Small Pleasures

 At weekends (which include Friday afternoon, natch) we choose our venues carefully.

The great thing about Bristol, especially in the summer, is how it becomes a very specific sort of visitor city (I don't think it was like this at all when I was growning up).  

They're here for all sorts of reasons:  the music scene (yesterday and today Idles doing a couple of outdoor gigs to kick off an international tour), the Wallace and Grommit trail (whatever the latest iteration of that is), beer festivals, cider festivals, harbour festivals...

...there are also, of course, the hen and stag parties:  so many pubs, so little time.

Throughout the year there are sporting events (EFL season started yesterday) - football, rugby, basketball...

Obviously, then the breweries and distilleries, and taprooms and tasting rooms and pubs.  There really is more than enough to make it a city worth visiting for a day, or more.

As a result, then, some areas of the city are HEAVING.

So - as I say, we try and choose carefully.  This generally means staying on this side of town.

It goes to explain why we tend to go Moor on Friday or Saturday and yesterday it was particularly quiet there (there are reasons, but I hope that doesn't carry on for too long) and less beer on tap than usual.

Nevertheless we sat outside for one and tried to find photographs for one of our new silly cameras:  a 1930's tiny (127 film size) box camera, since you ask.  When we decamped inside we played a couple of games of Regicide and then got chatting with James which is always a fine way to spend a bit of time.

When we headed home we thought we might get one or two more pictures (there are only 8 to be taken, for goodness' sake) and a chap said "is that actually a camera?"...and that sparked a conversation about film photography and silly cameras, completely at random.  It was a delightful 10 mins.

 This morning I went out to try and take the picture on it and to try a "new" old camera:  a Zenith 11 with a Carl Zeiss lens, so I strolled over the bridge and was greeted with countless people in "band" t-shirts arriving by train, and crowds at the 'spoons.  I headed towards Martha's, assuming it would be quiet so I could take some urban pictures.  I was staggered to see the arches next door have been turned into a pop-up plant shop with huge queues of people waiting (to pay???) and Martha's, the Pasty Shop and the Forest Bakery with loads of people in attendance.  How brilliant!

I queued for some bread to take home for lunch and then was really relieved to remove myself from the crowds and look down on them from our flat.

When we bought this flat there were literally no people wandering around at the weekend but it's gone on to be a bustling little corner of the city.  It's got its good and bad sides but it's lovely to see these businesses making the most of it. 

 

 

 

Ahhhhhhhh

 It's been a bit busy and there's an awful lot of plate-spinning happening.

When we came to head up to Bristol the trip felt a little bit daunting - and we were also taking more luggage than usual (including a negative scanner...because, you know...).

As it was, it was as smooth a trip - we jumped on a bus at the end of the road, our train was already waiting for us at the station, the tube across London was painless and we only had 10 minutes or so to wait at Paddington.  Once we walk through the door of the flat and ascertain that there had been no obvious disasters in our absence, we can start to relax.

The utter delight of settling into the Barley Mow was unparallelled.  We observed that we don't really like pubs which are devoid of customers but the BM is a bit of an outlier in that, even if the pub interior is  largely empty, you know that there will be loads of people sitting outside so people are always coming and going.  We sit in peace inside, whilst knowing we're not actually alone in the place.

There wasn't an enormous range of cask we wanted to drink but it was Monday (we don't normally travel up on a Monday - it was a bit disorienting) we had lovely beer, and we relaxed.

Lots of work to do this week, but the knowledge of local beer availability makes it all a bit better.  Funding bid, anyone? 

Never Say Never

 It was the BBB's birthday yesterday.  Sadly, I had to dash into work for a meeting but I was back around lunchtime.  We'd toyed with the idea of a walk but rain threatened so we chickened out and wandered down to The Crown to watch some cricket, play a birthday-present game and make the most of the beer.

There was a Burning Sky APA and that was supplemented by Long Man Mosaic.

The APA was lovely but it seemed a crime not to even try the Mosaic...we're not Long Man fans but we needed to take one for the team.

Actually it was really, really nice.  So much so, we shared a final of it.

 I hope the birthday boy enjoyed the trip as much as I did. 

Regulars

 Saturday saw us both in work again as we were co-producing a new session for young people at TechResort (that is to say, we've a vague idea how it should work but we wanted to test it on some willing victims before we go further).

