retiredmartin
retiredmartin
Martin
Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.
Latest Posts
April 2026. Skipton. Loads of pubs of all shapes and sizes in Skipton, and loads of disagreement over “the best”, whatever “best” means. I wanted to show Mrs RM the canal basin, as it’s where folk gravitate for boat trips and ice cream....
April 2026. Skipton. Still in Skipton last Sunday, we explored the little strip of shops between the High Street and Sheep Street with entrances off both. “Yorkies” looks like a dolls house, but it’s actually a chippy (small fish and...
April 2026. Skipton. I had (genuinely) brought Mrs RM to Skipton last Sunday for reasons other than beers (pork pies and canal basins, mainly), so it was disappointing when she stopped me on the walk to ask “What’s that pub like ?“. I...
April 2026. Bradford. I miss Richard Coldwell. A funny, intelligent, opinionated man, he would have had interesting things to say about pork pies and pub opening times. He’d have had an opinion on cafes like the Dales Cottage putting...
April 2026. Skipton. I seem to have upset my many esteemed Yorkshire readers, something to do with gravy, so to redeem myself here’s a post on saving yourself £12.80 on your visit to Skipton Castle. OK, you won’t actually get inside the...
April 2026. Skipton. Last week we went to Skipton again. Three (3) reasons; a re-opened GBG new entry to tick, a blog post series idea to explore, and a pork pie to audit. In 2022 I had declared Stanforths the best pork pie in England,...
One of the most exciting travel months for a while, with a Big Day Out in Tutbury the highlight, as we finally, finally, complete the sale of the family house. Sixty (60) different pubs in a month, that’s nearly two a day, surely ? A few...
April 2026. Salford. Greater Manchester’s pubs complete, I headed back to Wigan Wallgate, ignoring the lure of the Bass in the Swan & Railway, and joining a group of bewildered young women on a train heading to Todmorden via Victoria....
April 2026. Wigan. My final Greater Manchester GBG26 newbie is a good couple of miles west of town, and which man doesn’t want a 45 minute slog through industrial wasteland and retail parks to an industrial estate brewery tap. Despite...
April 2026. Wigan. Another weekend, another trip to Manchester, but this time for a rare Saturday gig. Not that the lack of football means Piccadilly is any quieter, Platform 14 showcasing the nation’s favourite train beers. Perhaps. A...
April 2026. Guisborough. North Yorkshire. This next “pub” had been irritating me for a year or more with its Friday and Saturday 3pm-7pm hours, but you take the rough with the smooth as a GBG ticker, and Guisborough is a nice little...
April 2026. Skelton-in-Cleveland. North Yorkshire. By noon last Friday I’d clocked up 16k of steps, almost enough to wipe out a third Thursday night’s crispy beef calories, and I still had 3 hours to waste away before my straggler of a...
April 2026. Saltburn-by-the-Sea. I visited the Cleveland coast in last weekend’s heatwave, or at least that’s what it felt like with the radiant heat stronger than the air temperature. My irritating 3pm GBG opener (go on, guess what it...
April 2026. Loftus. North Yorkshire. As an old Cleveland mining town with a population about the size of Waterbeach, Loftus didn’t promise much more than a couple of cheery micropubs, and the run of boarded up shops and chippies where...
April 2026. Loftus. North Yorkshire. I’d picked unsung Loftus for my campervan overnighter as it was free, a short bus ride to Staithes, and had a new GBG entry to tick. Sadly that was shut on Thursday, but next door Mad Alice’s was just...