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
June 2025. Haydock. Merseyside. I can still get thrilled at a visit to a new place, even if it is a mining village north of St Helens. Genuinely, I’d no recollection of Haydock, bar driving past the racecourse, and that’s virtually the...
June 2026. Lytham (not St Annes). An afternoon in Lytham (not St Annes, for a change) to meet up with Blackpool Jane on her blogging return and swap World Cup stickers with Lee. You remember Lytham ? The one with the windmill and the...
June 2026. Preston. A night in Preston, but an afternoon in Lytham, and that meant no pubs in one of the world’s great pub cities. No, it really is, even with the demise of the Greyfriar Moorbrook, with a proper mix of boozers (ugh). A...
June 2026. Preston. At last ! We’re leaving Yorkshire ! I’d forgotten what it was like to be able to wake up on a Saturday morning with freedom to go anywhere I want as long as I’m home by tea so Mrs RM can check her blog clicks. Mrs RM...
June 2026. Sheffield. From the Park Hill flats we followed the path of the tram toward town, with the UK’s scruffiest tourist sign at the Park Square roundabout. Much of central Sheffield has been modernised beyond recognition in recent...
June 2026. Sheffield. I don’t like these days in Sheffield, there’s too much still to see, but with Mrs RM busy curating her blog I need to give her options for local exploration. It’s a while since we explored the Park Hill flats out...
June 2026. Somewhere near Tonbridge, Kent. In truth, I’d been looking forward to the usual “Meal for Three” from Southborough’s Meows for Michael’s birthday, Mrs Meow is my second favourite lady in the whole world and it’s not even...
June 2026. Royal Tunbridge Wells. I’d left Mrs RM in the cheap Tunbridge Wells Travelodge on Mount Ephraim at 3pm for my dash into West London, and as expected the call about tea came at 17:59 just as I was finishing that pint of Shere...
June 2026. Teddington. London. Two cracking London pubs; one edging the beer, the other the “pub”. Back on the train that does the loop from Waterloo and back via Wimbledon, failing to take the killer shot of the Thames due to being on...
June 2026. London. Another long drive last Wednesday; Sheffield to Waterbeach to see Dad (firmly asleep), then down to Tunbridge Wells ahead of Father-in-Law’s 88th birthday (firmly awake and raring to go). There’s some longevity genes...
June 2026. Sheffield. Let the record show that I spent last Tuesday afternoon with Mrs RM at Meadowhall Shopping Centre, and spent nothing. There is nothing I want to buy now I’ve bought my annual pair of Riekes, though I’ll happily...
June (finally !) 2026. Wetherby. Monday morning brings us to Wetherby, famed for the lack of a railway station, a Sam Smiths (without sign) seemingly closed longer than you’ve been alive, and a wonderful collection of cakes and pies to...
May 2026. Loftus. North Yorkshire. On the last day of Sunday I decided it could wait no longer. Ibo’s Bunker must be ticked before June. For a third time this year I took the campervan to the mining villages of the north coast, parked up...
May 2025. North Yorkshire. There’s been a lot of Yorkshire on this blog this year. I won’t apologise; Yorkshiremen never apologise (I assume, having listeded to Geoffrey Boycott on Test Match Special all those years). Am I a Yorkshireman...
May 2026. Sheffield. While I was in zen mode back in 2022, focused only on completing the Beer Guide before family disaster/pandemic/ash cloud struck again, I’d have got irritated with anyone wanting to pop over to Sheffield to spend a...