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. 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...
August 2026. Cardiff. I’d dragged Mrs RM down to South Wales for a few days to escape the monotony of that Yorkshire-Cambridge-Kent run, and treated her to a couple of nights in the Zip hotel on the corner of David Lloyds sprawling...
August 2026. Newport. Gwent. Back at the ibis Budget hotel (not even a “where you been ?“) Mrs RM says only; “Hope we’re not going far for tea”. For a change, no, not with Sausage Saturday and Garin Fitter’s Oldies Show at the first pub...
August 2026. Newport. Gwent. My last visit to Newport resulted in a post called “Well, could YOU walk past the Murenger“, and though I rarely seem to visit Sam Smiths pubs these days you should never take that pint of cask OBB for...
August 2026. Newport. Gwent. I challenge you to find anyone who’s written as much or as positively about Newport over the years. See also : Stockton, Paisley, Dereham. But I’ve still never been to the Transporter Bridge, or done the...
August 2026. Newport. Gwent. Four years since my last visit to Newport, but I’ve still probably blogged more about this wonderful town than anywhere outside “home”. Four years means a couple of Beer Guide debutants have crept in, that...
August 2026. Newport. The east side of Newport into Maindee doesn’t have the haute couture shops and artisanal delis of the city centre, but it does have the Chicken Man. And it has a GBG newbie that’s been awaiting my visit for a while....
August 2026. Newport. (The Gwent one). It had been too long. A first night in Newport’s historic IBIS Budget (it wasn’t) since The Great Year of GBG Completion when it was only £34. Well, rather pricier 4 years later, with City and...
August 2026. Ross-on-Wye. Surely you’ve caught up on the blog after subjecting us to a torrent of posts, Retired Martin ? Er, no. Last weekend saw a third big trip of the week (nothing compared to the real ticker who cross continents on...
August 2026. Coventry. The last of our eight/nine/ten (appropriate as appropiate) Coventry pubs last Wednesday, though just because you have “Tavern” in your name doesn’t make you a pub. Things get more interesting on the approach to the...
August 2026. Coventry. Nearly finished. But not quite. Oxford Nick and I found a short cut to the legendary Broomfield Tavern tucked away off Spon End, and I immediately sighed “Oh, that’s the Broomfield“. In my mind, I visited all the...
August 2026. Coventry. I thought I’d picked an ambitious crawl around Coventry last Wednesday, and so it proved as we tackled the wonderful terraced pubs of Chapelfields. Never mind a “scratch ‘n’ sniff” edition of this blog; you need...
August 2026. Coventry. Right, let’s leave inner Coventry and head to the underpass, follow those scooters. Spon End is the heart of the light manufacturing quarter west of town, watchmaking mainly, a place few tourists tread. Of course,...
August 2026. Coventry. When I suggested a route for the Cov Crawl a month ago I’d used the Beer Guide as my starting point, but skipped the newish micropub in favour of an extra trad pub out west. Will gently chided me for this omission,...
August 2026. Coventry. Life After Football is that essential component you need on a pub crawl, the bloke who will veer you away from the GBG craft micro (ugh) in favour of the desi boozer, keg bar with pick-pockets, or Shisha bar with...