It was quite a lot of peopling for us both followed by developing 5 rolls of film in a non-dedicated darkroom...in other words, tanking up in the light-proof bathroom, and developing in the kitchen.

After the deluges of Friday night, the temperature crept up in the afternoon so by the time we left, we were hot and tired.  Beerarama seemed the best place to go.  Obviously, the prospect of Route 21 Cask beer was persuasive: we really enjoyed it but thought it might be more of a keg beer, YMMV.

On keg was a first (probably only) for Eastbourne:  an IPA from Brausyndikat Microbrewery in Zurich.  With the brewer also onsite.  Very nice it was too - definitely continental in style.

Beerarama is unlike any venue we go to in Bristol - it has a really good wine list and a decent keg offering at all times.  There's usually bag-in-box cider/perry too.

Their expansion into cask is very welcome but even if there's nothing on tap you fancy at that moment, it has a huge range of cans in fridges, together with an enviable no/low selection.

Speaking of Bristol, we're heading there soon (in a week or so) and I'm back to yearning for my home city and its variety of places.  As the BBB put it yesterday, it's also got more B&W photo-opportunities than Eastbourne.

We'll miss the garden but a couple of weeks watching balloons and peregrines whilst working will be the perfect reset from the amount travelling to venues and stuff I've been doing recently 

Reprise

 Friday we were working at base again so it seemed rude not to pop to Beerarama for some cask afterwards.

 This weekend's offering was by Almasty and was a lovely, hazy 4-and-a-bit percenter.

It had only just gone on and it was glorious. So much so that, despite some interesting looking kegs, we stuck with 2 more pints for our seconds.  Yum.

 Yesterday we had to go to the Wish Tower to meet the builder about some impending work so afterwards, we could have gone to the Bohemian, which is our usual after-tower venue but we wanted more of that lovely Almasty beer again before it went.  We almost never go to the same place two days in a row but this exception was definitely worth it.

Still fantastic but this time we moved to other beers after.  I asked Jamie how it was going and he was pleased to report they were making money out of it which is just lovely to hear.

 Today, I'm hoping for a bit of gentle garden-fettling followed by enjoying said garden with some Arbor beer.  I've another "out and about" week coming and next weekend also likely to be quite busy...some quiet time definitely called for. 

 

Eastbourne Developments

 D'you know, the beer thing might actually be looking in up in Eastbourne.

Granted, the starting place is pretty low but there are actual glimmers...

First, The Crown, our stalwart local that has a proper set of "regulars".  I'm starting to feel like one of them - cheerily greeted and bade farewell by other regulars.  A couple of the bar staff who have been around the pub as kids with their families (regulars, of course) and who started doing glass collecting at the weekends are now fully-fledged bar staff and we've seen them grow, and grow until now they're about 90-feet tall.  Landlord, Andy, tells us cask sales have increased some and now he's turning around more interesting cask beers pretty quickly - recently we've blinked and missed a new one!  When we tootled in on Monday afternoon there were two really nice ones on (Mallinsons Nectaron, Kent Prohibition) and that had followed NBB and Three Acres beers a few days before.  This cheers us enormously!

Then, if that weren't good enough, John and Jamie of Beerarama have starting doing one 9 gallon cask each weekend with a chiller jacket and a cask-tipper at the back of the bar.  Falling into the place after a stressful (but brilliant) work session with some volunteers, I asked for two-pints and John gave me a double-take.  "You don't drink pints!" he chuckled.  Frankly, it was just as well that we did because the bloody things didn't touch the sides...and lovely beer, too.

This week, I've seen on social media that a local micro-brewery (Route 21) and a local but well-known cider  producer are planning to open a new taproom in town (not far from the Eagle, it happens) and that's definitely cause for celebration. Even if we don't end up going in there all the time (like Ninkasi because it's not always convenient, or whatever) then it's nice to know that we can ring the changes.  Rest assured, we certainly will be.

Hopefully this will buoy up other similar places and maybe even convince others it worth opening. 

  

Not What it Was

 I had to go to That London last week for an event which meant me getting up stupidly early to get to "The City" for a 9.30 start.

 There's something to be said for Thameslink which meant that I could get a train a 7.30am (inhuman), change at Haywards Heath and arrive at City Thameslink at 9.15am, just a 10minute walk from the venue.  Doing this meant swerving the Tube on what promised to be a very warm day.

