We like Bristol. We like the city, and what's in the city, and we like the pubs in the city. Our liking of the city is attributable to those things, in roughly that order. The sum of them are greater than the parts.
Actually, I never thought much about the city since I lived there, full time, for most of my adult life. There was no reason to leave it but I'd never really considered whether I liked the city. It was where my life was. Introducing S to Bristol made me see it in an entirely new light...and I got to like it more because of that.
Peterborough, on the other hand is a city we like to visit from time to time. The first time I went was because the guys were off to watch football (BHAFC and Peterborough being in the same league at the time). "It's always a good day out" saith he. This has a fairly specific meaning in the context...it means the travel from station to lunchtime pub, to football ground, to after match pub and back to station is a coherent series of pleasant strolls and that the fellow fans aren't too lairy when you're there.
I liked the very centre of the place that day because, even though I wasn't going to football there was just enough for me to explore over the course of a couple hours and it has a superb and photogenic cathedral.
On Saturday, we made the trip up for a pre-season friendly (BHAFC and Peterborough are no longer in the same league). We planned to visit two of the usual haunts and perhaps explore a couple of new ones...
The old haunts were great - Charters (a floating Oakham pub) was less busy than we expected and had a really good range of great beer and fabulous thai lunches. The Brewery Tap was much as we'd expect late on a Saturday night - noisy, crowded but excellent (Oakham) beers and a shared dish of good Thai noodles.
Ah but those were not the highlights of the day...
Our first after-match pint was about a 10 minute walk from the ground - The Coalheavers - it needed a bit of a spruce up (and if I'm honest I would have preferred the beer to be a couple of degrees colder) but the beer was good, the garden was pleasant and the young barman, who was taking a break and taking a phone call on his mobile out front when we left, stopped his conversation and thanked us for visiting as we left. That's classy.
The Isle of Purbeck and Milton beers were very pleasant too.
A further 10 minutes walk from the Coalheavers...(back towards town, which was welcome) we found The Palmerston Arms. Not very prepossessing from the front but what a find! Inside it was all proper pubby and next to no pumps on the bar, since most of the beer comes straight from the casks in the cellar which is situated immediately behind the bar. So, we placed our order and glanced at the mirror on the wall behind the bar. Only it wasn't a mirror...it was a window...a window into the cellar. What a simple, and great idea. The beers were in great condition (no, I can't remember what they were to be honest) and a lovely temperature.
If you've read any of my other posts in this blog, it'll not surprise you that this feature instantly got added to our wishlist for our fictional, perfect, pub.
There are at least another two pubs in The Guide and one or two other pubs that looked like they might be worth swinging by. Not that we needed any more beer...and I wouldn't have wanted to miss any of the pubs we went to.
But if you've got more capacity then Peterborough is definitely worth it for the pubs...but I'm not sure that there's all that much else to recommend it: the shopping centre has ruined the permeability of the city which makes it annoying to wander around and the ring road is hideous.
Nope - just go there for the pubs, that'll do.
No comments:
Post a Comment