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
February 2025. Genoa. You’ll have to excuse this post, a little worse for wear after a night on the beer in Turin and now watching Mariah Carey introduce the Winter Olympics. Don’t the Italians have any singers ? It’s a dozen years since...
January 2026. Genoa. Mrs RM could stand the constraints of the weekly Sheffield-Waterbeach-Tunbridge Wells shuffle no longer and booked a cheap flights (cheap to us, the cost to the planet is a different issue) to Italy and hoped there...
January 2026. Waterbeach. One more night in Waterbeach before exciting forrin’ travel, and as always it’s Mrs RM who insists we nip in the Sun while waiting for the Chung Hwa to work its magic on squid. I wish Mrs RM would work her magic...
January 2026. Radcliffe on Trent. I’ve just realised when I visited the old Radcliffe GBG entries (one now a Tesco Metro). In 2002, during the South Korean World Cup, I dragged Mrs RM and two toddlers to a camp site in Stragglethorpe, a...
January 2026. Radcliffe on Trent. Pub 3 of 4 on our expertly curated survey of public houses in the ancient Notts village of Radcliffe, whose most attractive feature was some doggy knitwear on the way to the Chestnut. I’d struggle to...
January 2026. Radcliffe on Trent. When I came to Radcliffe to tick the micropub (temporarily closed so no return) in 2019 I’d asked a local; “What about the other pubs in Radcliffe ?” I asked. “Any good ?” “Nah. Too cliquey”. Well,...
January 2026. Radcliffe on Trent. It was Will’s idea, the daft best ones generally are. Someone on CAMRA Discourse admitted the much maligned Craft Union chain had a decent outlet near them, and Will forced the honourable member to name...
January 2026 wasn’t as dramatic as January 2025, thank goodness, but parental concerns still limited our travels. Not that you’d necessarily know that looking at the travel map; Rare trips into Lancashire, Norfolk, and Nottinghamshire’s...
January 2026. Waverley. Rotherham. “What’s new and shiny in Sheff ?” is the Eternal Question asked by beery tourists, and truth is the central “scene” (ugh) has settled down a bit since the Old Shoe, though we’ve now got an upmarket...
January 2026. Waverley. Rotherham. I knew it would take something new and exciting to persuade Mrs RM to stop refining her Sarajevo blog and come out for a walk on the remains of Orgreave pits, and that something new and exciting was a...
January 2026. Bradford. 2.9 miles in 37 minutes from the Crown down to the Alhambra, and a sorry tale of pub death awaits, despite a year as the UK’s Capital of Culture (and it IS a cultural giant). This is the extract from CAMRA’s...
January 2026. Waterbeach. It takes great resolve to take the train to Bradford and only have one pint; no-one ever completed the GBG like that. But the Crown out on the western suburbs was the totality of my toping that Monday, partly...
January 2026. South Blackpool. Another 20 minutes wait for a tram at Blackpool Tower (I’m not making this up); I’d have walked the mile to the Tipsy Seagull quicker. Not only were we meeting Blackpool Jane, in actual Blackpool, we were...
January 2026. Blackpool. If in doubt, tell the truth. I was wiped out by the time I’d finished that pint of Acorn Blonde in Bispham, fit only to head back to the warm embrace St Annes Travelodge with a cup of M & S instant coffee and an...
January 2026. Bispham. Blackpool. I like this Blackpool tram map so much I’m going to use it in my Rotherham post. None of you will notice. Ah, Bispham. How do you even pronounce it ? And why is Little Bispham so far from Bispham proper,...