasonable and it tasted well-kept and was at the appropriate temperature.

The upstairs of this bar is a restaurant area, which we didn’t veer into on this visit. The downstairs was quieter than we’d expected, but it was clean, comfortable and welcoming. I liked the different seating styles and there was a relaxed vibe to the bar, that endearing mix of on-trend and informal.

All in all, rather lovely and I’ll make sure I visit their Cambridge bar in the new year since I appear to have over-looked it.

December 24, 2019
GeoGuessr 2 – Birmingham (Birmingham Cathedral)

I hadn’t visited Birmingham Cathedral before, so we thought that we’d make a quick visit whilst passing by. It’s the third smallest cathedral in the country and it was originally constructed as St. Philip’s Church and was completed between 1711 and 1715. It was expected to cost £20,000, but the actual cost was only £5,000, a bargain of some size which civil engineers of today don’t usually deliver.

The population of Birmingham increased sharply during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but it was decided in the early twentieth century not to construct a new cathedral to cater for that enlarged congregation. Instead, the church was elevated to the status of cathedral in 1905 and there were no expansions of the building, although there were plans to revisit the decision at a future point. The cathedral was badly damaged during air-raids in the Second World War, but repairs were swiftly made and the Edward Burne-Jones stained glass windows, which had been placed into storage, were returned once again to the building.

It’s not the grandest of interiors for a cathedral, but it’s bright and welcoming.

December 24, 2019
GeoGuessr 2 – Birmingham (Canals)

When we were walking from the hotel back to Birmingham city centre, I realised that we were crossing the route of the Birmingham Canal Canter that I had walked earlier in the year with Susanna and Bev. This was my favourite LDWA walk of the year, not least because of the BBQ, but unfortunately the event isn’t taking place again in 2020.

Walking along the canal wasn’t the quickest way to the city centre, but it is atmospheric and we only saw one other person.

Two more photos…. Birmingham has 35 miles of canals, which is a greater length of canals than Venice has, so there’s no shortage of waterways to walk by.

December 24, 2019
GeoGuessr 2 – Birmingham (Primark)

I’ve now posted about Primark twice in a week, which is enough shopping blogging to last me for the next two years. This is an amazing shop though, it’s the largest Primark in the world and proof that the high street hasn’t entirely been buried by on-line shopping. Five floors, over 160,000 square feet, a barber’s shop, beauty studio and three dining options, that’s some shop.

I won’t mention in too much detail about Nathan’s sliding down a mud bank in Birmingham the previous evening, but it did result in him needing new shoes and jeans. So, hence why we were in Primark, although I was also intrigued about seeing this vast piece of retail estate.

I also won’t embarrass anyone, so I won’t name who it was, but when this person was buying his new shoes and jeans, he also gave his hat to the member of staff at the till. This confused the staff member as the hat didn’t have a barcode on it to scan, until Nathan, I mean, the person who I won’t name, remembered that was the hat he actually already owned and had come into the shop with.

The coffee shop within Primark and there was also a restaurant next to it which specialised in pizzas, with its own impressive pizza oven visible on the counter. The prices in Primark are certainly bordering on the ridiculous in terms of how low they are, but the store is well managed, accessible and there were plenty of staff around the shop. So, all very lovely.

December 24, 2019
GeoGuessr 2 – Bloxwich (Bloxwich Railway Station)

This railway station is similar to that of Rugeley Town, insomuch that it was closed down in the 1960s during the Beeching Cuts but has recently been re-opened. It’s not at the original station site, which was a little further down the track, with the current station dating from 1989. It has created the slight anomaly though that the railway station is now no longer at the town’s Station Place and Station Street.

There’s not much to see at the railway station and it deals with fewer than 50,000 passengers a year, but it’s positive that this is a stop which has at least been saved. The closure of this railway station in 1965 seems to me to clearly have been a huge mistake by the Government of the time and even in 1966 the Prices and Incomes Board were investigating the problem that local shops had put up prices in Bloxwich as there was no longer easy access to Walsall. A local union said in 1966, “this form of extortion hits hardest at mothers of small children” and there were problems with bus services from the time that the railway station closed.

Anyway, for the purposes of our GeoGuessr, we left from Bloxwich to return back to Birmingham New Street.

December 24, 2019
GeoGuessr 2 – Bloxwich (Bloxwich Showman)

We’d decided not to visit pubs in Birmingham on the Saturday night before Christmas, as it was pretty likely that they’d be full, so we instead took a leisurely journey back from Rugeley and stopped at Bloxwich. This is the only pub in the town listed in the Good Beer Guide and it’s operated by JD Wetherspoons, named after Pat Collins who was a local showman, Liberal MP for Walsall and the Mayor of Walsall. Being a politician and showman is perhaps a good combination, with Collins being heavily involved in running circuses around the country. A bit like some politicians it could be argued…..

The beer choice was a little limited for a Wetherspoons, although the prices were at the usual low levels. I went for a pint of the Old Man from Long Man Brewery in East Sussex, perfectly acceptable and there was a slight flavour of coffee to it.

We were fortunate to find a seat, which was in the upstairs section, which also had views over the main part of the pub.

The interior decoration.

Nathan decided, “for a laugh”, to buy two pints of Fosters in some kind of ode to Ross’s dreadful choice of beer. The crisps helped the situation, although Nathan then proceeded to argue with some of my friends on Facebook for about two hours. But we won’t talk about that ever again. The Fosters, which in my view is a drink which should never be drunk, was though a useful reminder of just how much like water it tastes…

Anyway, onto TripAdvisor….

“Avoid this pub if you want a glass for bottled drinks as we’re refused 2 glasses for bottled Aspel cider told could only have glasses with draft beers. We’re eventually given some after confrontation”

I like this one, the idea that a customer has to have a confrontation with a member of bar staff to get a glass for a bottled beer. I’m not quite sure that this is the brand standard.

“Terrible food it was cold and I could av saved money and did it myself a lot better at home”

Written by Karen, I can never understand the point of these reviews, since no-one has a clue what she ordered and it would be much more exciting if she took a photo of the food in the pub and the brilliant food she makes at home.

“Ordered strongbow and had to ask for strongbow glass”

An unhappy that their drink was served in a “bog standard” glass. Perhaps it was a Fosters one….

“I should have complained only I was with a friend and did not want to appear awkward, will not be going again.”

The ideal customer for a pub to try and help, one that pretends there’s no issue at the pub so as not to look awkward, and then goes back to leave 1/5 on TripAdvisor….

Anyway, all was well with our visit (bar Fostersgate) and the pub was organised, with customers being served in turn. Given that it was so near to Christmas, it was also pleasingly not overly busy.

December 24, 2019
GeoGuessr 2 – Bloxwich (Tom Major-Ball)

We stopped off at Bloxwich when returning from Rugeley to Birmingham, with Nathan looking at Wikipedia to see if there was anything interesting to see other than the town’s only pub in the Good Beer Guide. As it transpired, just around the corner from that pub was Church Street, which is where Abraham Thomas Ball was born on 18 May 1879. Later better known as Tom Major-Ball, he went to Pittsburgh (where I visited earlier this year) and established a career as a music hall performer. He had five children, one of whom is the former Prime Minister, Sir John Major.

I don’t know which house Tom Major-Ball lived in, but it’s somewhere down this street…..

December 23, 2019