By Kate Simon

Is there a link between tipping the wrong side of 60 and an irresistible urge to know all about the birds? How a golden fleck in a feather distinguishes one creature from another sporting a red bib. Which is responsible for a caw, which for a coo?

I suspect this was why I found myself at a ‘Birds for Beginners’ session the other week at RSPB Minsmere, which has partially reopened following July’s devastating wildfire. I was keen to up the beak-count on those birds I could name from their shape and the colour of their plumage, and put some faces to voices.

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Undeterred by the fact that the only other beginner on this activity was an eight-year-old child, I hung on every word of our guide, David. He showed us how to use our binoculars and tipped us off about CornellLab’s free Merlin app before we got down to the real business of looking and listening.

Obliging Blue Tits trilled, Robins whistled and Blackcaps ticked. We paused by a tree to locate a bold Redstart, only to discover its persistent warble was being played through a speaker strategically placed in the branches by the bird-ringing team to attract these visitors from Sub-Saharan Africa to their mist nets.

The sighting that really impressed the friends I visited for lunch afterwards, veteran birdwatchers, was the Hobby, several of which we observed over the reedbeds, locating their positions in the sky with the questionable help of that great golf ball-shaped blot on the Suffolk landscape, the nuclear power station Sizewell B. But our guide’s main aim was to show us a Marsh Harrier.

It wasn’t to be, despite the bird of prey being a familiar sight at Minsmere, where the team was instrumental in saving it from extinction in the UK in the early 1970s. The RSPB hopes the Montagu’s Harrier will enjoy a similar success story, chicks having been hatched for the second year running in England. Their location is a closely guarded secret, but the charity has asked for help tracking the little-known habits of the juveniles once they’ve left the nest, with a hotline for reporting sightings at montys@rspb.org.uk.

The Marsh Harrier is on my list of likely spots at the Discover Autumn Migrants walk I’ll be joining at Titchwell Marsh in Norfolk in September. It’s one of a number of seasonal events that the RSPB will be running around the country while Jays, Nuthatches and Blackbirds are busy foraging berries and acorns, and Dunlins, Knots and Pink-Footed Geese are arriving from the frozen north to stage aerial spectaculars from The Wash to Morecambe Bay. All I need is a bit of beginner’s luck.

Phil’s Beer Notes

After closing earlier this summer when wildfires threatened, the historic Ship at Dunwich, just up the coast from Minsmere, is now back open. Hurrah! Good food, local ales, including Adnams, and a beautiful garden await your attention.

And close to the entrance of the reserve there’s Adnams Brewery’s own Eel’s Foot Inn, which, as well as the range of beers you’d expect, hosts folk nights and the Eel’s Foot Pétanque Cup.

While near Titchwell Marsh, the Jolly Sailors at Brancaster Staithe is always a good bet, especially if you’ve got the kids in tow. The hand-spun pizzas are recommended and you can drink a cask beer brewed at the pub’s own Brancaster Brewery.

And if you do make a trip to Morecambe Bay, why not make a proper adventure of it and visit the Ship Inn on Piel Island (population: 3), as I did last week. A tiny ferry will shuttle you across from the mainland, and the pub will be open until about October, depending on the weather. Ulverston Brewery’s Laurel & Hardy-themed beers are on the pumps, including Laughing Gravy, after Stan and Ollie’s dog, of course.

Photo: “Marsh harrier” by Edwyn Anderton is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

By Phil Mellows

We can thank the Americans for craft beer and the wealth of styles and flavours we’re now able to enjoy over here. Of course, these beers still have their roots in European brewing, but from the 1980s the new breed of ‘boutique breweries’, as they were known, grew those roots in all kinds of weird and wonderful directions.

In recent times, US craft beer has undergone something of a loss of confidence as volumes have fallen. Some say that it’s lost its vim, its spirit of adventure. But none of that was evident at a lunch I attended last month on the eve of the London Craft Beer Festival, hosted by the Brewers Association, which represents American craft beer.

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The event promised to pair US brews with Japanese food, a bold mission, and I was feeling sceptical but at the same time curious as I arrived at the surprisingly spacious underground dining room at Moi in London’s Wardour Street.

And it turned out to be one of the best events of its kind that I’ve been to. It wasn’t just the matching, which was generally sound across the seven courses (including the canapes), with a couple of surprise stand-outs, it was the quality of the beer and the distinctiveness of the various styles showcased. There was a kind of clarity about these beers (and I don’t mean the liquid). They knew what they were about.

I don’t drink US craft beer very often. It’s become harder to find over here, and when you do find it, the price can put you off. But this lunch selection suggested that the Americans are just as bold and inventive as ever, and worth exploring, if that’s what you’re into.

Perhaps it’s because American independent brewers have got to fight their corner these days. Mediocre is not going to cut it. Beers can’t simply call themselves ‘craft’ to be offered a spot on a bar or in a fridge, they’ve got to deliver on those original values that brought such excitement to the market.

To pick a couple or three examples from the lunch, Oregon’s Coldfire Brewing, a new one to me, came up with the latest expression of its series The Sparrow and the Crow. This is based on a blend of beers wild fermented in oak barrels for two years to soften the sourness, then rested on pinot noir grapes grown in the local Willamette Valley to take on a vinous quality, then it undergoes a second fermentation in the bottle.

You’d think there’s enough going on with this without trying to pair it with food, but the king oyster mushroom, grilled eel and watercress was an intriguing companion.

The main course of bone-in sirloin and miso-cured trout, served with baked rice, salad, pickled pear and summer beans, was paired with a West Coast IPA from California, Knee Deep Brewing’s Breaking Bud. It’s a funny name for a serious beer that’s a reminder of what a West Coast IPA ought to be. You don’t know what you’re going to get when you order a ‘westie’ these days, but this was big enough to stand up to the food and the experience was helped along by a dry finish.

At the end we got a raspberry ripple sorbet for dessert. Yep, very simple. But it came with a very complex beer. Virginia Beer Co’s Ideas of Order blends a bourbon barrel-aged milk stout with an English-style barley wine and weighs in at 13% abv. The match divided the crowd and a theory went round that those who got more raspberry than sorbet in their scoop were disappointed while those who got more sorbet than raspberry, like me, were delighted. Discuss.

Anyway, the whole thing revived my interest in food pairing, which can be terribly hit and miss, and also my interest in US craft beers. So where are the best places to find them over here now?

The good news is that Tilray, a company that owns a number of breweries in the States (as well as a medicinal cannabis business), has introduced beers from nine of them into the 11 sites it took on when it acquired Brewdog earlier this year, that is the brewpubs in Birmingham, Canary Wharf, Ellon, Dublin, Edinburgh (two), Manchester, Paddington, Seven Dials, Tower Hill and Waterloo.

Other places where you can choose from a range of US beers and drink them on-site include the Beer Cave & Taproom on Birmingham’s Stirchley Beer Mile, opened by importer Brew Export at the end of last year.

Further north, the Stonegate branch of the House of the Trembling Madness in York is split between an atmospheric pub upstairs and a shop bursting with brews downstairs.

But it’s London that, predictably, has the most drink-in destinations, among them Ghost Whale, with branches in Brixton and Putney, Indiebeer in Islington, and that old reliable the Beer Merchants Tap in Hackney Wick.

It’s not compulsory to pair your American craft beer with fancy food, by the way. A packet of crisps will do the job.

Photo © Nic Crilly Hargrave

By Kate Simon

Sauna, in this heat! It’s all the rage down by the beach, don’t you know? At least that’s what my friend Jo tells me. She’s currently racing around Britain researching a book she’s writing for Bloomsbury about DIY wellness breaks*, which features wild and community saunas, wild swimming and other spa-style experiences in unusual locations.

What are friends for if not to help with such an arduous task. Which is how I found myself in a small car park above the beach at Pakefield on the Suffolk coast. We were there to test out the Salty Sauna, ‘the most easterly sauna in the UK’ (being just down the road from Lowestoft).

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From the outside, it looks like a horse box with a chimney. Inside, it’s the real deal – wood clad with a tiered bench big enough for six and a stove in the corner pumping out the heat. I was thankful that the glass door was tinted, obscuring us from curious passers-by on the adjacent coast path. (Change first or pack one of those beach ponchos if you don’t want to wrestle with your clothes in the confines of your car.)

It being a blustery day, we couldn’t help but turn a few heads as we ran down the steps to the beach in our cozzies to embrace the North Sea. It was at this point that I remembered my low blood pressure and questioned the wisdom of diving into the briny. But, unwavering in the line of duty, Jo took the plunge. One can only hope the body shock delivered on its promise to improve circulation, boost the immune system, strengthen mental resilience, and increase endorphins.

It’s not just by the sea that you’ll find such saunas. They’re popping up in picturesque settings across the British countryside and even in cities. Bristol is vying with London and Brighton to be the UK’s sauna capital. In January, the city hosted a sauna trail, with punters paying £30 to visit 10 in a day, all proceeds going to Icebreakers, a mental-health charity that brings together men in nature. Keep your eye on the Bristol Sauna Trail website for news of the next one in 2027.

The map on The Sauna Guide website will show you where to find others – it also serves to illustrate how popular sauna is becoming. Indeed, the UK sauna market is booming faster than anywhere else in Europe. Media outlets including the BBC have even suggested saunas will supersede pubs as the place to socialise. They forget; a refreshing drink is an essential way to cool down.

