Oh dear, has it really been five months or so since I last posted on here? Well, it would appear so.
Is this because I have taken the pledge and given up beer? Don't be silly, just rather too busy with other things (including drinking beer) to sit down and write about it.
Now, the clue about where I've been is in this picture - a brewery I'd never heard of.
A little while back some friends who had never narrow-boated (I realise I'm verbising a noun but it's the easiest way to describe it, trust me) expressed an interest in a canal holiday. Both S and myself had spent many a holiday on a boat in our respective pasts, but had never holidayed on a boat together so we were pretty keen on the idea.
Before we knew it we'd booked a week on a boat to attempt the Four Counties Ring. This is a route that S and I both know pretty well - it's one of those trips that shows you most of what a canal holiday can offer (locks, bridges, tunnels, aqueducts, cuttings, embankments, lovely countryside and industrial heritage...) and it's pretty easy to stop each night near civilisation (ie a pub and co-op for tomorrow's milk and bacon) to make catering, etc pretty unstressful. The slight downside is that it does require you to boat for 8 hours each day (or thereabouts) to make sure you can complete the route. For the beer-drinkers amongst us, this limits the number of pubs you can visit which always feels a little like an opportunity missed.
The last time I did this trip - 2006 if memory serves - I wasn't that whelmed by the beer choice (I remember some very tired Spitfire at Norbury junction) but since the beer scene around the country has improved, and since I've become much more fussy about what I consider to be good beer it was going to be a bit of a toss-up as to whether beer would be great, awful, or somewhere in between.
The first night we stopped at Stone which is a nice town just south of Stoke and we went into a pub (The Star?) which is right next to a lock and is an ancient place, with no two rooms in the pub on the same level. We had (I think) a golden Banks's beer - Sunbeam, possibly and given we'd had a sunny start to our holiday, it seemed to suit us very well. Definitely a Midlands beer but nicely kept, a good temperature and it hit the spot quite nicely.
The second evening's place of rest was Stoke on Trent. In the past, this has been very beer deficient, in my experience but from our mooring in Westport Lake, and with an electronic GBG and a little persistence, we were able to find the Duke William pub which seemed perfect, albeit up quite a big hill. It did food, really good beer and welcomed dogs. Sadly, they failed to tell us they didn't do all three in the same place. Still, we had a couple of pints of decent independent beer...including Oakham Citra...and we should remember that for next time.
Wheelock was the place of our next overnight but it proved to be a disappointment. Despite checking three sources that said "The Cheshire Cheese", which was close to the canal, served food on a Sunday until 7pm...we arrived at about 6pm to be told they weren't serving food at all. Sadface.
Instead we sat outside a waterside pasta/pizza joint and shared a litre of house red and pizzas. Nice, but not beer.
We made an unscheduled stop in Middlewich for lunch the next day and went to the White Bear which was a trendy modern kind of a place (at least for Middlewich) with good beer, good food and a landlord who bristled everso-slightly when asked how good his Guinness was (it was good, we discovered).
That evening we arrived at Barbridge Junction to find one of the pubs that had always been there (the Jolly Roger) had become the latest victim of pub closures/demolition-to-make-way-for-housing and was no more. Thankfully the Barbridge Inn was still there and the beer was much better than I remember, it being a local brewery "Woodlands". Their beer wasn't amazing but it was local, new to us and well kept so it was well received.
Bypassing the Shroppie Fly which I remembered fondly (so many pubs, so little time) we hacked on through the Audlem and Adderly locks the next day to arrive at Market Drayton. We went to the Joules brewery (The Red Lion) to eat and drink and very much enjoyed the experience. Elsewhere in the town, a little disappointing - the Clive and Coffyne having recently departed to be replaced by some hotel bar and clueless staff. So we went to the Sandbrook Vaults which also served Joules and we sort of wished we'd stayed in the Red Lion. Joules beers are pretty good stuff and I'd look forward to trying some again.
Wednesday evening we planned on staying in Brewood which I remembered as a really nice, but quite sleepy, village. It's changed a little bit in the intervening years, having almost all the space in the centre of the village replaced by new housing (none too cheap too, I would imagine). Nevertheless, the Bridge Inn right next to the...well, bridge...is a Martson's chain pub but the golden beer they had on offer was well kept and pleasant and the curry we had to go with it was excellent. After dinner we wandered into the village and tried the Swan Hotel which had, probably, my favourite beer of the trip. Lemon Dream by Salopian. S had something like Stairway to Heaven (can't remember the brewery) and very much enjoyed it...so much so we had another pint before wending our way back to the boat.
Thursday evening should have seen us at Tixall Wide near our boatyard, with the aim of going to the pub in the village. Unfortunately some mechanical problems put paid to that so instead we opted for lunch near Penkridge (nice enough beer and food) and boating as long as we could into the evening and then mooring in farming country which was as nice an end to a holiday as you could imagine.
So - the beer was much better than I feared but not as great as I secretly hoped...and it's left me with a yearning to do the trip again over two weeks to allow for more off-canal exploration.
*thumbs through canal brochure for 2017*
