Deeper Underground

A few shots from a visit last year to The National Mining Museum near Wakefield. It's on the site of the old Caphouse Colliery, which began producing in the late 1700s and closed, empty of economic coal, in 1985. It's got the lot - pit ponies, winding gear, steam boilers. And it costs nowt to get in. Much as I am in favour of museums being free - this is one that deserves a cough up for the donations box. It ranks with a trip to HMS Victory as one of the most educational days of my life. There's an astounding amount to see, though the highlight is a trip down the actual mine in a small group accompanied by a genuine miner, complete with a music hall Yorkshire thee-and-thou accent. No pictures from this, alas - anything that risks producing a spark has to be left on the surface.

These days the cage ("Nivver a lift - allus a cage") trundles down the original shaft at a sedate pace, though in its working life it plummeted at 45ft per second, which according to our guide "Felt like skydiving". The mine itself is a network of ancient and modern galleries shooting off in all directions, and of a darkness so complete that it swallows your torchlight. It's considered a 'wet' pit - a million gallons of water are pumped out each day. There's lots of brutal and massive equipment down there, but it surprised us that in some parts the coal had been dug out by hand, the seams being too thin for machinery. An hour down there left us all with the opinion that miners deserve every penny that they earn, such are the many and extravagant ways to lose your life or be permanently disabled. Indeed, a miner was killed at the museum this january, while extending an underground classroom.

The Underground

This sign's next to the intriguingly named Slaymaker Lane, just outside Oakworth. The Lane is a place of childhood dares, myths and folklore. Pleasant in the daytime, at night the high stone walls and the thick curtain of trees make it darker than normal, even on a full moon. It's a place where your footsteps quicken, even if you don't know about the resident ghost of a horse and rider.

Not to take anything away from Mr Swaine's undoubted catching skills, but there were three fresh molehills in the opposite corner of that field.

Homebrew 2.0

Say hello to my latest effort, brewed from a Woodfordes Wherry Kit. I cooked this up at the end of january, fermented it for 12 or so days and then barreled it without flooding the kitchen. Apart from the odd test snifter, It'd been sleeping peacefully in a cool corner of our dining room. Last friday - after a working week from hell - I could wait no longer. Out came the nonic.

So what's it like? Actually, pretty damn good - and nobody is more surprised than me. It's sweetish and malty with a long bitter finish and a proper, lacing head. It won't set any hophead's hair on fire, but It's a decent 'brown' session beer. Importantly, it doesn't taste like homebrew - I'd be happy to sup this down the pub. For some of the night, anyway. I forgot to take the original gravity, but it's something in the neighbourhood of 4%, though anyone reading my tweets on friday night may have thought I was on something stronger.

When I barreled this beer, I siphoned off a bottle for my mum and dad. Given the enthusiasm for it when they cracked it open last night, ("We've had worse in Wetherspoon's") bottle conditioning might be the way forward for my next brew. The Wherry kit is notorious for stuck fermentations - which I avoided - and failing to properly drop bright - which I didn't. There's a faint haze, but it's a helluva lot better than my last effort which looked like Bisto.

Porc En Croute Avec Pois Écrasés

In the same way you don't visit Yorkshire to get a sun tan, you don't go there and expect to lose weight. On my week-long visit I consumed* fish and chips three times, a curry and three pies - two of which came with mushy peas.

Pie and peas is the great Yorkshire meal. Classless, simple - you can eat it with a spoon - nutritious, filling and with the exception of Bradford beer festival, (great pie, not enough peas for £3.50) cheap. It's comfort food par excellence. A teatime favourite as well as a staple of football terraces, after-match rugby, village cricket lunches, bonfire night and Christmas eve. I've even eaten it (£1.50) in the grade 1 listed magnificence of Leeds Parish Church. The mushy element is very important - purists will only accept them made from dried peas, soaked with bicarbonate of soda and boiled for hours. You can see the difference above - the lower picture is the tinned variety. But It's the pie that really matters, and a butcher's reputation is only as good as his last porker. There are some heavy hitters in Airedale - Stanforth's, Affer faves Drake and Macefield and Ted Lee in Skipton. Lunds and Herd's further down the valley in Keighley, where people still talk about how good the long-gone Midgely's pies once were. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; If pie and peas was from the Ariége it'd be on the menu of the best restaurants in London.