Phil’s Beer Notes

Every trip to the sauna requires a rehydration break. From the Salty Sauna, either head north into Lowestoft town centre for the Triangle Tavern, which is the tap house for Green Jack Brewery, or south to the Sailors Home at Kessingland, which sits right on the beach and offers sea fishing trips as well as a good range of Suffolk-brewed cask ales.

It can surely be no coincidence that Bristol and Brighton, two of the best cities to go for a sauna, are also right up there when it comes to beer. Both have plenty of venues to choose from but here are a couple of favourites.

Left Handed Giant’s brewpub is bang in the centre of Bristol on the river and, as you’ve been shut up in a hot box, you’ll appreciate the big airy space over two floors as well as the stunning variety of beers on tap.

Brighton’s Hole in the Wall is a little harder to find, tucked behind the Metropole Hotel on the seafront, but you’ll find it’s worth the effort for the range of beers on tap and on cask, and simply for finding a friendly little pub where you can experience the Sussex game of Toad in the Hole.

*You can follow Jo’s progress on her Instagram, and her book, Swim, Spa, Sauna: 52 UK Wellness Weekends, will be sitting on Bloomsbury’s website – and the shelves of all good bookshops – in 2027.

By Phil Mellows and Kate Simon

Even in a place so rich in beer as Derby, the opening of The Tannery on 6 June felt like a significant event. The first tap house (more are promised) from the new owners of Ashover Brewery is on Sadler Gate and brings something genuinely different to the city centre.

The beautifully tiled bar, just inside the door, has six handpumps serving a well-balanced range from Ashover, while the tap wall behind offers 14 beers from other independent brewers. Tasteful branded glassware is, unusually, displayed in the window overlooking a small terrace, and there’s more seating upstairs. The menu is very much ‘beer food’ with meats and cheeses from local suppliers.

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Until The Tannery arrived, Suds & Soda, around the corner, was pretty much the only place to go for craft beer in the city centre. And this small bar continues to offer a distinctive focus in a rather more rustic setting. Originally opened by the owners of Neon Raptor Brewery, it’s now in independent hands and showcases some of the country’s leading craft brewers on the eight taps – plus many more in the fridge.

Between the two lies Derby Museum & Art Gallery (pictured), where Wright of Derby: From the Shadows has just opened, a major exhibition of the work of the visionary 18th-Century artist Joseph Wright, which has transferred to his hometown from The National Gallery in London. The chosen paintings focus on Wright’s extraordinary use of light and shade on equally fascinating subjects – scientists conducting experiments, intellectuals at their study – which reflect the insatiable appetite for knowledge in this era, the golden age of the Enlightenment.

You’ve got until 1 November to see the show, but fear not, this museum holds the world’s largest collection of Wright’s work in normal times. If you are a devotee, you might like to follow the new self-guided walking tour of Wright’s Derby. This museum is also the place to step out on the Derby Dracula Trail. Dracula in Derby? Indeed. Find out how this city prepared the Count for Hollywood with a suave makeover…

Now to The Flowerpot, a large, sprawling venue near the cathedral. Probably better known for live music, the pub has steadily improved its reputation for cask beer, leading to it being named Derby Campaign for Real Ale’s Pub of the Year for 2025. Eight or 10 ales are usually on the pumps, from hazy pales to Bass, including local brews. There’s a spacious beer garden, too, for an extra attraction at this time of year.

Onwards to the Museum of Making in Lombe’s Mill, which powered the production of silk in the 18th Century. The Rolls-Royce jet engine hanging from the ceiling in the entrance hall sets the tone for an entertaining exploration of three centuries of engineering in Derby, told through the objects and processes of local industry. The people get a look-in, too, not least in the artist-photographer Red Saunders’ tableaux vivant (living picture) The Derby Lockout of 1833-34, which portrays the workers in Britain’s first major industrial dispute. This is the spot, too, to pick up one of the new tours of the city’s Georgian era with author and historian Danielle Burton at your side. They depart on 27 June, 11 July and 1 August.

From here, you could set off upstream to explore the Derwent Valley Mills, including the prototype of the modern factory at Cromford – this bucolic industrial landscape is currently celebrating the 25th anniversary of its recognition by UNESCO. Or continue south to the Derby Computer Museum, a quirky attraction stuffed with vintage computers from the past 40 years, where you can play games such as early Nintendo. Derby’s technology, you see, isn’t stuck in the distant past. In fact, this is the home of Lara Croft (there’s even a road named for her). Events marking the Tomb Raider heroine’s 30th birthday this year include the transformation of Pickfords’ House into Croft Manor (starting 24 July).

Before you cross the river to sample a trio of recommendable watering holes, assess the seven-year, £35.1m restoration of Derby’s Victorian Market Hall. As is the fashion, the traditional stalls have been swelled by artisan makers and street-food sellers. You may think the iron-and-glass vaulted roof looks familiar – it’s the work of Derbyshire-born architect Rowland Mason Ordish, who also designed the roof at St Pancras Station in London. For the diary: this will be the venue for Derby CAMRA’s Heritage Beer Festival in October.

Now head in the direction of the railway station along the banks of the Derwent and you’ll come to the Royal Standard, on the east side of Exeter Bridge. This wedge-shaped pub (we like wedge-shaped pubs) used to be Derby Brewing’s tap house. Now part of the Pub People group, the new owner has kept up the tradition of good beer with a diverse choice of cask and craft, and it has invested in the characterful Victorian building, including the addition of a rooftop terrace with views of the river.

Follow the riverside path for Smithfield Alehouse. Dating back to 1840, this elegant, curved building once served Derby’s cattle market and stood by a bridge that’s long gone. There are views across the water from the beer garden and beyond to the Bass Recreation Ground, where brewery workers once came out to play. Ten handpumps pour a well-chosen range of ales (including Bass), and there are craft beers, too.

In most towns the Victoria Inn would comfortably be considered the best pub near the station. Unfortunately, in Derby it’s competing with the Brunswick Inn (Derby CAMRA’s 2026 Pub of the Year) and Castle Rock Brewery’s Alexandra Hotel. But new management has upped the pub’s game and it’s well worth a visit before you jump on your train. Beers from the local Leatherbritches Brewery dominate the 10 handpulls, and there are a similar number of boxed ciders behind the bar.

Photo courtesy Derby Museums.

By Phil Mellows

There is very little shock news in the beer industry. Some of the most outrageous developments can get a nod of recognition from those in the know. Or those who think they’re in the know.

But the announcement that Barcelona’s Damm Brewery has bought the Old Speckled Hen brand from Greene King seems to have baffled the pundits with their fingers on the pulse. The phrase ‘nobody saw that coming’ has never been more apt.

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Damm, of course, is most famous for its Estrella lager, and has worked hard on creating a glamorous sun-soaked image for its flagship beer – an odd stablemate for an old-fashioned kind of English ale.

Yet the family-owned company, which has just celebrated its 150th birthday, is making a concerted effort to embed itself in the UK beer scene. A year ago, it launched a distribution tie-up with Leeds craft brewer Northern Monk, and in October officially reopened the former Charles Wells Eagle Brewery in Bedford in its own name.

I was lucky enough to get an invite to the party, a grand affair – the investment in it alone demonstrated Damm’s serious intentions to carve out a substantial slice of the market here.

The £70million investment in the brewery was “only the beginning”, UK managing director Luke White told the audience, and that’s proving to be the case. Even so, Old Speckled Hen?

Something else is going on here. There’s a growing interest in what you might lump together as ‘heritage’ ale brands, most strikingly Bass. Bass was rediscovered by brand owner Budweiser UK when it noticed the remarkable throughput it was getting in the dwindling number of pubs where it was stocked. The brand is now being marketed again and distribution has trebled.

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Manchester’s Boddingtons is back on bars, now brewed by J W Lees, as is Allsopp’s, revived by a descendant of the family in conjunction with Kirkstall Brewery in Leeds. Allsopp’s is brewing Double Diamond again, too.

Meanwhile, traditional family brewery ales such as Harvey’s of Sussex (the Best is served on gravity at the Royal Oak, Wineham, pictured with an equally traditional half-pint of prawns) are enjoying refreshed popularity as a new generation of drinkers discovers them.

Old Speckled Hen’s heritage is a more modern creation. Originally brewed by Morland in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, to celebrate an eponymous car built at the nearby MG plant, it didn’t appear on draught until 1990, when Rupert Thompson, who now heads Hog’s Back Brewery in Surrey, deliberately converted it into a ‘premium’ brand.

The manoeuvre worked so well that by the turn of the century Morland had been acquired by Greene King – which promptly closed the brewery but continued to brew, and have success, with Hen.

Despite the beer’s relatively short history, Damm, perhaps, believes it has the potential to benefit from a turn to heritage by drinkers who are seeking the security of longevity in an increasingly insecure world.

And, as Luke White says, it “reconnects the Damm Eagle Brewery to its historic British beer and ale [sic] production roots”.

It looks like, for beer, history is very now.

By Phil Mellows and Kate Simon

Hackney has lost more than its fair share of interesting beer venues in the past year or two but, amongst the rubble, green shoots have sprung forth, and there’s plenty to explore along and around the London borough’s Mare Street spine.

Strolling up from the south, the Five Points Taproom & Courtyard is a good place to start. Hackney’s local brewery offers relaxed spaces indoors and out to enjoy seasonal specials such as the legendary Derailed Porter and green hop brews alongside its acclaimed core range including Best and XPA, all within touching distance of where they’re brewed. If you’re feeling peckish there’s a tempting barbecue, and if you want to learn more about the beer you can book a brewery tour and tasting.

