Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: UK

  • Hull – Streetlife Museum (1818 Hobby Horse Bicycle)

    Hull – Streetlife Museum (1818 Hobby Horse Bicycle)

    The museum was given this bicycle in 1905 by a Mr. Mayfield who said that this father had merrily cycled around the Yorkshire Wolds on it, having originally bought it in Scarborough. When I write “cycled”, what I really mean is that Mr. Mayfield’s father had to push himself along as the bloody thing didn’t have any pedals. Now, by chance, this is also how I primarily ride a bike, by just pushing myself along using my feet, since the pedalling bit tires me out.

    I bet these owners were the envy of the local area…. Actually, owners of the bikes were sometimes known as ‘dandyhorses’ in a mocking way because of their riders, and I can think of a few people that I know who would probably buy one of these given half a chance. What is perhaps the most incredible about this is that it took 40 years for anyone to add pedals, as in the meantime there was a production of three-wheeled bikes, which didn’t require the rider to balance.

  • Hull – Streetlife Museum (Lanchester Open Tourer)

    Hull – Streetlife Museum (Lanchester Open Tourer)

    There’s something quite romantic about old cars, as it must have been an exciting time to have one. Not perhaps those drivers who toured the cities getting irritated by pedestrians and driving over horse deposits, but to explore the country road with few obstacles. Although, back then of course there were no Greggs drive-thrus, so it’s important to remember that the grass isn’t always greener.

    Anyway, I don’t know anything about old cars, so I have to read the information panel in a bid to understand the heap of metal in front of me. This is a Lanchester Open Tourer from around 1906, a car manufacturer from Birmingham which later moved to the romantic dreamlands of Coventry, where apparently they were “Coventry’s answer to Rolls Royce”. The company had a little issue in 1930 when they went a bit bankrupt, but the transport angels of Birmingham Small Arms Company (which sounds like a gang) bought them out.

    Birmingham Small Arms Company sold their business to Jaguar in 1960, alongside the Daimler brand which they also owned. It was all a bit over for Lanchester by then, as their last car had been made into a prototype in 1956, but it was never produced.

  • Hull – Streetlife Museum (Ryde Pier Tramcar)

    Hull – Streetlife Museum (Ryde Pier Tramcar)

    This is the oldest surviving tramcar in the country, having once plied the tramway network of Ryde Pier (I’ve been there). When I say network, I really mean the 681 metres along the pier itself, but that meant it saw a lot of the sea. It was constructed in 1867 from mahogany and teak, and it remained in use until 1935, by then the oldest working tramcar in the country.

    Inside the tramcar, which has been restored to its original state, with seating for 22 people. Later on in its lifetime, seats were added on the roof, but there was a little incident in September 1935 when it quite literally hit the buffers, meaning that it was damaged beyond repair. Fortunately (although not for them), there were only two passengers on board, with one of them being taken to hospital.

    There’s a bit of the Trigger’s Broom about this, as I wonder just how much of the original 1867 tramcar still remains, but it’s a nice thought to imagine this meandering up and down the pier full of happy holidaymakers going on their holidays.

  • Hull – Head of Steam

    Hull – Head of Steam

    After my delight at the Head of Steam in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago, it seemed proper and fitting to visit their location in Hull (and hopefully I’ll visit the one in Sheffield next week). The decor is very different here, but there were still some excellent beers to choose from. The pub was busy, mainly with diners, and there was a nice relaxed atmosphere.

    The pub had Turning Point’s Lucid Dream Cookie Cream Stout, so that was me sold. There’s also a CAMRA discount which brought the price down to something like £4.20, which isn’t unreasonable for such a marvellous beer. Depth of flavour, creamy taste and at the appropriate temperature, a glorious beer.

    Actually, on the food, I did like one review on TripAdvisor:

    “I wanted a healthy option and, as stated on the menu, I asked one of the team. For health reasons I cannot eat some salad ingredients so told them what I couldn’t have. Their imaginative minds came up with lettuce and cucumber. If you read your reviews can I suggest grated carrot, sweat corn, red cabbage(I noticed that on my husband’s plate!) Grapes seeds quinoa dried fruit nuts beetroot to name but a few.”

    The pub’s response:

    “Unfortunately, our house salad is lettuce, cucumber, tomato, onions and pepper. As you are unable to eat tomato, onions or pepper, it didn’t leave our kitchen with a lot of options.”

    Beautiful. I’m not quite sure where the pub is going to magic up quinoa, beetroot and dried fruit from, unless they somehow pick the bits out of their vegetarian burgers which do have some of those ingredients in them. It must be disappointing when a customer leaves such a negative review when they’re doing so well in getting themselves as one of the highest rated pubs in the city.