*not all in one go.

Merry? Mungo In Fridge.

I'm partial to the odd Pure Brewed Lager from Samuel Smith - but as I'm still doing a one-man boycott, the Tadcaster bullies' beers are off limits. Apart from that, I've never really got on with British lager, even the 'craft' stuff. I don't even get on with Meantime Helles. If I want something golden and fizzy to go with a Thai meal i'll grab a few Zywiec from the shop next door.

Hang on though, what's this? West St Mungo in our local Waitrose. Oh yes. I've read about these. Glaswegian, but run by folk from Buttenheim in dear old Bayern. They brew to the Rheinheitsgebot, which as I know from my German days may be a good indicator of purity but not of flavour (Paulaner - i'm looking at you).

So what's it like? Gassy, woody nose and very nearly the colour of another Scot; Irn Bru. The head fades away in seconds. Taste is clean and bready with a bitter finish that clings. The natural carbonation is a bit sharp for me, and there's a flavour that I can't quite place which doesn't quite appeal. By bedtime I still had a quarter glass undrunk and warm. Never a good sign. Decent stuff, but not my Great British Lager. That I actually prefer a Heineken-owned Polish macrobrew to this probably says a lot about my tasting 'skills'. Zywiec is six for a fiver from our local offy. Cooking Lager would be proud.

Silent And Grey

A february sunday in Whitby.

Wheels Of Steel

I now possess two scooters, half a car, a skateboard (somewhere) and four bicycles. The latest addition to the fleet is this late 1980s Raleigh Winner, which came thanks to the generosity of a nice chap I 'met' on a cycling website. He'd owned it for 20 years, but as a new dad it was surplus to his requirements. He didn't even want paying, but accepted a donation to his nappy fund.


The Winner is an example of a once-ubiquitous style of bike, the affordable, friction-geared, hi-ten steel 'racer'. Comfy, with fittings for mudguards and rack - and expected to last a lifetime. These are the bikes you see being ridden to factories in 70s newsreels about industrial strife. The bike you rode to work, the same bike you rode out to the Dales at the weekend. I had one as a kid - a beautiful and sleek Raleigh Medale. New bikes of this type don't really exist anymore. The late 80s mountain bike boom that saw the Medales and the Winners off has ultimately led to a sort of race to the bottom. A typical 'everyday' bike for the masses is now something like a £70 Asda MTB-alike weighed down with pointless (and useless) suspension and plastic brakes. Find one of these or a steel racer in the back of a barn in 20 years time and see which one is still rideable.

Apart from the rear tyre this Winner is 100% original. Brakes will be the first upgrade. Sidepulls, funky chrome wheel rims and 'suicide' levers add up to a somewhat alarming experience when approaching junctions or descending even the gentlest hill. After that will be some decent wheels and tyres. In Spring I'll convert it to single speed. Not having gears should get me off this post-Christmas fitness plateau i'm currently sat on. By next autumn I should have lungs like a shire horse.

300

Sir Titus Salt was just one of dozens of stupendously wealthy Victorian wool barons, but unlike many of the others he built a 'model' village for his employees - Saltaire. Now a world heritage site, It's all still there, sandwiched between the River Aire and the A650 Bingley-Bradford road. Salt's clogged and shawled workers got streets of well-built cottages, a library, wash houses, a hospital, allotments and even a boathouse, all in the shadow of what was then the world's largest industrial building - Salt's Mill. Despite local legend, there's no record of Titus being teetotal. Saltaire's original lack of a pub (there are now three) is down to Salt's professed dislike of 'beerhouses' and the fact that many of his staff were Methodists.

I wonder what the epically-bearded patriarch would think about the 2011 Bradford Beer Festival being held in his sumptuous Victoria Hall? Last friday, Our Lad and me were lucky to snag two of the last 300 tickets held back on the door. The queue was a long one, and with the festival sold out, a lot of people would have gone home disappointed - or to Fanny's Ale House up the road. One thing that always strikes me about the crowd at a festival back home is how 'normal' everyone looks. Where I grew up, Real Ale isn't just the preserve of a few enthusiasts. For many people it's part of life. Even lager lads will sink a bitter now and then. The über-tickers with their dandruff and their trackpants pulled up to their armpits were (largely) absent from this queue.