Is it a gallery, is it a theatre, is it a bar? The Victor Wynd Museum, by the Regents Canal, is all these things. The home of The Last Tuesday Society is “dedicated to subverting life, the universe and everything” in its quest to “create a new world filled with beauty, wonder and the imagination”. Expect to find an eccentric collection of exhibits, from taxidermy specimens to a lock of Elvis’s hair, events such as an illustrated talk on Undertakers and Death, and some fine examples of absinthe.

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Housed in a hollowed-out former council office block, Mare Street Market is a bright and airy open-plan space that brings together shops, restaurants, takeaways and an island bar at its hub pouring beers from 10 taps featuring beers such as Five Points XPA, Verdant Light Bulb and Stone & Wood’s Australian Pacific Ale, now brewed in the UK. Make your choice and take a seat anywhere including a leafy outside terrace that runs down one side.

London Fields Brewery led a troubled life before it closed in 2021, but now the site under the railway arches has been resurrected in a grungy but good way by pub company Grace Land in the shape of Saint Monday Brewery. The bar has been moved to the middle, in front of the brewing tanks, and has 14 craft lines, half of them brewed on site, mostly IPAs, and the other half collabs and guests featuring, on our latest visit, Nottingham’s Black Iris.

Newcomers are always surprised by Hackney’s generous gulps of green space. Nearby London Fields is just one example. Originally common land, it’s now a pleasant place to stretch out on the grass on a sunny day – perhaps with a (pricey) picnic from adjacent Broadway Market if you chance by on a Saturday, when the street is lined with stalls of produce and street food that will satisfy gourmet tastes. Pack your swimmers – at the other end of the park you can take a dip in the Olympic-sized, 1930s lido.

After you’ve dried off and dressed, keep walking up Greenwood Road and look out for the unimposing Binch on your left. Owned by a Frenchman with a taste for craft beer, this neighbourhood bar combines, in a very small space, half-a-dozen extremely well-chosen draught brews from the likes of Orbit, Donzoko and The Kernel with a wall lined with finewines from France. It’s a proper little bolt hole away from the hubbub of Hackney Central and you can snack on a posh toasted sandwich, too.

From here, continue past Hackney Downs Station to the Pembury Tavern. A Victorian pub that was sensitively restored and brought to vibrant life by Five Points in 2018, it’s simply one of the nicest places to sit down for a beer with friends or family and share an award-winning pizza. It also serves some of the area’s best-kept cask ales – Five Points Best, Pale and Railway Porter are always on – and an interesting choice of craft, too, including guests.

Then swing round to Central for the Cock Tavern, Hackney’s famous rustic bare-boards ale house with always a great line-up of cask beers from across the country and a similar number of ‘real’ ciders. Howling Hops Brewery was founded in the basement here before moving to more spacious accommodation at Hackney Wick, and it retains a share in the business - so expect to find a good choice of its beers on the pumps and taps. Pickled eggs are a big thing here, and you can bring in a takeaway if you want something less eggy.

Mare Street’s newest pub, opening in March this year, is the Empire Tavern, next door to the theatre of the same name. While there’s a shiny retro American diner feel to the décor and burgers on the menu, it showcases cask beers from Walthamstow’s East London Brewing, which operates the place in a joint venture. The mezzanine above the long bar doubles as an events space and there’s a couple of shelves of vinyl to spin for sounds.

There’s a mini-trail of art and architecture to follow around Hackney Central beginning with “Warm Shores” by Thomas J Price, two larger-than-life bronze figures that honour the Windrush generation. They stand in the shadow of Frank Matcham’s ornate Edwardian music hall, the Hackney Empire, where everyone from Charlie Chaplin to the Rolling Stones has trod the boards. Over on The Narroway, you’ll find a second tribute to Hackney’s Caribbean community, three giant representations of fruit from the islands – Custard Apple (Annonaceae), Breadfruit (Moracae) and Soursop (Annonaceae) – by the Turner Prize-winning sculptor Veronica Ryan. Over them looms medieval St Augustine’s Tower, which stands sentry to the historic heart of this neighbourhood. Pass through the old graveyard to its rear to find Sutton House, one of the last remaining Tudor mansions in London.

And if you fancy one last beer, you’re now practically next door to the Chesham Arms, a charming community-owned local with a great range of beers, cask and craft, and a surprise garden out the back.

Photo courtesy Five Points Brewery

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By Kate Simon

Art is all around us and should be available for everyone to see for free. That’s the vision of Art UK, a charity dedicated to digitally displaying more than a million publicly owned paintings, sculptures and other artworks held by thousands of institutions across the country, including museums, libraries, town halls and hospitals. Now Art UK has announced the digitisation of more than 6,600 murals on show in the nation’s public spaces, from churches to shopping parades.

Murals composed in materials as varied as paint, tile, wood and stone, on themes as diverse as celebrating nature and social comment, have been recorded by the charity’s volunteer photographers in the three-year initiative, which runs until December.

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The archive spans the centuries, from 12th-century paintings displayed above the chancel arch in St Thomas’s church East Shefford, Berkshire, to works by some of today’s leading international street artists, such as Thierry Noir, Stik and, of course, Banksy.

And the murals are wide-ranging in size, too. Tiny paintings on bollards in Shrewsbury that tell the story of the Phantom Coach of the Lion Hotel are featured. So is the 82-metre-high work on St George’s Tower in Leicester, Britain’s largest mural, a montage of local points of pride – a fox for the city’s emblem, an astronaut to make the link between Leicester and space exploration.

Although Art UK’s quest is to make all this accessible to view via your phone or computer, almost 90% of the archived works are outdoors and the majority are free to view first-hand. That’s easily done with the help of the website’s map of the venues, and the team is currently composing trails to follow, which will be posted on the website. There are audio descriptions for blind and partially sighted people, too.

Free culture isn’t confined to visual art. In London, the Royal Ballet & Opera hosts Live At Lunch most Fridays, free performances of music and dance by resident and guest artists. Just be sure to turn up early to get a seat. The London Symphony Orchestra also offers free bite-sized concerts by small groups of its musicians, which include a Q&A session with the performers. And students and lecturers put on concerts, from chamber music to jazz, at the Royal Academy of Music.

Check out similar free initiatives at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in Cardiff, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, Royal Northern College of Music and Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester. It seems there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Phil’s Beer Notes

Pub walls are great places to paint murals, and in the case of the Prince Albert in Brighton a collage of musical heroes has become a tourist destination in its own right. There’s even a genuine Banksy behind glass. Inside, meanwhile, as well as being a busy live music venue, the pub showcases beers from Sussex brewer Burning Sky.

Other pubs commemorate local history on their outside wall. The Lord Morpeth in Bow, east London, has a beautiful painting of Sylvia Pankhurst – the socialist one of the suffragette siblings. She lived in the house next door, apparently, and I’m sure she’d have been popping in there for a pint and a pizza.

Not sure who the woman with the book and the dog is on the side of the Red Deer in Sheffield but the striking image was painted by Austrian artist Frau Isa. Inside, the pub is rare in welcoming students and older people with equally open arms and serves fine ales.

Murals on pubs, though, can be vulnerable to fate. When a fire at the Hardy’s Well in Rusholme, Manchester, meant the building had to be demolished 2023, Lemn Sissay’s poem, painted on the wall 30 years previously, went with it.

Photo: “St Mungo mural on Glasgow High Street” by Bex.Walton is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

By Kate Simon and Phil Mellows

You might have been to Leeds before, but have you been there lately? The past year or two has brought a wave of exciting new pub openings, including the Brewery Wharf Tavern, launched last summer by the people behind Leeds institution Whitelock’s.

Taking full advantage of its position on the southern bank of the Aire, the Tavern’s waterside terrace curves around the glazed frontage, while inside, it is bright, modern, comfortable and colourful, serving the range of beers you’d expect, on four handpumps and 14 keg taps. Alongside Hackney’s Five Points Brewery (which shares an owner with the pub), the city’s own vibrant brewing scene is showcased on the bar through the likes of Kirkstall and Northern Monk.

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Tetley’s Brewery ceased production in 2011 but the building by the gates of Aire Park remains a major landmark in the city – and, following a stint as an art gallery, since 2024 this imposing edifice has housed a pub that appropriately celebrates Leeds’ beer heritage. The Tetley is run by Kirkstall Brewery (its taproom is also worth a visit), so you’ll of course find its own ales on the pumps alongside other local brews plus Tetley Bitter to complete the nostalgic experience.

Art has not abandoned the area, there is a striking work to see in Aire Park, the city’s new green lung. “Hibiscus Rising” is a giant, colourful sculpture of the plant by Yinka Shonibare, dedicated to David Oluwale, a British-Nigerian man who drowned in the River Aire in 1969, victim of a racist hate crime. This is just one work on a downloadable street art trail that also includes Ian Randall’s “Steeped Vessels” back at Brewery Wharf, three six-metre-high bronze barleycorns that reference the city’s brewing heritage.

Across the river, near the railway station, the Bankers Cat is a splendid place to drink beer. The former bank has been tastefully and luxuriously renovated in a joint venture between Derbyshire’s Thornbridge Brewery and bar operators Pivovar and features a replica of an Edward Burne-Jones stained-glass window. Every pub should have one. On the bar, the Thornbridge cask range pours from the eight handpumps, supplemented by some well-chosen craft, including guests.