Since I'd had to shell out stupid money to get myself there it seemed a bit of a waste not to make the most of being in London so I'd suggested to the Boy that if he fancied the trip at a slightly more civilised (ie cheaper) time of day, we could meet up.  Alternatively, I could head home.

 He took the former option and we said we'd meet at Blackfriars station and maybe wander to Tate Modern with a Lomo camera to do a bit of film photography, and take in what was on there.

When I emerged from the event which had been really hot and stuffy I did so into this square with loads of public seating entirely surrounded by ridiculously tall glass buildings.  It was gloriously cool so I perched and caught up with stuff whilst I recovered from standing for an hour in the event.

After that, I had an hour or so to kill so I thought I'd stroll down to the embankment via Temple Church for a bit of an architectural gawp.  I passed Samuel Johnson's house and down to Fleet Street whilst getting hotter.  I thought there'd be a chance of a bench under a tree near the church but several hundred (well, about a dozen) people also had that idea and no seating in the shade was available.  So I walked down to the river but building works prevented walking alongside and the cool gardens that appeared to be available were very much "Public Keep Out".  Oh, yeah I'd forgotten places like that!

So I plodded on remembering that there used to be a long row of public benches outside the Blackfriar pub...but no, building works have absorbed that space too.

There were chairs and table outside the pub but I assume they were for Patrons and, as much as I love the building I didn't really fancy beer (and definitely not Nicholsons Ordinary) at the time.  Nevermind, a bit of shady perching space opened up outside the station so I waited there.  It's right next to the road and sound of irritable driving was intense.

Turns out, it may have been better to cross the bridge since the station has two exits...anyhow, we met up and wandered across together.

The south side of the river was also largely subsumed by building work - it looked like it was around my old company's disaster recovery side in what had been old bank building from the 70's.

We fought through pedestrians winding their way and eventually landed at Tate Modern.  I needed to eat but there wasn't any shade so we perched on a beautiful black stone bench which had managed to absorb all the sun it wanted and was, as a result, a bit of a bum burner!

I absolutely love the space alongside this bit of London but we needed to get some shade so we went inside.  My favourite exhibition bits was a Cuban artist's invocation of their home countryin sound, picutre and sculpture.  His favourite was some small metal sculptures.  When I leave a gallery not having seen it all, I sometimes feel like I'm doing it wrong...but we'd enjoyed most of what we'd seen, we took some Lomo pictures and we wanted to move on.

We headed toward Borough Market.

The first place we came across was The Rake.  As ever it's a wonderful pub/place with good beer on offer and not all of it at really Londony prices.  We relaxed and had a couple and I recovered from the heat and the walking (and the standing).  

 We thought it would be wrong not to go somewhere else, so we decided the Market Porter would be just the place.  It was crowded outside but looked cool and welcoming inside.  Except, the beer...there were 4 or 5 casks on but all of it was mainstream.  It couldn't possibly match up to what we'd just been drinking so, knowing there were 2 or 3 other really good pubs nearby we struck out again revisit pubs we'd enjoyed in the past.  We landed at the Old King's Head - a GBG stalwart with u21 football on the TV.  All they had was Tribute and not in good condition, either...though it was cheap in happy hour.  We watched some of the football but could only get halfway through the beer.  We wanted to stay within striking distance of London Bridge station for the journey home so we thought either the Royal Oak in Tabbard Street or back to the Rake.

To be honest, if we didn't live in Sussex we would probably have opted for Harveys Pub...but I wasn't in the mood and it was a bit hot for their beers.  Back to the Rake then, for another brilliant beer (Circle who had a takeover) before getting back on the train.

We reflected on the way home how disappointed we were at the changes in pubs we used to know and love but also now Borough Market is a very different sort of destination.  Where once were little independent restaurants etc, there are now mainly chains and maybe that's influencing the availability of a variety of different beer.  We'd literally seen nowhere we fancied eating and so we'd got an earlier train than otherwise would have been case, and made some pasta back at home.

I did also look on "Real Ale Finder" to see what beer might be available and only The Harp had an entry and none of what was on the list would have been enough to take me back over that way.  Looking on the What Pub app just listed a plethora of Fullers (at best) and similar places.

 The shame of it is that a lot of the pubs would be lovely to be in but without matching beer, I'm not going in.

If we have to do this again, I'll probably be looking at taprooms and the like which is a shame because whilst the beer might be superb...they're not proper London pubs, are they?