Saturday 6th June 2026 Daddy BRAPA's bare leg and the remnants of a flask of coffee. It could only be a summer car day, and the only surprise is that isn't Lincolnshire. Approaching the business end of the pub ticking season (final quarter) and I've not touched County Durham (or Merseyside, Cheshire or Leicestershire for that matter). This pleases me. It means I'm not panicking about going too far afield as September approaches. More of this in the 2026/27 ticking season p

Thursday 4th June 2026 Not often you have the opportunity to spread your wings on the 8:18am Grand Central from York to London, but the seat booked next to me (Carol Casey, aged 61, from Ashington) phoned in sick following surgery complications to fix a hernia, so Dudley Duck capitalised. Regarding Surrey, I was not a happy chap. 24 ticks remain, placing it in the unacceptable bracket. And whilst you can forgive a Dorset or a Highlands being in that state, Surrey isn't a h

Saturday 30th May 2026 Encouraged by my recent Aberdeenshire exploits, I head back up to Jockland in optimistic mood for what I hope would be a day of high quality beers + pubs. This will be my last Scottish trip for quite some time, as I have bigger fish to fry. Those fish being Wales, East Anglia and the South West. Riddled with parasites before cooking. But BRAPA history tells me that Edinburgh + The Lothians can be a beery struggle, and Daddy BRAPA's Scottish record is

Saturday 23rd May 2026, 7:20pm A poignant moment. Or as poignant as any moment can be sitting in a hot car on level one of Beaconsfield railway station multi-store carpark, munching a previously cool-bagged cheese & tomato sandwich and guzzling down a litre of weak orange squash in companionable silence with Daddy BRAPA. Dad turns 80 next year, and granted he's the youngest 79 year old on the planet, but important I savour moments like a dramatic Hull City promotion to the P

Thursday 21st May 2026 Oi oi! With 22 pubs still to tick, Essex was teetering on the brink of BRAPA unrespectability so today's aim was to bring it dahn below 20, with another trip to come in mid-July which'll make it look half decent. This is a far cry from my 2021 'full greening' of the county (Bures Hamlet, Woodforde Wherry, never forget) , and although Essex isn't the 'churniest' of counties, leave anywhere alone for five years and you WILL get banged, so to speak. I dec

Saturday 16th May 2026 Look, there's a train over there if you squint. The tip of South Cumbria was the setting for my second consecutive week in Lancs. A Daddy BRAPA car day no less. We'd have all round better pub experiences than the Blackpool coast provided last time out. The journey over t'hills was dominated by Wemberley chat after our shock win at Meewaw the previous Monday. But who will we be playing? What day? What time? We were all of a fluster due to the spyi

Word up pub lovers, Ding dong the Humph is dead, and I'm hoping this illicit photo I took on Saturday didn't hasten his demise ..... It has been a successful month here at BRAPA Towers with 61 Good Beer Guide pubs visited in the month of June, plus 8 pre/post-emptives. This moves me onto 78.26% GBG completion, and most thrillingly (for me) is 978 pubs remaining, under 1,000 for the first time. I'm basking in the glory until September's churn comes along and undoes most of m

Saturday 9th May 2026 Blackpool Winter Gardens minus the drunk punks slumped in the streets with their 2 litre bottles of cider always looks a bit naked to me, but it felt a necessary pilgrimage and Daddy BRAPA humoured me. Besdies, we had to wait until noon for our first pub to open so no point taking the northerly 'Fleetwood Fairy' tram just yet. I was still recovering from that long old week in Aberdeen, so I'm happy to make today a gentle four-ticker. I did have one add

Good evening from BRAPA Towers, I'm not sure I can justify devoting my full attention to Spain (the Man City of World Cup football) versus Cape Verde (the Rotherham of World Cup football). So I've got it on mute with the music by The Dead South on my iPhone because I can't be bothered to turn my stereo on. Here are my four favourite pubs from my recent* holiday to Aberdeen & beyond. *six weeks ago but never mind Globe Inn, Aberdeen 10pm on my opening night, and I'm very much

I can't really justify giving my undivided attention to Qatar (the MK Dons of World Cup football) versus Switzerland (the Preston North End of World Cup football) so I've got it on in the background on mute with Slim Cessna's Auto Club's peculiar grower of a 2024 album on. Anyway, here we are. The first four pubs in our Scottish finale. It should be all eight, but the truth is I've been fragile all day following Poppleton Beer Festival last night, and didn't really surface