Head west from here to the Monks Bridge Viaduct, recently transformed into a public garden. Every self-respecting city with a railway network wants its own version of the High Line, New York’s celebrated elevated park built on a disused train track. Leeds is no exception and this is just a small, realised part of a greater vision. The trains still rumble by, but the sprawl of stations once here has disappeared, replaced by a forest of modern blocks of flats and offices. In one of the stranded remnants of the former railway complex, the Wagon Lifting Hoist Mini Museum shows pictures of what this area used to look like.

From some of the newest to the oldest pub in Leeds, it’s always a nice surprise to find Whitelock’s Ale House in the middle of the city’s concrete and glass shopping centre. You step into the past when you walk into this long, narrow pub dating back to 1715, the tables and chairs spilling out into the alleyway when weather permits. It has got more than historical charm, though. There’s great beer, too, including cask ales from across Yorkshire, such as Theakston Old Peculier if you’re lucky. And the choice embraces craft, too, with interesting options from modern brewers.

Further on, beyond the shopping city, North Bar has its own place in history as one of the country’s first pubs to get on board with the new-fangled hop-forward beers coming out of the States. Going for nearly 30 years now, this is a lively spot that’s not lost its enthusiasm for novel brews, even though it has ventured heavily into cocktails of late. Alongside the craft tap list, you’ll find two or three well-kept cask beers.

Close by are Leeds’ elegant Victorian shopping arcades. Thornton’s was the first to open, in 1878, designed for the theatrical entrepreneur Charles Thornton by the architect of his City Varieties (still open on Swan Street, the UK’s longest running music hall). Hence all the dramatic flourishes beneath its glass roof – look out for the Ivanhoe Clock, depicting a scene from the tale. This early shopping centre is a beauty, perhaps only outdone by neighbouring County Arcade (pictured), built by another theatrical designer, Frank Matcham. Check out Grand and Queens Arcades, too.

A short hop over the inner ring road to the west will take you to the Highland Laddie, a small backstreet pub that’s quietly created a huge noise among beer lovers and restaurant critics alike since it reopened nearly a year ago. Its minimalist website simply describes it as “a drinkers pub with a dining room”, and it’s getting that difficult trick right, making those downing a couple of pints with their mates at the bar (four cask ales are available) feel as comfortable as the people who’ve come to find out why it’s made the latest Top 50 Gastropubs list.

Due north, the University of Leeds campus holds a couple of surprises. The M&S Archive is a trip down memory lane at for anyone who ever had their nametag sewn into a pair of St Michael’s undies (the city’s Kirkgate Market was home to the brand’s original Penny Bazaar). Undies and much more sold in this British institution are on display here, with exhibits including a film theatre showing the kind of sexist ad campaigns that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow in the Sixties and Seventies. Also, follow the public art trail of 21 sculptures from the 20th and 21st centuries – including works by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth – spread about the equally interesting Victorian and Brutalist complex.

Returning to the city centre, the Victoria & Commercial is the latest addition to the Leeds scene, opening only last December. Perhaps it’s really not new, though, being a glorious revival of a famous pub thought lost when it closed as Covid hit in 2020. Instead, Kirkstall Brewery and Whitelock’s joined forces to restore the Victorian interior, uncovering forgotten original features in the process. They also made sure there’s plenty of beer to choose from, with eight handpumps and 14 keg lines. You can even get a pint of the revived Double Diamond from Allsopp’s.

Around the corner, the Henry Moore Institute was undergoing a major refurbishment when we last visited, the first in 30 years for the UK’s first purpose-built sculpture gallery. Now reopened, this year’s big exhibition (until 10 January 2027) is an examination of the use of steel in the art form in the last 20th Century: “Some Steel: Sculpture and Steel in Britain, 1960-90”.

Photo: County Arcade © Visit Leeds

By Phil Mellows

Let’s be honest. The sparkle has dimmed around craft beer a little. As I’ve previously argued, that’s not necessarily true for specialist bars, and there are still plenty of interesting brews out there. But last month SIBA, the association for independent brewing, reported that in the past year three breweries a week have shut down their mash tuns.

A lot of that is to do with the financial pressures on the beer and pub industries, a squeeze on profitability caused by rising costs and falling disposable incomes. Yet it’s also true that there’s not so much excitement around craft – after all, much of that was to do with novelty, which inevitably wears off.

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That’s reflected in the state of beer blogging, which has become less about spotting the next new thing and capturing in words the organoleptic pyrotechnics of some fresh hop combination than about chronicling everyday curiosities and reflecting on the longevity of ‘heritage’ brands and styles – such as this post on the revival of Boddingtons.

Jess and Ray at Boak & Bailey have gone so far as to call for more of this from new writers, while Adrian Tierney-Jones perhaps best exemplifies the art of soaking up the vibes (along with the beer) in his blog and his book, A Pub for All Seasons.

And beneath this creative carapace it’s possible to detect an organic shift in what drinkers want. There’s still an interest in tasting new hops such as Krush and Vera (which make me think of Bobby Crush and my late Aunt Vera respectively) but even for some of the most sophisticated beer palates, that’s now for the odd occasion.

Drinkability is back, if it ever went away, and the greater demand is for balanced beers that will stay a session, still tasting good after three or four pints. The Craft Beer Channel summed up this trend well last month in a show worth half an hour of your time.

The urge to explore is still there, but to explore in its original meaning of scouting a hunting area for game – you’ve got to get out there in the wild, which we at Beer Breaks are obviously quite pleased about and would like to encourage.

Last week, for instance, I called in at The Farmacy in Matlock, Derbyshire. It’s a micropub halfway up the town’s precipitous and daunting Bank Road, but it’s worth scaling the heights because it’s the only place, to my knowledge, where you can drink draught Aldwark Artisan Ales from the Peak District brewery that owns the place.

As well as the exclusivity, the beers are very good – classic cask ale styles with an extra punch to the flavours, suggesting there’s more going into the pot. Added to which the pub itself has a quirky, slightly edgy, farm-theme suggesting agricultural realities. Instead of cuddly animals, just the skulls hang on the walls. “Yeah, things die,” it seems to say, “get over it.”

Also last week I finally got to Microbus in Gateshead (pictured), another micropub, this one with a bus theme. Everywhere you look there’s a bit of a bus. Even the tap wall is the front of a bus. And the beer list was one of the best I’ve seen lately, headed by a collab between the pub and Brewlab, the brewer training centre in Sunderland, a cask 6.5% abv West Coast IPA hopped with Krush, which is something you don’t see every day. Bobby would be proud.

By Phil Mellows and Kate Simon

Step straight off the train into a bit of Victorian splendour. Opened in spring 2025, Chester Station Tap occupies a previously neglected Grade II-listed station building, and the restoration work has revealed some hidden architectural features, notably the ornate ceiling.

And once you’ve drunk in that, your eyes naturally fall on the generous range of beers on draught. Local brewer Spitting Feathers (which also has the Brewery Tap across the city) is behind this brilliant addition to the Chester scene, so you’ll obviously find their ales on the pumps, from the Best Bitter and Oatmeal Stout to modern pale ales. But the keg lines also feature a variety of guests including lagers from Hacker-Pschorr and craft from the likes of Thornbridge, Arbor, Two by Two and Electric Bear.

The Tap serves breakfast, featuring sausages donated by pigs fed with the brewery’s spent grains, from 7am with the bar opening at 9am for thirsty travellers, if you fancy an early start.

This is also the spot to contemplate the contribution of local boy Thomas Brassey. Once only remembered on an easily missed plaque on the wall in the station, Brassey is now celebrated with a life-size statue outside the main entrance, which was unveiled last spring by the Society in his name. Cast in bronze, holding a map of the Chester to Holyhead line that he constructed, Brassey was responsible for one in 20 miles of the world’s railways at that time.

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Onwards towards the city centre and The Cellar, a long-established home of good beer in Chester. In this traditional ale-house setting, alongside up to six cask ales from across Britain, there’s a truly international selection on the keg taps – Belgium, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Scotland and the United States are all currently represented. Look out for regular tap takeovers and meet the brewer events.

Across the roundabout, That Beer Place started as little more than a market stall but has expanded into a smart and bright two-storey home on the edge of the city centre, where it plays a big part in developing Chester’s reputation as a craft-beer destination.

Just about every imaginable style is on tap – and if it isn’t you’ll find it in the eight double fridges full of canned and bottled brews from around the world. At the moment, draught lines include a wine gum sour, a grapefruit radler and an imperial chocolate porter, plus three Belgian lambics and cask ales from Verdant and Neptune (the brewery, not the planet).

Across Foregate Street, hidden at the end of a narrow winding lane, you’ll find the brewery and taproom of Spookton Brew Co, a newcomer to the Chester scene that moved in here in 2024.

Spookton is not afraid to experiment with styles and has just launched a ‘dip hopped IPA’, a new one on me, in collaboration with Manchester’s Courier Brew Co. You can try them all at the taproom in close proximity to the brewing kit, and bring your own grub, if you like.

A short walk south from any of these three venues will take you through ornate gates into Grosvenor Park. A gift to the people of Chester in the late 1800s by the paternalistic second Marquess of Westminster for the purposes of ‘health and recreation’ but not, heaven forfend, ‘dancing’, it is still a favourite haunt – visit in summer to catch a performance at the estimable Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre.

