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
October 2025. Bucharest. We concluded the quartet of Bucharest taprooms at Hop Hooligans in the (relatively) genteel suburbs east of the University. Yes, a gorgeous looking home for Romania’s best known (more Vocation than Brew Dog)...
October 2025. Bucharest. More cultural and culinary highlights from our 3rd day in Bucharest, as we leave the unprepossessing surrounds of the Ironic Tap, and stumble upon this oddity; “Don’t go in there” I warn Mrs RM. Mrs RM goes in...
October 2025. Bucharest. The Young Boys of Bern had told us that Bucharest’s Ironic Taproom was an essential visit, and as Mrs RM wanted a blog post called “four essential craft bars” it was easy to drag her from the seedier part of the...
October 2025. Bucharest. Mrs RM had devised an ingenious plan to get me to trudge round Bucharest in the drizzle taking photos of Instagrammable sights on our 3rd day. Her blog posts will no doubt cover this stuff in fine detail. Simply...
October 2025. Bucharest. Friday was the Big Tourist Tick Day in Bucharest, and Mrs RM had targeted Caru’ cu Bere as the must visit Romania restaurant. And not just because it was close to Ground Zero and it was raining. Chat GPT had told...
October 2025. Bucharest. Six hours on the Bucharest tourist trail, time for a beer. Luckily for Mrs RM, a brand new bar awaited yards from our coach drop-off. Seven years on from our first trip, the capital has lost a couple of Old Town...
October 2025. Bucharest. “All I remember about that first Bucharest trip is your ****ing craft beer pubs” said Mrs RM angrily. Somewhat unfair, as I distinctly recall it was her making me go in places called “Beer O’Clock” and “100...
October 2025. Bucharest. Romania. Yes ! It’s those forrin muck posts you love ! It’s Mrs RM’s fault. With the old folk heading downhill she’s taking every opportunity to kill the planet fly to Eastern Europe for £20 while we can. A...
September 2025. Sheffield. You’ll remember (well, Russ will, he takes notes) that I’d started the Sheffield Half Pint Marathon in full Bass Star kit, spraining a metaphorical ankle by losing the stickered map after a week, having to...
September 2025. Hope to Castleton. Ooh, a tourist pub ! You’d be surprised how few GBG entries there are in the Peak District, with the towns on the edge hogging the entries over the years. But Castletown, home to Blue John as well as...
September 2025. Cambridge. The town of my birth, if not my heart, was experiencing a quiet period in the week before the students return. Cambridge gets steady Asian tourist trade, most of which succumbs to the charm of foppish...
September 2025. Atherstone. One thing about Old Mudgie, he’ll make sure there’s a lunch stop on your pub crawl. What he couldn’t have foreseen was that the White Horse, under new management and with an ambitious lunch menu, would be...
September 2025. Atherstone. Just like Oasis, our revival of August’s massively successful Atherstone crawl was a re-run of the big hits, just with better-looking participants. We start off at the canal pub, where the King’s Head is again...
September 2025. Atherstone. Barely a month after the official CAMRA curated exploration of Atherstone’s public houses, we were back at Warwickshire’s most beguiling small market town. This time Old Mudgie and Jon from Frome joined...
September 2025. Crookes. Two ticks on the Sheffield half-pint marathon, a clever device to get you out of the house in a quiet September visiting pubs. As if I need an excuse. Crookes is a decently pubbed village for middle-class...