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.
July 2026
August 2026
September 2026
Top Words
- pubs
- pint
- sheffield
- spoons
- cask
- bass
- beer
- stocktake
- preview
- arms
All posts (720)
December 2025. Hastings. You’ll know that I fund my hedonist lifestyle by not buying clothes, but by Monday I realised I was going to have to replace my dark fleece, inexplicably left on the 17:35 from Uttoxeter after 4 pints of Bass. 20 minutes by rail brings you to Hastings, which has shops and pubs. Oddly, I...
December 2025. Rye Harbour. I’d popped down up to Waterbeach to see Dad on Friday, leaving Mrs RM to her blog without me ruining her WiFi. “Are you back tomorrow?” she asks, oblivious to plans. Obviously she wanted something brought down to Rye, probably chocolate*, so I caught the first train back, the one with Fen...
December 2025. Waterbeach. Ask anyone about Waterbeach and they’ll say “Ah, that’s where the Southworths ate a Chinese takeaway with folded bits of card“, but it’s also renowned as the place with two breweries and a Brewery Tap that isn’t. Pastore is the fruit sour specialist whose beers pop up in the craft beer...
December 2025. Waterbeach. Back at Home (2) after that little Gravesend diversion and 20 minutes between train at Kings Cross that I judged just insufficient for a pint at the King Charles I, I visit Dad in the afternoon (I’ve just missed “Annie” at the care home), hoover Sunnyside and then pop to The Sun. That...
December 2025. Gravesend. Kent. The route from home (1) to home (2) to home (3) is fairly well-established now. Friday saw the Rye to Waterbeach via St Pancras leg, interrupted by a short diversion at Ebbsfleet International, one of the UK’s least used (per square foot) railway stations now the Eurostar avoid it on...
December 2025. Bexhill-on-Sea. We’d entered the gates of Bexhill with such noble intentions. Culture at the De la Warr, a long bracing walk along the front, Eddie Izzard’s model railway… But too much beer early on had scuppered plans, and I wasn’t even in the mood for some clothes shopping for me. Not today. But a...
December 2025. Bexhill-on-Sea. Mrs RM enjoyed our lunchtime in Sussex-by-the-Sea, remembering the times that her aunt (it was probably her granny but I’m not strong on genealogy) took her to Bexhill for whatever people used to do at the seaside in the 70s. Look out to sea and shout at France, I guess. The houses on...
December 2025. Bexhill-on-Sea. There’s no point sitting in a caravan in the rain in Rye, waiting for the next elderly parent crisis to hit, when you could be on a train to a town with pubs. Mrs RM hadn’t been to Bexhill in over 40 years, so her memories were of childhood trips to the pebbly beach, rather than...
December 2025. Folkestone. Kent. Lots of pubs in Folkestone to revisit, but the two Harbour taps that interest me (Floc and Iron Pier) don’t open till later in the week, and they’re certainly not on the itinerary for the CAMRA Defenders of the Cask Faith crawl on Saturday. But that list reminds me that, away from...
December 2025. Folkestone. Kent. Leaving Folkestone Harbour Arm, with its scary giant seagulls that look like they’ve escaped from Squid Games, we suddenly find it’s nearly half three, the Golden Hour for photos before dusk. Time for a trip along The Stade, replete with souvenirs from the feral Ultras of South...
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