I first wrote about The Turnip Prize last December. I said then I don’t recall how I first heard about the prize and the pub, the New Inn, Wedmore, Somerset, where it’s held, but since reading about it five/six years ago I look forward to seeing the results of the prize each year and listening to the exploits, of this, my favourite art competition.

This annual piss-take of the established art world’s Turner Prize is held every year in early December at the New Inn and the winner is the entry that makes the judges laugh the most and into which the least amount of effort has gone. The more crap it is, the better its chances of victory and entries can be disqualified for “not being shit enough”.

The prize is a turnip, which the previous winner has to replace, impaled on a plank of wood with a rusty six-inch nail. (more…)

On Friday 4th November Wigan and Makerfield’s Labour MP’s Lisa Nandy and Yvonne Fovargue dropped in on All Gates’s, The Anvil, Dorning Street, Wigan to offer their support to landlord Ian Thorpe and the pub industry as a whole.

The visit was part of the House of Commons ‘MP’s In Pubs’ initiative, which saw Lisa & Yvonne working on the bar to experience life as a publican and to allow customers to have their pint pulled by their local party representative.

Ian told them about the challenges facing the industry, including over regulation, alcohol tax hikes and the effect cheap booze sold by the off licence trade has on the pub. (more…)

I was saddened to hear this week of the death of John Hesketh who passed away the weekend before last. John was a partner in the Stalybridge Station Buffet Bar and who since 1997 had together with Sylvia Wood turned around what was an iconic, but failing piece of railway/beer history.

The Buffet Bar is one of the very few remaining Victorian station buffet bars. Dating from 1885, it has retained the original marble-topped bar, back fittings and the welcoming fires that Victorian travellers would have enjoyed. (more…)

I see that  during my recent absence on holiday in Eire, my local, The Taps in Lytham St Anne’s featured in The Telegraph,  The Famous Grouse, Famous Pubs 2011 series. 

Good to see yet more accolades for Ian, John and the team.

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Another mention for All Gates; this one in The Telegraph; Weekend section of 13th August 2011 in a review of  The Buffet Bar, Stalybridge Station, by Chris Arnot who, “settles on an ambrosial pale ale from All Gates”.

A very good review for our friends at the Buffet Bar also.

Read the full article here .

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After leaving Pontypridd and Otley Brewery, late afternoon, we took the scenic route home via The Heads of The Valley Road, Hereford and the A49. Traveling along the latter, some hours later, in north Herefordshire I saw a sign for Leintwardine, six miles distant to the west and remembered a news article I had read a while back about an old parlour pub there and a simple detour was made.

Leintwardine is a pre-Roman village, close to the border with Shropshire. The main street is on the same line as the Roman road, Watling Street and it is theorised that Leintwardine performed the role of a trading and outpost early in the Roman conquest of Britain. Archaeological excavations in the village in the early 1990s discovered Roman baths, further pointing to Leintwardine being a sort of “Retail Park with Travelodge” of Roman Britain. (more…)

Whilst in Devon I had a few hours to spare Sunday afternoon and decided  to visit a pub I had been meaning to many times on our frequent family visits to Sidmouth but had just never got around to.

Sandwiched on the petering edge of a narrow peninsula between the choppy Exe estuary on one side and a spot where water is tamed into the Exeter Ship Canal on the other is The Turf. It is a wild canal side pub which wrestles with nature’s elements and is something of a Devon treasure. (more…)

Last Friday I managed to get away from the office for a few days; to South Wales and Devon to be exact. The reason for my travels was to again meet our friends at the multi award winning Gwynt Y Ddraig cider and then onto Devon to see my father. I traveled to South Wales with my business partner, John and stayed with friends of his in Barry.

For Saturday lunch we called at The Bunch of Grapes, Ynysangharad Road, Pontypridd. I had called here last year but on a Sunday evening when no food was available. It’s in the Good Beer Guide, and is run by the excellent Otley Brewing Co. It’s a good few minutes’ walk from the town centre, and is a multi-award winning gastro-pub and the flagship for Otley Ltd. (more…)

Bank Top Brewery was established in 1995 by John Feeney, the original brewery being situated in an old industrial unit off Back Lane close to Bolton town centre. The Brewery name came from a long held dream of John’s to convert an old tennis pavilion in Bank Top, close to his home, into a brewery. John successfully ran the brewery on his own until he was joined in the business by Dave Sweeney in late 1999.

The continued success of the business eventually allowed John to turn his dream into reality when the brewery relocated to the old pavilion in August 2003. In November 2004 Dave became a Director and part owner and subsequently following John’s retirement in 2008 majority owner. Since then Dave has taken the brewery to another level, with a doubling of capacity and awards for Dark Mild, at SIBA 2009/2010; Gold in the Mild category and a Bronze in Supreme Champion of The Year. (more…)

I managed a day out of the office recently, for lunch with a former boss whom I hadn’t seen for 25 years. I went with my business partner. The choice of venue was left to us and as we had seen a good review on The Riverhead, in the Daily Telegraph only the week before and he resides in its general direction it seemed a good choice. Furthermore it was, unlike many other food concerns in the area, open on our chosen day, a Monday.

Marsden, seven miles or so west and uphill from Huddersfield, is a small Yorkshire mill town, set in a deep valley and hemmed in by the Pennines. Lowryesque 19th-century buildings – a decaying woollen mill, long terraces of workers’ cottages and the Mechanics’ Institute – dominate the townscape. Over the past 20 years or so, though, the place has reinvented itself as a cultural and tourist destination. (more…)