Cross the lawns to The Groves for a pleasant promenade along the River Dee to the Roman Gardens. This gallery of oddments from the time found around the city, original and reproduced, is also the location of a dint in the city wall where it was breached by the Parliamentarians. At the top gate, turn right to find the (largely reinterpreted) Roman Amphitheatre, thought to be their biggest in Britain.

On, then, to the Cavern of the Curious Gnome, which you reach by walking through a wine bar called Paysan and up the stairs at the back. You’ll emerge into a kind of gothic hall where some interesting cask ales rub shoulders with classic Belgian brews and German lagers. It’s quirky. If you order the Kwak you’ll have to leave a shoe as a deposit on the glass.

The Cavern recently opened an adjacent shop, called Gnome and Away, specialising in beer, wine and artisan teas and coffees.

This venue puts you in the heart of the Rows (pictured), a unique network of open walkways that run along the first-floor level of the four main streets at the city’s historic heart. Built in medieval times and embellished by every subsequent era, there are plenty of architectural layers to unpick as well as treasure to discover, such as, in The Antiques Shop on Watergate Street, a Tudor plasterwork trail that suggests a visit by Catherine of Aragon. (Follow Visit Chester’s free audio tour, written and voiced by Kate, to find out more as you go.)

The Cavern is also close to the Grosvenor Museum, which has an extraordinary gallery of Roman tombstones, which were discovered by the Victorians to have been used as ballast in the city walls.

Head to nearby Watergate Street for Beer Heroes, a shop and taproom in one of the Rows’ age-old undercrofts, which is focused on bringing the best in UK independent brewing to the streets of Chester. The draught list has now expanded to 12 taps, and on top of that, there are literally hundreds of cans in the fridges to drink here – or take away on the train home. The knowledgeable team also offers guided tastings.

Turn the corner into Northgate Street to find the Cathedral, a medieval abbey with a makeover by Sir George Gilbert Scott and a freestanding bell tower from the 1970s. It is due to display Luke Jerram’s massive Museum of the Moon in the South Transept from 12 February to 15 March.

Storyhouse is also close by, a serious hub for the arts with its own theatre and resident troupe, and the new indoor market, where several of the street-food stalls champion local produce. Now climb the walls that wrap around the old city, a ring of stone that offers a literal overview of most sights and has its own tales to tell.

For more ideas about where to drink and what to see in Chester – and 29other destinations – pick up a copy of our book, Beer Breaks in Britain.

Photo courtesy Chester BID

By Phil Mellows

It’s that time of year. A national newspaper asked me to come up with 10 beers for Christmas, beers anyone can easily find on the supermarket shelves and not have to take out a mortgage to buy.

After trawling around the big retailers, I had to resort to Fortnum & Mason to find one that had Christmas in its name. Not the spot for everyone’s weekly shop, but it was interesting that the store had teamed up with a long-established small independent brewer, Westerham, and the beer was still reasonably priced.

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When you think about it, though, it makes sense that supermarkets are not stocking ‘Christmas’ beers as such because they’ll look out of date by Boxing Day. Better to have a seasonal offer that sells the whole of winter.

But it got me wondering, what do we expect from a Christmas beer?

Something strong and dark is the obvious answer, preferably spiced and rich with pronounced flavours of dried fruits, perhaps even sherry-like. Harvey’s Christmas Ale would be a typical example. It’s technically a barley wine, and so is Fuller’s Vintage Ale, in my house a must for the dinner table on December 25, even though it hasn’t got ‘Christmas’ in the name.

There are lighter alternatives. Shepherd Neame Christmas Ale is relatively pale but still fruity, and it’s available on draught in the Kent brewer’s pubs during December at a lower ABV, 5% rather than 7%. It reminds me of a cask ale I liked, originally brewed by Wethered’s, then Whitbread, called Winter Royal, which I see has now been taken up by Rebellion Brewery.

You’ll see quite a few Christmas cask ales in pubs, though it seems to me not as many as there used to be. Often, they’ll have an ABV of little more than 4%, which isn’t a problem as long as they’ve got the flavour. But some of them fail to distinguish themselves from the kind of ales you might drink all year round. The festive tag is just a marketing thing.

This is the danger. Sticking a bit on tinsel on it and calling it Christmas. The beers we’re looking for here require substance. They need to be special. They have to match the smells and flavours of the season.

Here’s a quick test. Will it stir into a Christmas pudding? Apparently, sales of Theakston Old Peculier spike this time of year as people look for something to moisten the mix, and barley wines are, indeed, another favourite pudding ingredient.

Also, it has to be something you wouldn’t usually drink. Brewers recognise this by bringing to the fore souped-up versions of their well-known brands. St Austell has a vintage Extra Special Tribute, Greene King has Abbot Reserve (my brother’s favourite) and Old Crafty Hen, which is a blend of Old Speckled Hen and a strong, oak-aged brew called 5X.

And that’s why it feels like the right time to open that 11% bottle of imperial stout. Last year, for me, it was St Austell’s Black Square, and this time it could be something I’ve had stashed away for a few years: Salt Beer Factory’s portentously-named bourbon barrel-aged Hexagon Project #13 K.I.S.S. (no longer on sale). It’s 13% and in a big bottle, so one for sharing – which is what Christmas is all about, after all.

Kate’s travel notes

‘Tis the season to elbow your way around the country’s heaving malls and markets. If the thought fills you with mighty dread, consider leaving the shoppers in the family to it while you slope off to a nearby attraction.

The V&A East Storehouse, which opened in May, is a case in point, an easy walk from the mega-mall Westfield Stratford City in London. More than half a million works are available to browse in curated displays or, on request, close personal inspection, including 80,000 objects in the David Bowie archive. Tickets are free but sell out fast, but walk-ins are possible if your luck’s in.

Photo © Shepherd Neame

By Kate Simon

The race is on to find the German hairy snail. Pseudotrichia rubiginosa may be small – about the size of a fingernail – but right now it’s a big preoccupation with Britain’s conchologists who are leading the hunt for this endangered mollusc on the banks of the River Thames.

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The snail is thought to have slid its way to Britain, powered by the hairs on its shell, during the last Ice Age, when the Rhine was still linked to the Thames. Sightings of this rare species that feels at home in the heart of our urban capital have been reported at Kew, Isleworth and Canning Town.

Elliot Newton, director of rewilding at Citizen Zoo, a countrywide organisation of professionals and volunteers dedicated to rebuilding wildlife diversity, told the BBC that it’s “a species that helps spark imagination and open people’s minds to the curious and diverse wildlife that can thrive across Greater London”.

Indeed, London is a veritable menagerie. The Eurasian red fox that stalks the capital’s streets, thought to have come to Britain about 330,000 years ago, is but one example. It’s fair to say it’s not the most popular of residents, and its reputation hits a new low in the depths of winter, the mating season, when the screams of the courtship ritual under cover of the night are blood-curdling enough to wake the dead let alone the neighbours.

The red deer that roam free in Richmond Park, arriving in Britain from Europe about 11,000 years ago, are more popular with the locals. But then the deer rut, which ends this month, is one of the capital’s, and the country’s, greatest natural spectacles. Although watching two 350-pound stags go head to head with their razor-sharp antlers to win the hearts of the hinds is something to be enjoyed at least 50 yards distant. The reward is a phenomenal display of testosterone to a soundtrack of fearsome roaring.

Richmond is one of the eight Royal Parks, populated by an exotic array of creatures, ranging from the pelicans in St James Park, the legacy of a gift from the Russians in 1664, to the European eels that snake through the waters of the Serpentine in Hyde Park before returning to the Sargasso Sea.

The London Wildlife Trust is another gateway to the animal world, managing 36 nature reserves, including Walthamstow Wetlands, a vast network of reservoirs that still supply the city as well as providing an explorable wildlife haven. Both organisations host walks, talks and other activities throughout the year.

London is full of attractions, some a little wild.

Phil’s Beer Notes

After all that wild excitement you’ll need to wind down with a quiet pint. The Mayflower in Rotherhithe is so close to the Thames mud you might even spot one of those hairy snails while you’re sinking one of the cask ales they have on constant rotation at this characterful 17th-Century pub with a jetty over the water.

Just north of Richmond Park, in East Sheen, you’ll find a lovely little shop called Micro Beers which typically has at least 150 beers in stock, including seven on draught that you can sample as you watch humans in the wild on Upper Richmond Road.

A safari across the Walthamstow Wetlands could be a chance to check out the brewery taprooms congregated in this part of east London, the latest including Queer Brewing and Dalston’s 40ft Brewery, which has recently opened its second venue on the Blackhorse Beer Mile.

Photo: “Red deer Richmond (and cyclist and runners!)“ by CarolineG2011 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

By Kate Simon

I do bang on about Ipswich, but how can I not when my adopted town leads the way with initiatives such as the UK’s first live-stream window on the world, which opened last week.

The Portal art installation, a large porthole-shaped sculpture in Cornhill, created by the Lithuanian artist Benediktas Gylys, aims to act as a “bridge to a united planet”, allowing local communities to meet each other while they are thousands of miles apart.

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So far, the people of Ipswich have said hello to passers-by in Vilnius in Lithuania, Lublin in Poland, Dublin in Ireland and Philadelphia in the US. More cities are due to join the scheme – next up, Piauí in Brazil.

