I can't quite work out what the problem is. The drive isn't that long, it's very picturesque, and I was being put up in a decent hotel this time. Still, irrational though it was I started feeling out of sorts on Saturday, despite the fact I wasn't travelling up until Sunday afternoon. Fortunately the good lord has seen fit to create a soothing balm for troubled nerves so I decided to partake of it once I'd got there.
As I don't have a current edition of the good book I checked with my mate Jim (a Surrey compleatist) if there were any ticks but sadly not. There are however plenty of pubs, and the place I was staying had three beers on in their bar. The staff were very friendly and the bar was quite cosy. I had Hook Norton's rugby beer as I don't suppose they'll be brewing that one again for a while.
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| The Noel Arms bar |
At £4 a pint though I thought it was worth seeing a bit more of the village so after dinner I wandered down to the Eight Bells, the place with the best Beer in the evening rating. It wasn't craft beer prices in here, but the beer did taste a bit yeasty so I still managed to get the craft beer experience.
I don't know if being in a pub on my own brings out my nosiness, or if it's just that my book wasn't gripping me, but I found it fascinating earwigging the tourists. There was an American gentleman that was after some chips but couldn't quite believe that asking for chips wouldn't get him crisps. And a table of what I think were Scandinavians who seemed to be talking about Scooby Do a lot.
By the third pint the beer had worked its wonders and washed away my woes. The book had started getting interesting too. Who'd have thought that Marx wrote a letter in defence of Bakunin to the Morning Advertiser? Mind boggling on many levels. And desperately calling for some googling, so with that it was bye to beer and back to the hotel.
I always sit and listen in pubs, that’s where I get most of my ideas, you hear some great stories.
ReplyDeleteI'll work on my earwigging then.
DeleteChipping Campden's an odd one as all the main roads carefully avoid it, and when you turn off to get there you always seem to approach from a different direction to the one you expected. Beautiful town, though.
ReplyDeleteI think that's one of the things that gets on my tits about it. The interminable minor roads until you're sudden in an unlikely spot on the high street.
DeleteYour obsession with yeasty beer borders on Rain-man level autism.
ReplyDeleteIf you think that's obsessive don't get me started on Farnham whitebines!
DeleteWhen I was a home brewer I always thought my beer looked amateurish if it was cloudy. And when I was working in production if I sent out cloudy beer it would be sent back as ullage. So I still think that most of the time if a beer is cloudy it's because it's badly made and the beer would taste better if the brewer got it right and it was bright.