Saturday 17th January 2026 Heady times to be a Hull City fan. I've never felt more connected to the club since the 2007/08 season which culminated in us beating Bristol City at Wembley to reach the Premier League for the first time in our history. In the December of that season, we had back to back away games at Preston (midweek) and Southampton (Saturday), just like I'm about to tell you today. 3-0 and 4-0 defeats. We plummeted to 15th. Some fans shout for Phil Brown's he

Saturday 10th January 2026 F.A. Cup third round weekend, the original Daddy BRAPA car day. As a Hull City fan, we've learnt to accept that we'll get a home draw against a fellow long-standing Championship team, and we'll put in an abject performance in front of 6,000 people whilst freezing our bums off. Ain't worth it mate! I called it back in December as the balls were about to be pulled from the hat, look ..... Blackburn at home. You've gotta laugh. It had been moved

Saturday 27th December 2025, 3:30pm With Brighton safely tucked under the BRAPA belt, I decide that I have time to visit two more East Sussex pub ticks before heading back to King's Cross for my regulation ESB. Newhaven isn't a town I've visited before, no need until now but I felt immediately at home due to the echoes of West Ayrshire, Bridlington and Whitley Bay in the winter. Angry skinhead seagulls, a stiff icy breeze, no one alive between the ages of 20-70, and ancient

Christmas 2025 (24th - 27th December) Ho, ho, ho, MERRY CHRISTMAS (retrospectively) from my default position squashed in the armchair behind the Christmas tree at Mummy & Daddy BRAPA's pile and what a smashing seasonal Brew York that was. Gin and Tonic? Dry Martini? Pah! #NonBeerWomen!! I lost the annual snooker tournament 3-1. I'm blaming my 'Enfield Hand'. Still bad, I couldn't grip my cue properly at the back #AlwaysGetYerExcusesReady Fast forward to Boxing Day, and

Saturday 20th December 2025 All aboard the festive Dross Country for the final BRAPA outing before Christmas. A curtailed day, as I'd booked myself a Birmingham-Leeds 5pm train back so I could meet my work colleagues for the back-end of our Christmas night out. Following on from what we'll term the 'Enfield Slip' two days previously, my left knee passed a late fitness test but my right hand wasn't so great. I cannot even lift a full pint, only a half. Conclusion - I must d

Thursday 18th December 2025 Tripping towards the finish line, as I tick four of my remaining six pubs and edge ever closer to the Greater London clean sweep for the first time in BRAPA history. There was another pre-emptive 'Spoons and a late trip to the Parcel Yard thrown in for good measure. It was an opportunity to right the wrongs of the previous Saturday, where you might recall I only ticked a pathetic two pubs on our Millwall away day. It was the first of two BRAPA Chr

Wednesday 10th December 2025 All I've got to show for January 2026 at the time of writing is 11 ticks in the first 16 days, though I'm hoping by the time you read this, Southampton (yesterday) has been semi-productive. Skinny ticking months cause me feelings of anxiety and guilt. Sitting at home thinking about all those times in life where I've been idle when I could've been ticking. Why didn't it occur to me to start this quest at a younger age? Just imagine, I could've c

Saturday 6th December 2025 Having been Tony Gubba'd at home to the Smoggie darlings (0-4 down at half time, but we won the second half 1-0) the previous evening, it was a fragile BRAP soul who travelled down to Kings Cross on the 07:02 the following morning. EMERGENCY HALF TIME GUINNESS SITUATION But the restorative effects of an Arctic coffee and air fryer croissant cannot be underestimated. I gallop to Euston like a beast, have a quick widdle alongside a cross-eyed Spurs f

Thursday 4th December 2025 Sick of the sight of London after too much recent exposure, so I look slightly further afield for my remaining 2025 Grand Central cheapo day tickets. Bedfordshire was the initial hope, but when raining cats & dogs like this, I didn't wanna be stood on a swampy roadside waiting for an unreliable Grant Palmer (bus, not man). And I must not feel cheated every time I see a sign like this ..... .... it (probably) wasn't me who first coined the term. B

Thursday 27th November 2025 With Blackheath, Charlton and Plumstead tucked nicely under my belt, it was time to head more central for today's remaining three Good Beer Guide ticks of the evening. And I had the added twist of being joined by birthday boy and recently inducted pub ticker, Derby Rich. He'd just arrived in t'smoke for a long weekend of ticking, and before checking in at his East London digs, agreed to lug his rucksack around a couple of pubs we both needed. #22.