    The staff member was friendly, the pub was relaxed and the selection of beers entirely met my expectations. And, it’s in the Good Beer Guide, yet another deserved entry in my humble, and irrelevant, view.

  • Hull – Brian Fell Sculptures at Wilberforce House

    Hull – Brian Fell Sculptures at Wilberforce House

    This is a lovely creative idea, it’s a metal fence behind Wilberforce House which features representations of various items from the collections in the city’s museum quarter. The steel sculptures were installed here in 2009 and can be seen by those walking alongside the River Hull.

    The only little negative here is that I couldn’t see any signage signifying what each of the items actually was, although it does give the excitement of visiting the museums themselves to find out.

  • Hull – George Hotel

    Hull – George Hotel

    Continuing on my trail around Hull pubs which are featured in the Good Beer Guide, this one is located on the intriguingly named street, the Land of Green Ginger. It’s one large room, which I assume was once two rooms, and the welcome was friendly and authentic.

    Not meant as a complaint as this is clearly a successful pub, but it is quite challenging for a customer when pubs let their customers sit in front of the pump fronts. This was a pub with plenty of space, including at other points along the bar, and my view of the beers was nearly entirely obscured.

    I decided against trying to poke my head between customers to examine the beer options and just ask what dark beers they had on. The staff member was apologetic that they didn’t have any, although he mentioned that some were coming in, so I think that I was just a little unlucky. I can’t help thinking that seven real ales and no darker choices isn’t ideal though, with the darkest available being Abbot Ale from Greene King, which isn’t something I’d particularly want to ever actually pay for.

    Of course, this left me in a position of not knowing what alternative to have since I couldn’t see half the pump fronts (although I was able to take a photo after to zoom in on the choices). I opted for Mad Goose from Purity since I hadn’t heard of it and it sounded appealing, although I then discovered that the reviews for it aren’t great. I rated it better than the reviews, it was quite a crisp taste with flavours that I couldn’t identify, but it was worth the £1.70 for a half pint.

    A nice interior, although I can’t help but notice that lovely space they could plonk the customers at, away from the pump fronts. Or, as a compromise, they could get blackboards and chalk the beer options up on that, which seems the usual alternative when pub customers can’t easily otherwise see the bar.

    Anyway, it was a friendly environment and the member of staff seemed to be knowledgeable and competent, so I suspect he might have been the landlord. I’d come here again because it had that nice calm environment that I like in a pub, but hopefully there will be some delicious darker options on next time. It gives the impression of being a Craft Union pub and some of these are clearly working, although I hope they don’t do one of their dodgy refurbishments on this place, as the interior is full of character.

    This is another claim to fame for the pub, which is the smallest pub window in the country. It’s apparently a throwback to when a porter would look out to know if he (or perhaps she) should let people in, but the pub has made something of a thing of it which is good. This is another one that deserves to be in the Good Beer Guide.

  • Hull – Three John Scotts

    Hull – Three John Scotts

    I think I’ve been to this pub before a few years ago, which is now just one of two Wetherspoons pubs remaining in Hull as two others have closed relatively recently. It’s in the Good Beer Guide and so a perfect location to start my pub exploration of the city.

    The pub name is imaginative as well, referring to the three generations of vicars of the church opposite, St. Mary’s (which I was fortunate enough to see inside today, more on which in another post), who were all named John Scott. And, it was second of those two John Scotts who invited none other than George Gilbert Scott (his cousin) to remodel the church’s interior. As pub names go, this is what I’d consider to be a good one.

    The welcome was excellent, an engaging and helpful member of staff who went through the different real ale options, with a nearby manager recommending the Muddy Boots from Great Newsome Brewery. I didn’t get much depth of flavour from it, but it had a pleasant taste, was at the appropriate temperature and was entirely drinkable. And, with my 50p CAMRA voucher, it came to only £1.65 for a pint. Bargain.

    This is a decent Wetherspoons, a relaxed atmosphere, friendly staff and some interesting beer choices. A customer at a table asked a staff member if they could order food by paying cash and a helpful manager agreed, taking the cash over to the till for them. I didn’t order food, but it looked well presented and everything seemed orderly and well managed.

    All told, a well deserved Good Beer Guide pub entry.

  • Norwich to Hull by Train – Greater Anglia, EMR, LNER and Northern

    My train from Norwich to Hull involved four train journeys, (i) Norwich to Ely with Greater Anglia, (ii) Ely to Peterborough with EMR, (iii) Peterborough to Doncaster with LNER and (iv) Doncaster to Hull with Northern. This trip cost just £12 and was a bit precarious, as if I missed any connection then I would have missed the last train operating into Hull. Anyway, all was well and I ended up in Hull on time and without any delays.

