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
August 2026. Sheffield. More “Ticking the Tickers” on Saturday, as I finally meet up with one of my favourite bloggers Evo of EvoBoozySaddler fame. I’d been waiting till Walsall got a new entry in the Beer Guide to catch up, but it looks...
August 2026. Wombwell. Greater Barnsley. “You’re weird” says Mrs RM, which I’m taking as a compliment. A week after that foreign holiday in Wales, I’d barely left Sheffield. At Dad’s care home this afternoon, the lovely staff note my...
August 2026. Sheffield. Walking back from that Bass-less Loxley Sports Bar through Hillsborough, I once again fail to walk past the door of the Spoons. This is definitely the year of Wetherspoons, and not just because I didn’t lose my...
August 2026. Sheffield. Nearly six (6) years in Sheffield now, and there’s still several dozen pubs I’ve still to visit, including this one a mere 7 minutes walk from my front door; Sadly, he Rose has been closed a year now, and I feel...
August 2026. Sheffield. Mrs RM’s had to take a pair of shoes back, and walked a new pair in on the mile down into central Sheffield, where the first Christmas decorations were spotted on 23rd August. You’ll be thrilled to know we’ve...
August 2026. Manchester. Your traditional contractually obligated “first game at the Etihad” post you’ve no interest in. AFC Bournemouth at a traditional time, too, 2pm on a Sunday. The August fixture traditionally finds me scrabbling...
August 2026. Sheffield. The rain returned to Sheffield today. I’d forgotten the joy of a good soaking. It came in quite a rush, heading down the hills to the Don, and tonight the interweb is full of pics of water rushing through Kelham...
August 2026. Holmesfield. Derbyshire. From Abbeydale Industrial Museum and the posh southern suburbs of Sheffield, with its abbeys and golf courses and Ember Inns, you quickly find yourself on the edge of the Peak. For me, an unexplored...
August 2026. Abbeydale Road. Sheffield. A tiny bit of culture between the pubs, and Sheffield does culture better than most. I’ve seen ballet, theatre, symphonies, comedy and major photographic exhibitions seen we moved North; it’s not...
August 2026. Sheffield. Back home in Sheffield, Mrs RM is trying out new comfy shoes* that will allow her to rejoin the Cask Camino before that canal towpath ices up. “Are you taking me out for a pint then ?“. Really, she’s incorrigible....
August 2026. Alvechurch. A well-trod three and a half hour drive back from Cardiff to Sheffield, M4/A449/A40/M50/M5/M42/M1, and I got as far as the M42 before I needed to stop (bones not bladder). It’s a quarter of a century since I last...
August 2026. Cardiff to Penarth. I left you pondering which crafty pub co. ran this futuristic looking diner facing the Welsh Senedd on Cardiff Bay, and the answer, of course, was Sam Smiths. The Waterguard (which was very quiet) looks...
August 2026. Cardiff. A whole day in Cardiff with no plans. No football, no pubs, no Chinese takeaway trail through Splott. A quick look at the market, a triumph of function over form, and a dither at the big clock facing what used to be...
August 2026. Cardiff. We’d booked two nights at the £31 a night edge of town Zip Hotel, a Premier Inn concept that doesn’t seem to have taken, off despite high spec capsule rooms and a “Pizza and Pint for a tenner” offer. Because people...
August 2026. Cardiff. Well, it was a decent display of pyrotechnics at the Charity Shield, but another damp squib of a City performance against the Gooners, and NO, I didn’t stay for the presentation. But at least I stayed for the final...