Tuesday 25th November 2025, 5:30pm Welcome back, I was 23 pubs away from London glory (completing the Greater London section of the GBG, not the Greene King beer), and after Richmond where I left you last time, I reach the wrong Putney station and cross the Thames on foot for my fifth pub on day two. #11. Eight Bells, Fulham (3161 / 6002) Chelsea are at home in Europe, bouncer on the door. The least pleasant 'Hull City badge clockage' of the week occurs. Bouncer looks skept

Monday 22nd November 2025, 3pm "Don't even start on the lifts cos I'm sick of hearing about them. YES, I KNOW one is out of service and the other is being repaired. You'll just have to take the stairs. If ONE MORE person mentions it to me today, I'm going to lose it, so how can I help you?" "Errrm, well I just want to check in if possible?" I squeak in reply. This was the start to a week of pub ticking, 33 Greater London Good Beer Guide pubs remain, the majority of which

Saturday 22nd November 2025 All aboard the Dudley bound bus, 10:15am on a grey drizzly Brum day. A return home for my eponymous duck mascot. A slightly less talkative fellow traveller than Daddy BRAPA. No trains to London today had forced our hand, no QPR away game for us. We'd lose anyway, so it proved a lucky break. Not to mention the fact I'd be in London on Monday for the beginning of a week's ticking. Plenty of churn for me in the West Midlands in 2026, randomly dot

Thursday 20th November 2025 Winter is here! I skid down to York station in near blizzard conditions, thankfully only a brisk seven minute walk from BRAPA Towers. I'm already against the clock for my train. My leaky boiler, which was repaired yesterday, is working, but now no heat is getting into the radiators. Why do these things always happen in the worst possible conditions? At the station under the scoreboard, I get chatting to this chirpy lady. "I'm loving watching t

Saturday 15th November 2025 Flask of coffee, crumbly Mummy BRAPA homemade cherry scone, and a blank football weekend. It simply had to be. A Daddy BRAPA Lincolnshire car day. One of my most eagerly anticipated of all outings in the pub ticking calendar. Lincs churn had for the first time ever, been fairly kind in 2025/26 and I can only assume they've run out of random village pubs making their GBG debut despite having been open for centuries doing their own thing. It was

Happy New Year pub lovers! 2025 has been a record breaking year here at BRAPA towers. 664 Good Beer Guide ticks, bettering the 619 I managed in 2024. I'd never have believed I'd come close to that twelve months ago. The mascots are drunk, are you? You should be! Colin (retired), Ivor Panda, Pedro Plum, Oscar (suspended), Dudley T. Duck, Owlie McBurnie. So pour yourself a strong drink (ESB, red wine, whisky, I don't mind), or if this is hangover reading, an icy glass of

Thursday 13th November Under the majestic tripe inspired roof at London King's Cross, so often the base for all manner of BRAPA days, I bring you this six pub morale booster. I was down in Croydon on holiday (said no one ever!) in little over a week, but having travelled down on the mid-morning Grand Central service instead of the 08:27 (which I'm blaming on their rubbish website), I didn't want to be too expansive with my ticking. Especially after last weekend's Stirling tr

Saturday 8th November 2025 Judy woz robbed At the sign of Sir Andrew Murray's golden post box, I arrive in Dunblane on a grey damp Autumnal morn, keen to build on my pathetic total of ONE pub (Falkirk's excellent Wheatsheaf) in the area known in the Good Beer Guide as 'Loch Lomond, Stirling & Trossachs'. There's not much of Scotland that is comfortably doable in the day from good ole' York, but the Stirling area is a fertile hunting ground and I will be back in January to mop

Thursday 6th November 2025 This is big Les Wade. He's got nothing to do with Biggleswade, but his cardigan is giving 'disappointing 'Spoons carpet' and his book could be a 1940's CAMRA Good Beer Guide. I'm sick of opening my GBG on the first pub page and seeing Biggleswade's Wetherspoons unticked. Not a difficult tick to get done by any means, but when you've got a quirky ole' dude from Hitchin called John saying "Si, make sure you don't do it without me!" it requires more

Saturday 1st November 2025 Uncanny isn't it? And that's not a pun based on the spooky Danny Robbins show of the same name. But it can be, if you know what I'm on about. With no appetite for our yearly lunchtime kick off at Carrow Road on the part of either Daddy BRAPA or myself (just one new Norwich tick required this year), a 'gentle' car day of Very North Yorkshire was decided upon. After all, six ticks are better than one. Naughty Little Cousin Pumpy made his annual ma