Once inside (CAMRA members got a token for free half) we got stuck straight into some real keg: a bitter and smooth (if a tad overcarbonated) Kacour IPA Samurai, a visitor from the Czech Republic. Grand Ridge Bitter from Oz was soapy and sort of 'veggy', but drinkable. After that, we stayed cask. Deep and tangy Acorn Bullseye; floral, light and fruity (and hazy) Allendale Wagtail. We found the Liverpool One Maharaja IPA lacked any real hop bite, unlike Summer Wine Gambit which was almost puckeringly bitter. Salamander Garuda was gently hoppy, light and smooth and creamy. All this was to the sound of rockabilly foursome the 309s. Other nights entertainment was from Carl Heslop and the hall's Wurlitzer organ, which must have been a surreal drinking experience. After pie and peas we wound down with Yorkshire Dales Nappa Scar, which smelt like a farmyard but went down bitter. Last beer of the night we stuck it to bullies Sam Smith by downing a Yorkshire Warrior from Cropton. It was a great end to a disappointing day, on which I failed my 3rd (THIRD) driving test. I thought I might find the streets of Skipton easier than East London. And I did, until I hit the kerb trying to park behind the very same car I'd practised on an hour earlier. Better than my last test though - on that occasion I reversed into a bollard and failed without leaving the test centre car park.

London Pride

TIW favourite The Harp has been voted CAMRA's pub of the year - the first time ever for a London pub.

Is it the best pub in Britain? It's all highly subjective of course, but The Harp is certainly in my personal top five, and is easily my favourite London boozer. It's been my default Zone 1 destination for years. The Harp just gets it all right. Always busy, but never too busy to get you served quickly and with a smile. Genuine, unforced character and seven or eight ales and real ciders - It's where I first fell in love with Dark Star's Hophead*. No music, no idiots and I've never once had a bad pint. Proper, Northern-style friendliness, too. The Harp is one of the few places in London where you can strike up a conversation with a total stranger without them secretly dialling 999.

*pictured here on one of the rare occasions we've managed to bag one of the window seats.

Art Is For Lovers

Leytonstone. A flower shop. It's St Valentine's day.

Geezer: "Aar much are these 'ere roses?"

Florist: "Four pounds per stem, sir. It will be very nicely wrapped."

Geezer: "Four quid!? It better be wrapped in a bleedin' Picasso for four bleedin' quid."

The Flat Earth

The 300-odd acres of sandy grasslands and mature trees that make up Wanstead Flats are seen as a bit of a sacred site in our part of town. It's where you walk your dogs, play footy, ride horses, fly your remote control 'plane, go to the circus, lounge in the sun, watch fireworks, bareknuckle box and (sometimes) poison the wildlife. Leytonstone locals hate the idea of any development, no matter how small (or 'temporary' like the mooted Olympics police HQ), encroaching on the flats. It took me by surprise, then, to find this spanky new cyclepath on my way home one evening. I can only think this was allowed because it was previously a muddy 'desire line' worn into the turf as a shortcut from Francis road to the boho crescent of Bushwood, which leads ultimately to the North Star (the boozer, not the celestial feature. It's not that long a road).


This being a Waltham Forest Council project, It's beautifully flat and smooth until it stops at Francis road, suddenly terminating in a compacted earth berm - what BMXers used to call a 'whoop-de-doo'. Oh well. It's hardly the start of a Copenhagenized E11 but it'll make getting back from the pub a bit easier.

Devon Knows

Just realised - I forgot to mention that after years of searching, I've finally found a decent pub in Barnstaple. It's the Rolle Quay Inn, a two-minute walk from the northern end of the High Street. It's much bigger than it looks from the outside, and a bit chintzy on the inside - but none the worse for that. We had a couple of first class pints of Proper Job (it's a St Austell house), served up by a friendly and knowledgeable barman, and enjoyed them while we sat defrosting by the pub's fragrant woodburner. It was light years from the usual Barno boozers with their knots of shivering rollup smokers, karaoke, pints of vinegar and two-for-one WKD promotions.





