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
August 2026. Frome. Yes, I’m really milking the Frome Folly Jolly for content, and appropriately Pub 7 talkes us to Milk Street, former home of Milk Street (now Frome) Brewery. The Griffin is the perennial GBG entry, the quirky local...
August 2026. Frome. Pub 6, or 7 (seven) for those on our Frome Roam who had popped off to Palmers Bottle Shop after Just Ales. I can tell you nothing about Palmers, which means it is guaranteed to make the next GBG. The pace was...
August 2026. Frome. Pub 5 on the Frome Frolic, and having retrieved Kentish Paul from the chaos of the rail system it was time to do a rapid tour of the town, and head for the GBG micro up the hill. Oddly, we lost Stafford Paul at this...
August 2026. Frome. The pub blogging community is very tight knit and supportive. Oxford Nick aka Prop Up The Bar has been receiving our support since posting this photo on Tuesday night; I shall be stealing that Olivia Rodrigo reference...
August 2026. Frome. It’s 12:13 last Saturday and we’re already on Pub 3 on the Great Frome Pub Survey, or whatever we’re calling it. It’s something called Archangel, without the “The“, like Architects without the definitive article. And...
August 2026. Frome. Oh look, spoiler, a map showing our pub crawl route in Frome last Saturday. The best is yet to come, but every pub deserves a Retired Martin post, even the George, the most stately looking place in the market place. I...
August 2026. Frome. I can’t remember why we started our Proper Pub Crawl/Curated Survey of Licensed Premises* at the Blue Boar. Oh yes, it opened at 10am. We live in a world where many pubs don’t open till 4pm (if at all) during the...
August 2026. Frome. Somerset. A weekend in student digs in Bath, with the centrepiece a Saturday pubbing in Frome, guided by local celebrities Jon and Tracey. “Froooom. Throwm. ANiceTotnes. However you pronounce it, Frome is a gem”, I...
August 2026. Bath. I’d opted for a couple of nights down in Bath, a little luxurious but the student residences on the edge of town were cheaper than a Doncaster Travelodge, Twerton Mill’s riverside rooms near Bath City FC spotless and...
August 2026. Bath. I arrived back at Isambard’s (quite good) statue with 5 minutes to spare, and half an hour later was clambering the Paragon steps on the edge of central Bath. You must know this one. A symphony in brown dark red, where...
August 2026. Bristol. My train to Bath left in 50 minutes time; Google reckoned 54 minutes walk from the Port of Call to Temple Meads, which gave little time for dawdling on the descent through Cotham Hill. And so, once more, I could...
August 2026. Bristol. I’ll show my deep ignorance of suburban Bristol now and admit I don’t really know the difference between Clifton Village and Clifton proper, about 50p on a pint I guessed. Yes, there are buses I could have taken,...
August 2026. Bristol. It’s been a while, but I finally managed a trip outside that brutal Manchester-Midlands-Cambridge-Kent corridor last weekend. A choice of routes down to Bath, and the one stopping at Oxford would have been ideal...
August 2026. Skegness. Lincolnshire. We stayed at The Vine, as we did back in 1999 when our 6 month old cried through Roger Protz’s dinner in the oak panelled dining room. A week later we found out James had a hernia, bless him. I’m not...
August 2026. Skegness. Lincolnshire. Obviously Skegness isn’t the most newsworthy east coast seaside resort this week, what with alien bins* competing for our attention, but I was genuinely keen to discover why the trains from Sheffield...