It got me thinking about that rather more traditional window on the world, albeit with a somewhat closer geographical scope, the camera obscura.

First recorded in the mists of time by the Chinese philosopher Mozi in 400 BCE and later identified as a groundbreaking tool for drawing in perspective by Leonardo da Vinci, it took the enterprising Victorians little time to spot the camera obscura’s potential as a tourist attraction.

Maria Theresa Short was one of the first to open a camera obscura to the public on Calton Hill in Edinburgh in 1835, fascinating visitors with moving pictures of the city, 60 years before the advent of cinema. The principle is simple: a small hole in the wall of a dark room allows light to enter and project an upside-down image of the outside world, which is then inverted and projected onto a table to be viewed the right way up.

But it seems Short’s sideshow was frowned upon by polite society, especially the local council, which evicted her. Undeterred, she bought a townhouse on Castlehill, added two storeys, popping the Outlook Tower on the top, pictured, and set up shop again.

It’s still there, offering prime views of Edinburgh’s castle, the Royal Mile, the Old and New Towns, Arthur’s Seat and the Firth of Forth. Today, the camera obscura is part of a larger attraction, Camera Obscura & World of Illusions, alongside other features such as a telescope viewing platform and a gallery with those weird plasma tubes where you appear to mould electricity with your hands.

Short may have been a tourism pioneer, yet her camera obscura was not the first in the UK or even in the world. That honour belongs 80 miles to the southwest in the Dumfries Museum, at the top of a windmill.

Opened to the public by Thomas Morton in 1851, you can still climb the spiral staircase to see within what lies outside – though generally only between October and March and not if it’s raining or windy, to protect the fragile equipment.

Scotland has a third camera obscura at Kirriemuir, north of Dundee. Like the previous two, its setting competes with the camera for interest. This one is housed in the attic of the entrance tower at The Barrie Pavilion, a cricket pavilion given to the town by local boy JM Barrie, creator of Peter Pan. You can check out the old weaver’s cottage where the author was born while you’re in the town, too, it’s cared for by the National Trust for Scotland.

There are a few other camera obscuras around the UK. The Clifton Observatory, overlooking Bristol’s famous Suspension Bridge, arguably offers the most dramatic topography to view, while the one at the summit of Constitution Hill in Aberystwyth comes with the chance to ride the rails of the longest electric cliff railway in Britain. They’re fun diversions for a day out from anyone’s perspective.

Phil’s Beer Notes

Not sure whether it’s in sight of the camera obscura, but the Bow Bar is just around the corner from Castlehill, a good place to escape the throng of tourists Edinburgh inevitably attracts and drink cask beers from Scottish brewers dispensed in the traditional way up here, using air pressure to draw it from the cellar.

Across the river from Dumfries Museum you’ll find the Riverside Tap, a smart modern bar with a great range of beers from home and abroad, on cask and keg and in bottle and can.

While your best bet for decent pint in Kirriemuir is probably the Airlie Arms in the centre of town, which usually has a couple of locally brewed ales on the pumps.

“Camera Obscura at night 02” by byronv2 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

By Phil Mellows

For a couple of years in the Sixties, Hastings was the favoured spot for the family holiday, last week in July, first week in August each time. Exactly 900 years after a more famous historical event there, I remember interrupting my game of table-tennis to watch the 1966 World Cup in the family room of a pub where they’d rigged up a small black-and-white telly for the occasion.

Also, I remember Hastings for the hottest weather I’d so far experienced. The sea seemed to freeze in the heat, the sun glinting like ice on the torpid waves. I got heatstroke and had to be put to bed. In contrast, taking the train along the coast for Hastings Tap Takeover last week, I looked out at low grey skies that merged into an even greyer sea. But seaside towns retain a kind of charm in miserable weather. And you feel less guilty about spending all day in the pub.

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The weekend promised 17 pubs and bars, each paired with a brewer showcasing a selection of beers. Our little group focused on the centre of Hastings – the event extended to neighbouring St Leonards, which could wait for another day.

I had bracketed the town with similar seaside resorts that have in recent years attracted younger people, unable to afford a house in London, to move there, bringing a certain metropolitan lifestyle along with them in the pantechnicon, including a taste for craft beer. What we found went beyond my expectations. Hastings turned out to be wonderful destination for great pubs serving beers both traditional and modern in a laid-back kind of style, making you feel at home in your temporary local straight away.

There was an obvious place to start. Tumble out of the station and you’re in The Seadog, a corner pub painted in layers of ice-cream white and aquamarine with the words ‘Welcome to Hastings’ boldly flying from its top deck. It was rescued from a fate of becoming flats and brought back to life only in 2022, yet it feels like it’s been there forever. The Seadog’s adopted brewery was Portsmouth’s MakeMake, super trendy at the moment with a particular line in milkshake ales, if you’re into that kind of thing.

After that, I thought it might be nice to hit the seafront to catch some sun, and despite the absence of that we did it anyway. Courtyard is half-submerged beneath the promenade (and thankfully out of the wind and rain) in a building near the pier which, in Victorian times, housed baths. Brewing Brothers, local hero of Hastings’ blossoming beer scene, shares the space with a handful of cafes and restaurants, its 26-tap bar making room for a fine selection from Manchester’s Track.

Buttoned up against the flailing skits of Storm Amy, we next headed east along the prom to a much more traditional place. The Albion is a handsome seafront building that dates from 1730, with panelled walls, a blazing fire and pies – the house speciality. Two breweries, both based at Tenterden in Kent, were featured here, on handpump as well as tap: Twisted Wheel and McCanns. But this stop was mostly about the amazing pies.

Restored and nourished, we went around the corner and into the Old Town for the Jolly Fisherman. As the name suggests, going back to the 1830s it was originally dedicated to making fishermen jolly. After the fishermen dried up it closed. That was in 1959, and it didn’t open as a pub again until 2016. Yet, you wouldn’t know what storms it had survived, relaxing in this timeless tranquil space.

Norfolk’s Duration Brewing had taken over the bar here, perhaps because it has a beer called Fishermen, but I went for a palate-cleansing grisette, of course, before continuing to the Jenny Lind Inn. Opened in 1851 and named after the Swedish opera singer, who no doubt used to lubricate her larynx here, the pub is best known for its live music, which had just started when we arrived. It has eight cask ale lines which, on this occasion, were dominated by ales all the way from Harrogate Brewing.

Then came the difficult bit. We could, and probably should, have hopped on the funicular railway to take us up the steep hill. Instead, we climbed straight over the top where beers at the Imperial, hosting Windsor’s Two Flints as the special guest, seemed especially well-deserved. This has been home base for Brewing Brothers since 2016, and it has its own microbrewery on site as well as a proper wood-fired pizza oven. The vibe is grungy, in a good way.

Next stop was the Prince Albert, a pub that reopened only at the beginning of 2023 under new owners down from London who have turned it into a cool local and introduced good beer on cask and keg, featuring Newcastle’s Donzoko for the weekend.

And finally to Eel & Bear, a co-founder and organiser of Hastings Tap Takeover. Night had fallen by now and the warm, welcoming yellowish glow from the windows of the town’s “only craft beer bottle shop and taproom” drew us into the busiest venue on our tour. Beers from Time & Tide, of Deal, Kent, were on the taps.

But apart from the beer what really mattered about all these pubs and bars were the easy-going people behind the bars who made this return to Hastings so memorable. And the great thing is, they’ll be there for you whether it’s Tap Takeover or not.

Kate’s travel notes

Hastings has plenty to entertain the traditionalists – pinball and penny falls in the arcade, crazy golf with a view of the beach, and a miniature railway that choo-choos its way along the seafront. But it is also the location of one of a series of impressive contemporary art galleries along the south-east coast.

The Hasting Contemporary opened in 2012 in a black box above the sands, an award-winning homage to the nearby net huts of the town’s fishing fleet. Despite some initial resistance, it has become a landmark in the town.

Inside, the work of artists from LS Lowry to Maggi Hambling has been showcased, as well as recurring exhibitions by Artist Patron and local resident Sir Quentin Blake (you can buy original, limited-edition prints by him here, too). Just opened, ‘Things Fall Apart, The Centre Cannot Hold’, artist-activist Isabel Rock’s colourful if menacing vision of our world after climate collapse. Some food for thought with your candy floss.

By Kate Simon

Thirty years ago, I took my partner to Suffolk for the first time. I loved how the flat ground opened up the big sky; he thought it was a tedious landscape. Thirty years later, we live in the county – he’s since embraced big skies.

That same sense of awe is what tempts people to stride out across the flat expanses of tidal sands. What to some seems like a pointless trudge to a distant horizon, to others is about being in an elemental space. September being a month for walking festivals (check out Walkers Are Welcome), it seems a good moment to consider such a hike.

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The most famous walk of this kind in Britain crosses Morecambe Bay, from Arnside to Grange, on the Lancashire coast, offering an unparalleled perspective on where land meets sea. But these are treacherous sands where guides have been providing safe passage since the time of Henry VIII.

Yet more perilous, if lesser known, is The Broomway in Essex, which has a reputation as the deadliest footpath in Britain, earning it the nickname The Doomway. This route across the seabed from Great Wakering near Southend to Foulness was the only way to reach the island until a bridge was built in 1922.

The sea has caught out more than 100 people over the years. With weather, tides, shifting sands and, this being an MoD area, unexploded ordnance to negotiate, a guide is advisable here, too, a job done by a former bait digger, Kev Brown, aka Thames Estuary Man, who offers walks of three to seven miles in length.

