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
April 2026. Mareham-le-Fen. Lincolnshire. A productive weekend in rural Lincs leaves me with just the one tick to finish the county, but as that’s in bucolic Skegness I’m saving it for a special occasion. Mareham-le-Fen is another small...
April 2026. Wragby. Lincolnshire. Your actual new Wragby Beer Guide pub isn’t a classic, but then the Lincolnshire Wolds aren’t renowned for classics. Prove me wrong. But you do get this extraordinary piece of art in the garden of the...
April 2026. Wragby. Lincolnshire. You’ll remember my brave but doomed attempt to get to Wragby by bus last week ? Well, I tried again. A man who is tired of East Lindsey district has already been once. Actually, that’s not fair;...
April 2026. Sheffield. As I may have hinted, the last few months have been stressful, and not just due to the more limited recent availability of the £1.89 salt and pepper calamari from Home Bargains, which I used to fill out our...
April 2026. Eyam. Derbyshire. The landlady at the Three Stags’ Heads gently chided me for my mispronunciation of the name on the pump clip, which made me keen to visit Eyam, pronounced just as you’d expect (or not). Our last American...
April 2026. Wardlow Mires. Peak District. I’d taken Mrs RM to one of the most scenic points in the Peak District, bought her ice cream and Jaipur (NOT in the same glass, silly ! That’s a Stockton thing) and drove her home via some of the...
April 2026. Monsal Head. The Peak District. Mrs RM had been reminding me how little of the Peak District we’d actually done since moving to Sheffield (hardly any new GBG pubs), so I gave her a mystery trip into the heart of the Peak last...
April 2026. Tutbury & Hatton. As promised, a rare “long read” (ugh) on our pub crawl to Tutbury and Hatton this Tuesday. If you get bored after my regulation 389 words send me a note and I’ll go back to writing up every pub individually,...
April 2026. Waterbeach. A week ago we were on our way down south for our last overnight stay in Mum and Dad’s Waterbeach cottage; a year’s stay without a TV and internet, a month sleeping on a mattress on the ground. A mattress covered...
April 2026. Sheffield. Walking back from the Botanical last Saturday I had a lot of worries on my mind. The chance of Dad’s house sale falling through at the last moment (it didn’t), Mrs RM’s blog getting more views than mine (it might)...
April 2026. Sheffield. A Saturday in Sheffield before, we hoped, a last hurrah cleaning the old house in Waterbeach. I did a walk out over the hills to the Botanical Gardens, where I brought Dad 5 years ago on his only visit to...
April 2026. Sheffield. Some good news today. Sunnyside is finally sold, to a lovely couple with two toddlers. Mum would be delighted. A week ago I was waiting for something to go wrong with exchange/completion/WW3, and persuading Mrs RM...
I’m suddenly miles behind on the blog again. How has that even happened ? April 2026. Birmingham. I’d just had the overdue glass of water on my Curated Exploration of Public Houses (CEPH), but forgotten to eat. Across the road from The...
I’ll spare you the A-ha video. April 2026. Hockley. Birmingham. At Bournville station I caught up again with the two Wolves fans from Attic, and had a chat about the merits of the Great Western vs the Wheatsheaf, and the mysterious...
April 2026. Stirchley. Birmingham. With Attic ticked I could/should have caught the next train to New Street for my second Brum pub, but something was drawing me to Stirchley High Street. Not the Peanut Butter Jelly-me-up burger on the...