Ready for seven pubs which I genuinely enjoyed despite some Scottish limitations? (Look, I know you prefer the pish where I suffered cos you're a bunch of sadists, but I've still to tell you about Tranent in the coming weeks so plenty more misery on the horizon don't ye worry). Balmoral Bar, Ballater They really know how to milk the tourist trade in this parts - Highland Games, royal noncery, Traitors, castles, castles, castles, snowy mountain tops. Despite being hit over t

Ready for seven minor Scottish gripes and occasional weirdness from my recent holiday in Aberdeen and beyond? Good, let's begin ..... Alexandra Hotel, Ballater "ENJOY THA SUN!" barks the elderly landlady, which sounds like an order to bugger off outside and leave this stuffy 1989 Bridlington-esque style stale piss and stewed veg smelling hotel bar for more deserving local crones. Just as well that Friday 1st May 2026 is the warmest day I've ever witnessed in Scotland. I cro

I've just looked down the list at our next eight pubs, and winced / yawned slightly and felt a sudden urge to take a long hot Radox bath. But in happier news, the beer is an improvement on part one. Let's rip the band aid off and get right into 'em ..... Muckle Cross, Elgin More like the Mucky Cross, am I right guyyyss?! I've had my 20 minute walk around the deserted Saturday morning streets of Elgin, reading about the town history and recce'ing the 'bus station' , so it i

Thursday 30th April - Wednesday 6th May 2026 My recent birthday trip to Aberdeen ranked decently in terms of pints, pubs & people. About mid-table, perhaps a bit higher in my experiences of Scottish BRAPA so far. Not as good as my Greater Glasgow & Ayrshire trip last November, or recent visits to Borders. But far superior to the Kingdom of Fife, Edinburgh & Lothians and Dumfries & Galloway. But you're always going to get a few gobblin' turkeys, even in a West Mids, Derbys o

Saturday 25th April 2026 The 6:10am York-King's Cross train might involve a 5am alarm, but at least it guarantees zero chance of a Madri-swilling Geordie / Mackem invasion , and the opportunity to spread yourself, your Daddy, Owlie, GBG, Croissant and Arctic coffee across a 4-seater. Charlton away, but I'd had a better offer. Old mate Paul G. had offered to drive us around south Kent (although he's keen to tell me what whilst Kent has an N,E and W. , it actually doesn't have

Happy Premier League from all at BRAPA Towers, what a strange and crazy month May has been. Despite the distractions of football, birthdays, parties and a lost wallet, I've managed 50 new ticks in the 2026 edition of the Good Beer Guide, pushing me onto 76.9% completion. 'Only' 1041 ticks to go. Which incidentally, was the year in which Director of Football and sickly Dane Harthacnut, drafted Ed The Confessor into the matchday squad after a successful loan spell at Normandy

Thursday 23rd April 2026 The second of my DrossCountry freebies due to their general incompetence has me back down to Birmingham New Street on another brilliantly blue skied Thirsty Thursday. Being incompetent, they'd given me my paper tickets in an LNER wallet because that's how they roll. Local lad Dudley Duck was in the mascot hot seat, as we take a connecting train to Kidderminster. 19 (NINETEEN) ticks remain in Worcs. Just below my threshold of acceptability (20) but

Saturday 18th April 2026 My new mentality is 'any county where I require more than 20 ticks is a disgrace'. This brings me back to Cambridgeshire. A county teetering on the brink of acceptability with 21 ticks remaining. Let's get into 'em! Back in 2018/19, I completed the whole damn county but have largely neglected it since. I had Martin Taylor, swift chauffeuring in his Waterbeach era to thank for much of it. Seven years later, Dan M. is my new Cambs contact. St Ives b

Saturday 11th April 2026 Considering by mindset going into today was "I've barely recovered from my Bicester Easter break, only three or four pub ticks on the agenda today so let's have a quiet one", it is astonishing and quite appalling that I end up drinking 10 (TEN) pints. I'm hoping this blog will prove that it wasn't my fault, I was merely a victim of circumstance / led astray by Daddy BRAPA. But we will see. Sheffield Utd away. Could we revive our ailing playoff push

Wednesday 8th April 2026 Shortest blog title of the season, RetiredMartin inadvertently laying down the gauntlet yesterday. The final day of my Easter break ("how is he STILL writing about Easter?") I set out from Bicester North to Birmingham Moor Street once more, needing to go further than ever to find a clutch of pub ticks to keep my numbers healthy. Worcestershire is the chosen location. It'd prove the strongest day of the holiday, which shouldn't surprise me because Wo