April 2026. Steeton. West Yorkshire. I shouldn’t be jealous of anyone, really, jealousy gets you nowhere. But I do look at Simon’s blog and wish I was travelling round the country doing seven pints a day again. While BRAPA was finding half a dozen new pubs in Oxon I was scrambling around for a single new Guide entry...

April 2026. Manchester. A day in central Manchester, the modern bit between St Peters and the Irwell, with a diversion through Spinninfields (no ta), and a quick look at the history of Unionism (yes please) in the wonderful People’s History Museum. We meet Blackpool Jane (why don’t we ever use proper names ?)...

April 2026. Manchester. Quite a contrast between the central squares in Tyldesley, and Manchester, where I find Mrs RM in the art gallery. Well, the cafe. She tells me the city looks gorgeous in the sun, the flashy high rise complementing the Victorian heritage, so I’m not alone in that view. Opposite the Town Hall...

April 2026. Tyldesley. You can’t come to Tyldesley and just do the lone new GBG entry. Perhaps I should have gone craft, but the lure of the longstanding “Proper” pub was too strong, so the Union Arms it was. Thwaites on the bar, a clear preference to how you pay (“Ooh, a fiver, I love fivers !”). and local legend...

April 2026. Tyldesley. A slight post now, perhaps, but I thought you’d like to see the highlights of my mile walk through central Tyldesley (pop. 16,142) in Wigan’s old colliery belt. Love a Monkey Puzzle tree. A spotless red brick town, with a heartening number of Chinese takeaways and an Indian gastro pub called...

April 2026. Tyldesley. My GBG newbie is over a mile from the centre of Tyldesley, in an area of neatly kept old mine workers houses, pleasant if unremarkable. You’ll need to cross the A580 into Astley for the really interesting houses and the mining museum. Should you be cancelling your big holiday in Whitby or...

April (finally !) 2026. Manchester to Tyldesley. You learn a lot about the UK transport networks as a pub ticker. Some towns stand out as tough to tick, particularly the string of mining towns without a railway station between Manchester and Wigan. Thanks a bunch, Mr Beeching. But this very week celebrates a decade...

March 2026. Waterbeach. Waterbach Gault looked rather lovely last Tuesday. Less so, the contents of the skip we’d hired to clear muck from garage and potting shed. The house sale rumbles into its 15th month, quite the most stressful 15 months of my life. It’s inevitable, really, that everyone walking past a skip...

March 2026. Chesterton. Back down in Waterbeach, where Dad was looking better groomed than myself, and then a catch-up with Dortmund Annie to discuss “stuff” at the Haymakers. A possible answer to a quiz question, Milton (via Waterbeach) Brewery’s flagship is the only pub in Cambidge High Street, which is actually...

March 2026. Sheffield. We have more honoured guests arriving next month, so we used Sunday to do a risk assessment on the nearby streets leading to pubs, starting with the toughest of them all. Actually, the Blake Hotel isn’t too bad to reach from ours, you just wouldn’t want to run up it from Upperthorpe half an...

March 2026. Norton. North Yorkshire.. Not THAT Norton, Dave If you include virtually contiguous (love that word) Norton as well as Malton the population is 12,275, I read that somewhere. Norton is very much Malton’s hidden away ugly nephew, even though it’s somehow bigger, and has fewer pubs. I head there now, via...

March 2026. Malton. North Yorkshire. Before I cross over the picturesque Derwent to my second pub, I must reflect on Malton’s astonishing pub scene. Ignore those grey Ps (unless in Wolverhampton); I make that fifteen (15) pubs for 4,888 people in a town mostly famous for cafes and bistros and hidden food courts....