(Didn't have my camera with me when we went to the Rolle Quay - these pics were taken on Westward Ho! beach a day or two earlier)

From The Lions Mouth

Bad Leytonstone news and good Leytonstone news.

The good news. Lots of action at the Red Lion (which is now on Twitter) - and should be open by the end of march. Here's the latest release from owners Antic:

"I’m sure you have noticed our lovely builders getting stuck in at the Red Lion, work really is moving along and we are revealing more and more of the lovely old building all the time. Yesterday saw two false ceilings being removed from the bar area to really open the room up and the old kitchen being knocked out to make way for a brand spanking new one.
 
The pub now has it’s own Twitter account if you would like to be kept bang up to date with goings on: Theredlion_e11. A Facebook group is soon to follow.
 
I am also pleased to let you know that The Red Lion will be taking part in this years Leytonstone Festival. We will of course be looking for artists, groups, clubs or acts to appear during the Festival so anyone interested should either drop me a line or wait for the pub to open and pop in and have a chat.
 
Finally we are vey pleased to announce that we have appointed Mark Sprules the new General Manager  of the pub. Mark is currently the General Manager at  another of our pubs, Westow House in Crystal Palace and although he is sorry to be leaving the area,  is very much looking forward to the new challenge the Red Lion will bring. I am sure we can count on you all to make him feel very welcome when he takes up his new role in March. "

And the bad news? "Troubled" High Road landmark pub Lincoln's has had it. It's been bought by a housing association who want to demolish the place and shoehorn seventeen flats onto the site. When completed, this will give E11 the same population density as Hong Kong. Probably.

I haven't any suitable pictures, so I hope a Bavarian dog wearing sunglasses is OK.

1933-2011

Hard to know where to start with John Barry, isn't it?

Yeastender

So, here's the result of my first-ever go at homebrew - the Brubox 'London Bitter' Our Lad got me for Christmas. I followed the (somewhat vague) instructions to the letter, especially the bit about the dangers of the bag bursting through over-pressurisation, which was no empty threat. Had a look the morning after I charged the brew with sugar and found the bag blown up to the size and shape of a beach ball and climbing out of the box. We were perhaps seconds from disaster. As I er, released gas I felt just like Jack Bauer.

But what does it taste like? Despite being opaque (at this stage anyway), it's pretty good. Malty, fruity and bitter - if a tad 'yeasty' - and miles better than it looks.

The Lion In Winter

A big sign (hoho) that things are at last progressing for Leytonstone landmark The Red Lion (ex Zulus). Rumour has it that a lot more work is needed refurbishing the old place than was first thought, which may have put the reopening back a few weeks - so it'll be spring at the earliest. New owners Antic have set up a holding page for the pubs website, showing how it was in (I presume) about 1900 and hopefully how it might look again. Can't wait.

American Friends

Mrs TIW's uncle and auntie are spending their retirement touring the US in a Fifth Wheel - or the world's poshest caravan, as it's also known. You can read about their escapades here. They've got an uncanny knack of bringing me over some superb and fairly hard-to-find American beers, like this Stone Ruination IPA, one of a brace that they got me for Christmas. I've only seen it for sale at Utobeer, and for about eight quid, though it might also be in those ur-fridges at the Euston Tap.

Stone claim that 'Ruination' is what's going to happen to your taste buds after drinking this. Well, my mouth recovered after about an hour but it's definitely not a beer for food matching. Unless you're eating handfuls of hops. It's massively, heftily, grandly, bitterly hoppy this beer. Despite that it was an easy drink once I'd got over that big hop punch, and settled into citrus and sort of walk-in-the woods pine notes, all somehow balanced with those intense, 100+ IBU shovelfuls of Columbus and Centennial. After swigging nothing but meh* beers over Christmas in Devon, this was like being plugged into the mains. Beer as a primary colour. And in the States you can get it on draught. Sorry - "draft". Lucky Yanks.

* (TIW passim) honourable exception: Hartland Beers at the White Hart, Bideford.