    The first journey was with Greater Anglia and the conductor was exceptional, and I partly know this as he sat down opposite me to read the Metro newspaper and he was conversational and humorous. His train announcements also amused me, I’ve never heard Ely described as something like the “effervescent and glowing beauty of Ely, which also has a big church”. Marvellous. The train was also the new Stadler service, which is growing on me after my initial scepticism (my favourite eight-year old boy has sold it to me).

    Not much to report on the second journey, which was just the short hop from Ely to Peterborough with the new EMR set-up. It’s an older train which doesn’t have the facilities of the Stadler, but everything ran to time although I didn’t see a conductor on the journey. I did see the Flying Dustman though…..

    The only train that I had which was timed was the Peterborough to Doncaster one, so I got on a train from Norwich which got into Peterborough giving me around an hour’s connection. This gave me chance to go to the nearby Wetherspoons and get a chicken wrap, as well as to moan about their quiz. And then complain about the LNER seating at Peterborough railway station…..

    LNER’s Azuma train pulls into Peterborough railway station. This is a beautiful and sleek train and it was easy to identify which seats on board were reserved. They have a red light by each seat for reserved, a green light for free to use and an orange light for currently clear to use, but is reserved later on. I’m surprised it has taken rail companies so long to come up with such an easy system, but it’s very logical. No staff checked tickets and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a bit of fare evasion going on along this route.

    Doncaster railway station, a solid traditional building which I got to see for around 15 minutes.

    LNER and Doncaster railway station are clearly, and rightly, proud of their Azuma trains.

    I didn’t get a service operated by Hull trains, but this is an innovative open access operator which is now owned by First Group. They operate on the Hull to London route and I like the idea of this set-up, something similar is happening in Germany and hopefully it’ll expand throughout the European Union.

    And safely into Hull railway station on the train which is on the right hand-side of the above photo. My ticket was checked by a friendly conductor and once again, for the fourth time out of four, I got a table seat so that I could type away on my laptop without having it perched on some dodgy tray table.

    For the money, this was an amazing value fare given that I used four different rail services from four companies. Two of the trains were state of the art and the other two were perfectly adequate. It’s easy to be excited about railway services in other parts of Europe, and indeed around the world, but the UK network is still one of the best in the world that I’ve ever experienced for trips such as this.

  • Peterborough – LNER’s Luxury Seating

    Peterborough – LNER’s Luxury Seating

    I can’t help but think that perhaps LNER, the operators of Peterborough railway station, could invest in seating that was just a little more comfortable.

    And, LNER’s frugality with seating has meant they’ve had to put a sign up warning parents to look after their children when using the luxury seats. I assume this is because children quite often fall off the bloody things. Travel in luxury with LNER….

  • Peterborough – Draper’s Arms and the Quiz….

    Peterborough – Draper’s Arms and the Quiz….

    I don’t much like pub quizzes, although I manage not to harbour a grudge against those pubs who hold them, since they do play a part in pub life. And anyway, life’s too short when I can complain about the lack of dark beer in pubs. But, I’ve still yet to discover a Wetherspoons where they run a pub quiz and it’s actually popular, although I don’t deny for one moment that such a mythical beast exists. Indeed, the quiz in the Draper’s Arms, which was littered with inaccuracies (I had to listen in so that I could complain to myself about the situation) was busily attended by four tables (and a man on a stool) and it managed to disturb the entire pub. I noticed four customers walk in and walk out, primarily because their preferred table was in the middle of the fallout area of the unnecessarily loud sound system which had been rigged up.

    Perhaps it’s often more popular, and to be fair, they had reserved off three tables in what appeared to be an unusually aspirational move since the quiz was half-way through and there were still no patrons at those tables. On the inaccuracy front, even I was puzzled by what the “Gatsby Plot was” (I was trying to work out if it was to do with F. Scott Fitzgerald), although fortunately one of the quiz entrants told the pub’s quiz host that it was the Catesby Plot. One table (well, one person at the table, although I suppose that was enough) was cheating throughout by looking at their phones for the answers, so I assume that this quiz isn’t for big money.

    I also looked like I was cheating since I had a laptop on the table, but I overcame that worry. I liked the knockout round at the end where if you answered a question and got it wrong then you lost all your points. A bit like bar billiards I thought. And on that point, perhaps they could get rid of the quiz and replace it with a bar billiards table. Win win.

    Incidentally (and irrelevantly, as is usual with my posts), I have a good record at pub quizzes. Not because I’m any good at them, but primarily as I manage to get on teams with someone who is clever and good at quizzes. That’s the key to winning quizzes, not being clever.