We have a similar spot in my home county, Cheshire. This one, in Wirral, covers the two-mile gap between West Kirby and Hilbre, one of three islands in the Dee estuary (before borders were rearranged, this now landlocked county touched the Irish Sea). The Friends of Hilbre have published a recommended route and guided hikes are also available via Eventbrite.

Hilbre was once an outpost for Benedictine monks from Chester Abbey. At the turn of the 19th century, it had a pub that served the crews of passing ships, and more recently has counted among its few residents the author Ann Cleeves (Shetland, Vera), who is a patron of the Friends of Hilbre. Today, it is an uninhabited nature reserve, one of the best places to see Leach’s storm petrel and a breeding ground for shelducks, meadow pipits and linnets.

Clearer routes for walkers are marked out for those wishing to cross to Brough of Birsay in Orkney to see the remnants of a Norse settlement, the castle and priory at Lindisfarne in Northumberland, the Art Deco hotel on Burgh Island in Devon, the castle on St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, and the tip of Worm’s Head on the Gower. But each must be undertaken with as much caution as Morecambe Bay, The Broomsway and Hilbre Island.

Such walks offer great beauty and great danger in equal measure.

Phil’s Beer Notes

After risking your life on the sands, you’ll need a pint. At Arnside, with spectacular views through picture windows across the sea to Lakeland, JJ Crossfield’s is a good bet. This café-bar on the site of a former grocer’s shop, opened in 2023 and showcases cask ales from the local Lancaster Brewery, plus guests.

There’s a brewery at Great Wakering called George’s, and you can best sample its ales from the handpumps at the nearby Castle Inn, a pub which dates back to 1620, with cellars that once led to tunnels that ran down to the creek and were used by smugglers of tea, silk and brandy.

Liverpool’s Black Lodge Brewery opened a second taproom at West Kirby last year and provides a lively community venue serving cask and craft beer and hosting regular tasting events upstairs. And there’s a Spitting Feathers Brewery bar just around the corner, too, so you’re spoilt for choice here.

Photo: Walking the Broomway by G Travels is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

By Phil Mellows

You might have heard there’s a rather good book out titled Beer Breaks in Britain. Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I, having co-authored it. But it’s reassuring to know the thing actually works, by which I mean it is, indeed, useful for planning a trip.

It might seem odd, but I even use it myself. At the end of August a few mates joined me on a visit to West Yorkshire. After an afternoon in Leeds, calling in at the Northern Monk Refectory and the city’s oldest pub among others, we took a walk along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, from the Saltaire Brewery taproom in Shipley to the Goose Eye Brewery taproom at Crossflatts.

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It’s about five miles straight along the towpath, and we took our time, taking refreshment at a couple of spots along the way, including the café at Bingley Five Rise Locks, a must-see. You can read about these things and see pictures but until you’ve stood at the bottom you can’t truly appreciate this breathtaking watery stepladder rising up in front of you.

Apart from anything else it shows the power of the industrial revolution, driving human beings to perform spectacular feats of engineering in the name of trade. It’s no good making stuff unless you can get it to the people who’ll buy it.

But enough education, we were mostly here for the beer, of course, finishing in Bingley with a curry at the Peacock desi pub and a pint at Chip ‘n’ Ern, one of the country’s quirkiest micropubs – visit the gents for the fright of your life!

The sun shone, defying the weather forecasters, and it all made for a grand day out.

Pub crawls, of which beer walks like this are one variety, have received serious attention of late. With pubs fighting harder than ever to get customers through the door, they haven’t simply become more competitive. The usual business strategies have combined with cooperation, publicans getting together to create ale trails and craft-beer walks that can attract people to the area and float everyone’s boat, so to speak.

There are too many of these to list, but I’ll be heading to the Hastings Tap Takeover in October, for instance, where pubs and bars are teaming up with independent brewers to showcase what the Sussex town can do for beer lovers.

The phenomenon has even been noted by academics. University of York’s Victoria Wells, also known as The Pub Professor, has led an investigation into the various types of pub crawl and why they’re so popular.

And though merely walking from pub to pub drinking a pint in each is a part of it, here at Beer Breaks we think we’re onto something by pointing out there’s much more you can do on a visit. Every destination has a story to tell, as we discovered on the West Yorkshire trip where we spent a morning at Salts Mill, pictured, finding out more about the 19th-Century textile industry and browsing the art gallery featuring works by local boy David Hockney.

After that, the beers went down even better.

Photo: "Salt's Mill and River Aire" by Tim Green aka atoach is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

By Kate Simon

My friend Barry just sent me a photo of the Place d’Ipswich in Arras, taken while he was passing through northern France. He’s from Ipswich, I live here, and it amused us both. The explanation is simple; the towns twinned in 1993 because the Suffolk Regiment was billeted around Arras in Pad-de-Calais during the First World War.

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Barry and I were quick to dismiss the twin-town movement as an excuse for local dignitaries to enjoy a holiday courtesy of the public purse, a widespread attitude that has led to the un-twinning of some towns. Even the sitcom The Vicar of Dibley used the initiative in one episode to illustrate the corrupt character of Tory toff David Horton, who prefers to use funds for his trips to explore twinning possibilities in the south of France than for a much-needed local bus service.

But the twin-town movement deserves a little more consideration. It arose in the aftermath of the Second World War, a cultural and commercial way for former enemies to reconcile and build a lasting peace, and it continues to thrive in places. Malmesbury, for example, added another twin town to its list just last year, Bad Hersfeld in Germany. As I write, the editor of the Hersfelder Zeitung, Kai Struthoff, is making the 650-mile journey to the Wiltshire town by bicycle to mark the first anniversary and raise money to fund a visit by the youth section of the German town’s volunteer fire service.

The concept has developed in poignant ways down the years, too, with partnerships such as the twinning of Leeds with Durban in South Africa during the apartheid years and, more recently, Tower Hamlets with Jenin in Gaza. And there has been fun with the notion. The joke’s not lost on the good people of Dull in Perth and Kinross, who have twinned with their siblings in Boring, Oregon, nor on Wincanton in Somerset, which is twinned with Ankh-Morpork, a fantasy city from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

In Arras, a classic red phone box stands in Place d’Ipswich, a tangible symbol of the hand of friendship. Such visual cues can be seen in twin towns across Britain, too. When the Scottish sculptor David A Annand created for Basingstoke the two stainless steel men reaching towards each other with arcing poles, creating a shape suggestive of a gateway, he was inspired by the town’s close relationship with Alençon in France, Braine-l’Alleud in Belgium, and Eurskirchen in Germany.

In Nottingham, the relationship has even altered the landscape. The city extended its tram network in 2015 in consultation with its twin, Karlsruhe in Germany, which had successfully developed its own network. The link is practically celebrated in the shape of the Karlsruhe Friendship Bridge, which spans Queen’s Road.

In May, a mural was unveiled at Richmond Station in Greater London to mark the 65th anniversary of the town’s civic partnerships with Fontainbleau in France and Konstanz in Germany. “Richmond has always looked outward,” said council leader Gareth Roberts at the unveiling, “and we’re part of a wider international tradition of cooperation rooted in mutual respect, peace and cultural exchange… [connecting] our borough to a wider global story of collaboration.”

In the current atmosphere, looking beyond borders with mutual understanding and tolerance is to be encouraged.

Phil’s Beer Notes

One of my beers of the year (so far) has to be the Strong Dark Mild brewed on Thornbridge’s Union set. Exquisite on cask, and smoothly drinkable at 6.5% abv, it’s one of the latest notable collaborations between British and foreign brewers. On this occasion, Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver, not for the first time, made the trip across the Atlantic to put his spin on a traditional style.

International collaborations have been a feature of the UK craft brewing scene from the start. As early as 2013, Berkshire’s Siren Brewing launched its Rainbow Project, looking to bring together brewers from across the globe.

Covid caused a hiatus but the global collab soon bounced back. At the launch of the 2023 Norwich City of Ale I was able to taste the results of four partnerships between Norfolk and Belgian brewers who came together specially for the event – introduced by veteran beer writer Roger Protz.

In the same year Brew York marked its seventh birthday with a series of international collabs with brewers from Norway, Florida, the Netherlands, Poland and Germany, and in 2024 Birmingham’s Attic came up with a fresh twist by pairing with brewers from Philadelphia and Màlaga, Spain, with (almost) the same name.

Now one of Britain’s oldest names has joined in, producing a cask version of Dutch brewer Uiltje’s Bird of Prey IPA. Birds, after all, know no borders.

Photo: "Dull and Boring" by Peter Mercator is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

By Phil Mellows

Travelling around the UK, researching our book Beer Breaks in Britain, I was struck by the way each destination expressed a unique character, not only through its history, architecture, culture and so on, as described by my erudite co-author, but through drinking the beer.

Still, I was surprised, in a good way, when top beer writer Emma Inch, in her review on Bluesky, said that “this book makes the connections between place & pint in a way that so many articles on terroir have failed to do”.

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Most flattering, especially as I hadn’t really thought about it like this. For one thing, terroir in beer is a highly controversial topic. As you’ll know, the term is native to wine, which is made in a completely different way from beer.

It’s easy to imagine how grapes grown in a certain soil and climate and so on can determine what the final product tastes like. Brewing, however, uses four different materials – water, malted grain, hops and yeast – which usually come from different places, and the beer produced is also influenced by the processes in which they are combined.