A King At Night

The original Tron was baffling for the thirteen-year-old TIW sat in Keighley Picture House. But Our Lad and me were there for the computer animation rather than the confusing but lame storyline. All done on the Foonly supercomputer with its astonishing two megabyte memory. There'd been nothing like it before - but of course, there's been a lot like it since. Last night I saw Tron: Legacy. Not without its moments - though every time the CGI 'young' Jeff Bridges came on screen I couldn't help but think "why have they made him look like Gary Barlow?".


After that a drink was needed, so we nipped round the corner to The Kings Arms. The pub's on Roupell Street SE1, part of a conservation area of early Victorian terraces which looks like it belongs on the cover of a book by Valerie Wood called something like 'The Ragged Princess' ("she was the daughter of a jellied eel seller, he was the Fifth Duke Of Witney").

The King's Arms is a multi-room boozer, modernised a bit but still retaining a lot of character and original features. When I worked nearby, I came here a lot, but i've not been in for months. Back then the beer could be a bit inconsistent, but last night the Adnam's bitter was in prime nick, unlike the Doom Bar I kicked off with which just about OK. Out the back there's what looks like a converted courtyard where you can be brusquely served Thai food. The bar staff are pretty brusque too. I don't expect a high five when I order a round, but some verbal communication would be nice. And please, do something about the rickety bar stools. Sat swaying three feet in the air does not make for a relaxing visit. It was nice and warm though - old fashioned iron radiators and a real fire crackling away in the tap room. Good atmosphere too, and pleasingly busy for a chilly monday a week into the new year. Bit of a curate's egg for me, this pub - it ticks a lot of my boxes but I didn't find myself wishing I could still nip in after work. Hmm.

Photo by Lars Plougmann

Git Yer Brew On

When I were but a nipper, my dad was a full-grain homebrewer, boiling the mash in a huge, copper jampot. The aromas of his small-scale efforts filled our street and mingled with those from Timothy Taylor 200 yards down the road. Along with golf, dad's primary hobby these days is researching the family tree, which has thrown up several ancestors running pubs and brewhouses in Leeds.


Now it's my turn. Our Lad got me this for Christmas. It's a Brubox, a sort of one-pot homebrew system. Very straightforward. Sterilise, boil up the 'teabag' of hops and grain, add the malt extract, fill with water and add yeast when the temperature gets down to 18 degrees. Actually, that was the hard bit. The temp went from 22 degrees and settled at 16, which was a bit cold for the yeast to get its mojo working. A bit of wandering around with a thermometer showed that the dining room was the best bet, so after bunging in the yeast that's where I left it, wrapped in old blankets. Stand back, light your pipe. And that's that. Came down this morning to find the airlock blooping away and a satisfyingly crusty 'krauesen' forming on the top. There's a lurid warning in the instructions about venting off gas if the fermentation gets carried away and causes the bag to burst.

So, in about a month I'll know if I've got 20 pints of 'London Bitter' or 20 pints of vinegar. Or a dining room freshly decorated with malt extract and a supremely angry Mrs TIW.

A Deep And Dark December

There’s a Yorkshire dialect song that we used to sing at school. I can’t remember the title, or much else – just the line “Nivver bin warm sin ah left me bed” – ‘warm’ pronounced to rhyme with ‘calm’, obviously. This line kept appearing in my head during my recent, pre-christmas visit home. It was cold. So very, very cold. One day we took a walk to the top of the Five Rise Locks, looking at the ghostly, frozen valley below us. Nothing moved except woodsmoke lazily curling up from chimneys, and a group of kids sledging down an iron-hard field.



In the five days I was up in Keighley, the temperature never got above minus 4. One shocking night it was minus 15. It’s the sort of weather where you never feel entirely, properly warm – except in about three places: My mam and dad's house, my grandma’s living room (hotter, in fact, than a nuclear reactor) and sat in front of the fireplace in the Boltmaker’s Arms, where I took this short film while supping Ram Tam - Taylor's famous winter warmer - with my dad and my uncle. I hope it captures a little of the welcoming banter of this very special pub.

Happy Christmas, and many thanks for reading my humble blog - see you next year!