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
May 2026. Sibiu. Central Romania. A couple of nights in one of Transylvania’s top tourist towns, which normally means you ensure you can visit all the best pubs. But in this case it meant we left the highly recommended St Andrews...
May 2026. Sibiu. Central Romania. Sadly for my readers keen to read about Wetherspoons breakfasts and suburban Bass houses, the law of the diary-based blog requires I get to the end of this Romanian week, so come back, ooh, next Monday...
May 2026. Sibiu. Central Romania. Right in the heart of Transylvania, in fact, close to Vlad Dracul’s home in Sighisoara and a string of UNESCO fortified villages. Sibiu isn’t quite as eerily characterful as Sighisoara, it’s busier and a...
May 2026. Sibiu. Romania. The Untappd check-in map tells a tale of a well-pubbed town. Some doubts I’d been having about the strength of the Romanian economy (Sighisoara and Alba Iulia were very quiet by dusk) were removed that first...
May 2026. Alba Iulia to Sibiu. Romania. Day 2, City 3 in Romania, catching the 15.29 with what might be “Corofana”, one of the many totally reliable minibuses listed on Autogari.RO Mrs RM’s blog will contain much, much more detail on...
May 2026. Alba Iulia. Romania. See ! This blog isn’t all closed micros and Singapore rice. Staying overnight within the Alba Iulia fortress gave us a best spot at the changing of the Austrian guard the next morning (Press PLAY). I’ve no...
May 2026. Alba Iulia. A night in the fortress city of Alba Iulia, and in the citadel trenches the only craft beer in town. The fortress had received an expensive makeover (some Romanians we met were scathing about the cost) to make it...
May 2026. Alba Iulia. Romania. Seven days in Romania, five (5) different cities overnight, with the alarm going off at 6am far too frequently for one of us. An hour in Cluj before heading to the station, reminiscent of one of those...
May 2026. Cluj. Romania. Unexpectedly, we seemed to have a week free between “hosting” (ugh) Americans and Pep Guardiola’s farewell (of which less later). As usual, Mrs RM was on the same wavelength as me. “Week in Cluj ?“. The flights...
May 2026. Blyth. Nottinghamshire. Off on our latest trip south to see Dad and source blog material from Transylvania. Sis gave me a book of lunch stops off the motorways a while ago, most of them at garden centres and alpaca farms. I...
May 2026. Sheffield. Joan and Dave reached the end of their world tour of Yorkshire in Sheffield, stopping overnight in Retired Martin Towers to admire the beauty of our “natural” garden. The cultural tour for Americans takes in the...
May 2026. Masham. North Yorkshire. Half a dozen pubs (well, two of them brewery taps) and a golf club bar for 1,205 residents of Masham; time to see if the GBG has picked the right two (the red Ps). It appears Dave and Joan joined me in...
May 2026. Masham. North Yorkshire. From the Peak to the Dales. This year’s crop of new GBG entries in North Yorkshire had only one thing in common; they’re a sod to get to on public transport. And who wants to drive to Masham, one of the...
May 2026. Stockport. Manchester. Sheffield. Big news in the RM household yesterday as Matt and Emma move from Piccadilly to Heaton Norris, SK4. If it was good enough for Old Mudgie… I met Matt and Emma’s lovely folks in Beermoth a...
May 2026. Sheffield. Central Sheffield isn’t underpubbed, but apply the cask ale filter and the area around West Street looks a little different. I’ve lived here more than 5 years, I ought to have visited all the real ale pubs in...