A few have sought to produce their own ingredients close to the brewery. Surrey’s Hogs Back and Derbyshire’s Thornsett, for instance, have their own hop gardens and Pembrokeshire’s Old Farmhouse grows its own barley. But these are exceptions.

If you really want to get into the agricultural argument, see Matthew Curtis and Stan Hieronymous for opposing views.

Perhaps it’s more relevant to think of ‘social terroir’, a term applied to craft beer, as a conscious marketing strategy, at least where I’ve seen it. If you extend it to loosely take in the place not where the beer is brewed, but where you’re drinking it, I reckon you can call that social terroir.

For perhaps the sharpest example I can come up with, I’ll make no apologies for returning to the topic of draught Bass. Order a pint in this beer’s Midlands heartland and you get the classic tight, creamy head. Ask for it on Teesside and you’ll be handed a Mister Whippy ice-cream cone of fluffy foam that soars several centimetres above the brim (pictured). And Bristol is known for pouring it with no head at all.

Teesside’s ‘banked’ pint has its roots in the area’s heavy industry. Thirsty workers coming off shift all hit the bar at the same time, so pubs had to be ready with part-poured pints. Topping up created the tall, foamy head. Reece Hugill has told the full story.

And Bristol’s ‘flat’ pint? It partly results, of course, from that north-south divide in cask beer dispense in which, beneath the latitude of about 53 degrees North, the sparkler screwed to the end of the tap that produces the creamy head is absent.

This divide is less pronounced than it used to be, and the new marketing drive for Bass by its global giant brand owner AB Inbev foregrounds the Midlands dispense, but drinkers have got used to their local style over generations, pubs have to give them what they want and that will hopefully mean the social terroir survives.

There must be many more examples like this, and it all gives British beer culture an especially rich and fascinating diversity – that’s worth getting out and about to experience for yourself. But we would say that, wouldn’t we!

Photo © Reece Hugill

By Kate Simon

Ipswich is in the news. First it was ranked one of the best places in the UK to take a short break by consumer organisation Which?, then it led the pick of British ports worth visiting in The Guardian’s series “Where tourists seldom tread”.

Which? placed the Suffolk county town at number 17, giving four out of five for the lack of crowds. That’s the very reason why it headed the article on the travel pages of The Guardian, which specialises in destinations you didn’t know you needed to visit and trends you didn’t know you needed to follow, here “townsizing”, the art of visiting obscure towns over obvious cities.

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That Ipswich has its merits isn’t news to me, having moved to the town a couple of years ago; I was hankering for the coast but unable to completely cut the umbilical cord with London, just an hour down the train track. While Which? marked the port down for ease of getting around (you can, in fact, walk everywhere worth seeing) and gave extra points for the revamped marina (this jury is out), pictured, The Guardian spotted its more interesting assets, in particular the fact that Ipswich has “one of the best-preserved medieval cores in the country”.

Its correspondent, Chris Moss, quickly identified the reason why this town is undervalued. “You have to rummage to find the historical treasures, which lie scattered, disguised, buried, bullied… wrapped in roads, houses, retail and leisure centres,” he says.

Seek and you shall find a trail of places connected to local boy Cardinal Wolsey, and 16th-century Christchurch Mansion (with the biggest collection of paintings by Constable and Gainsborough outside London), which stands within bucolic Christchurch Park. There’s also a proud town square, Cornhill, graced by Italianate, neo-Georgian and Flemish architectural flourishes, and an Anglo-Saxon warren of roads and alleys with quaint names such as Silent Street, along which slouch medieval timber-framed houses, some pretty in Suffolk pink.

More recent additions include the hulking black glass Willis Building, a Seventies’ work by the architect Norman Foster, and an amusing bronze statue of Grandma and assorted characters from the Daily Express cartoon by Giles, whose former studio overlooks the spot. There’s a busy programme of open-air festivals, too.

Time has taken its toll on The Guardian article’s two other choices of ports deemed worth visiting: the faded seaside resort of Ramsey on the Isle of Man, where you can still take the electric railway to the summit of Snaefell; and Lancaster, once England’s fourth-largest slave port, which is now unpicking its dark maritime history for those keen to put into context why parts of the Lancashire town’s landscape are easy on the eye. They’re both going on my list for a reappraisal.

Indeed, we like an overlooked town at British Beer Breaks – especially when there’s good ale on offer – and my vote goes to one at the top of East Anglia’s bulge, King’s Lynn. Beyond the modern shopping precinct, this former Hanseatic port has a compelling history, rooted in its relationship with dastardly King John, and a well-preserved Georgian quarter, with fine medieval merchant houses amid cobbled lanes that lead to the harbour, where the river Ouse flows into the Wash.

A walk about town reveals a trail of handsome architecture, featuring a stout 17th-Century Custom House, the even older Trinity Guildhall, becomingly checkered with flint, and St George’s Guildhall, the UK’s oldest working theatre, with one of the stronger claims that Shakespeare trod its boards. In a sure sign the place is on the up, the artists have been moving in, including the innovative GroundWork Gallery, which uses art to address climate change, and Contemporary and Country, specialising in the art of East Anglia, which has just opened a private viewing room.

I’m due to visit King’s Lynn again soon. But first we have more visitors due in Ipswich. No doubt they’ll join the growing ranks of those surprised to find there’s much to admire in this unjustifiably overlooked destination.

Phil’s Beer Notes

There’s no shortage of fine beer venues in Ipswich. Among them, The Dove Street Inn is an old favourite that was picking up all the awards 15 years ago – and it hasn’t changed much, with 10 handpumps pouring a wide range of styles and an in-house brewery.

The Fat Cat is another must-visit for cask fans with up to 15 brews on the bar plus a selection of Belgians. For something more modern Briarbank Brewery, near the waterfront, has a very pleasant taproom upstairs where you can sample some quite creative modern brews.

And the Arcade Tavern comprises a warren of rooms over two floors with two bars serving a great range of craft beers on tap plus a couple of handpumps for the traditional stuff.

Photo: "Question Mark" by Leo Reynolds is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

By Phil Mellows

Once a month I’m privileged to have sight of the official beer sales figures for the UK. When they pop up in my inbox I duck behind the settee and peer at them through my fingers. I’m a cask beer drinker you see – well, about three-quarters of the time – and watching the steady and sometimes not so slow decline of the category is scary.

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According to the pub trade’s Morning Advertiser this week, cask ale volumes dropped by more than 7% in the past 12 months on top of year after year of similar falls for as long as anyone can remember. Barely 8% of total beer sales in pubs and bars – also in decline – are now poured from a handpump. I remember when it was twice that and people were worried then.

Does this mean cask is going to disappear entirely? If you only look at these topline numbers that would be your conclusion. But the full picture is intriguingly messy.

Some brewers are seeing cask sales climb. Theakston, for instance, last week reported a third consecutive year of growth based on a “renewed interest” in the category. The Yorkshire firm has experimented with modern styles in cask, but its more traditional best-sellers are also going well. That’s Theakston Best, a fairly standard sort of bitter, the stronger XB, one of my favourites 30 years ago when it was available nationally, and Old Peculier, a hard to define dark beer that’s a hefty 5.6% abv.

It’s hard to make sense of this. Ask me off the cuff about the future of cask and I’d point to a trend towards lower-strength paler ales, encouraged by favourable duty rates, and cask versions of highly hopped, sometimes hazy, craft beers.

But there is also a stirring of interest in ‘retro’ styles, with modern brewers bringing out their own takes on bitter and mild. Only yesterday I drank a Dark Mild IPA hopped with Chinook and Citra at the Unbarred Brewery taproom in Brighton. Weird oxymoronic stuff (a dark pale) but it suggests something’s going on.

Manchester’s Cloudwater, one of the sexiest names in beer, has just launched a pair of cask ales, available only in its own bars, one showcasing English hops (Long are the Nights), the other American (Gone are the Days).

They aim, says the brewery’s Instagram feed, to “capture the essence of the brewing landscape from the late 70s and tell the story of the evolution of British beer”. That’s a heavy narrative load for two beers to bear but it’s the intention that’s significant. It reflects a rising consciousness of the journey we’re on – and it’s a long way from “a pint of the usual”.

Then you have Thornbridge Brewery playing around with its Burton Union set (pictured) and coming up with more expressions of ‘heritage’ cask styles, including collaborations with US brewing legend Garrett Oliver.

Meanwhile, there’s been a resurgence in sales of Draught Bass, of all things, such that its reluctant brand owner, global brewing giant AB Inbev, has broken with years of neglect to launch a sales drive complete with flashy Instagram account, and Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, another long-established brew, is now the nation’s top-selling cask beer.

Drinkers seem to have a desire to both return to classics such as old Peculier, Bass and Landlord, and to try with something daring and new. It’s the brands that fall between that seem to be losing out. And I believe the continuing decline of cask has also something to do with changes in the places that sell it.

For a long time, I’ve thought that serving cask ale properly is becoming a specialist job, and post-pandemic many more pubs have made the decision not to stock it and repurpose their handpumps as blue roll spindles. Finding a pint in some parts of the country (London especially) has grown harder. The huge surge in Guinness sales, a common default purchase, in part results from this.

We no longer live in a time when cask beer is the staple of every corner pub, and that may be a good thing as far as quality is concerned. It also means dedicated cask drinkers might have to put in a little more effort to find the pub for them.