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

Tuesday 7th April 2026 Armed with a panda, emergency beermat and a floppy homemade ham and marmalade sandwich which smells of tom cats, it was back up north out of Bicester for my penultimate day of this BRAPA break. The long Easter weekend was over and I was relieved, public transport normality could resume, if normality is ever a thing with public transport. Quieter trains and ashen 'back to work' faces abound as I set out for Kenilworth, from where I'm the only passenger a

Monday 6th April 2026 Pub ticking doesn't come much more head-scratching than on a Bank Holiday Monday. Will the pubs employ Sunday or Monday hours? Are any trains and buses actually running, and if so, which timetables will they use? And is there going to be any social media transparency so that I know what is going on? The answer to all three questions in invariably 'no one knows'. Thankfully, direct trains run from my Bicester starting point to Birmingham Moor Street, a

Sunday 5th April 2026 Like, totally .... A lot of water has flowed under the bridge (probably a Scottish one) since I brought my remaining Oxfordshire tally down to just two pubs on Easter Sunday, which this year coincided with BRAPA's 12th birthday. What a mature young man he's become (just don't take him to Newark Northgate). Flagging from a heavy Saturday, I drank a weird murky green 'Lion's Mane' concoction from M&S as I make my way from Bicester Village to Oxford, which

59* (not out) new Good Beer Guide pub ticks for the month of April, meaning I only need one more tomorrow (30th) for it to become my best month of 2026 so far. This takes me onto 3407 out of approx 4500 Good Beer Guide pubs, so I'm 75.7% complete. These are heady times at BRAPA Towers, and no time to rest on those laurels as my birthday BRAPA holiday is imminent. The celebrations have started early in York's excellent Black Horse. Get it in the Guide! Drunk in Derby, earl

Saturday 4th April 2026 Easter Saturday, or National Bass Day to those who celebrate (anyone else see the decisive question on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?' the other night) began in sunny breezy Charlbury, waiting for a bus north to Chadlington as Storm Dave rattles the perspex. GBG super-regular, the surprisingly wet-led Rose & Crown sadly isn't open yet or I'd be whipping in a swift half. I'd slept like a log on my second night in Bicester, which won't surprise those o

Ready for a 'long read' (ugh!)? Even by my wordy standards? Best pour yourself a stiff drink. This is both a painful and satisfying day to recall. Friday 3rd April 2026 "I'm not in a funny mood, I'm in a funny way!" Daddy BRAPA, South Oxon country road circa 12 noon A' red dot' tick = a Good Beer Guide pub which has been in the previous five editions (or more). The working theory is that these will be the better pubs to tick off, both in terms of quality and longevity. D

Thursday 2nd April 2026 Even the cash machine at York station was getting into the Easter spirit as I tootle down to sunny Oxon for a full week away, with the intention of mopping up (most of) my remaining 19 ticks, with a view to getting stuck into neighbouring counties when I run dry. I would've taken mini Jesus as a bonus pub mascot but Ivor Panda is famously atheist. It has taken me FAR too long in my pub-ticking life to realise you can do York-Oxford/Banbury directly by

Saturday 26th March 2026 International football weekend could mean only one thing ..... Daddy BRAPA car day (woop, woop). Let's hope Hull City fluke promotion so my calendar is full of similar blank Saturdays caused by the Premier League's 38 game season and even more ridiculous kick off times than we currently suffer. Dad might not be so enthusiastic about this prospect when I ask him to turn down a dirt track on the North Yorkshire Moors in the pitch black so I can have a p

Thursday 26th March 2026 2017 was the last time I ticked a pub in Herefordshire. Poor form! I was on holiday with the parents in a remote cottage near Eastnor which had loud owls and an obelisk. I went to Ledbury one evening to 'help' Daddy BRAPA to post a letter, with the view to tick a couple of pubs before Mummy B. wanted us back for a ploughman's tea and vintage Bergerac. "Daaaaad? As Ledbury has a train station, please could we do a couple of villages instead?" I wh

Saturday 21st March 2026 Misty 7am pint at York's premier Wetherspoons? Tempting as it was, I kept my eyes on the prize and headed down to North Kent via London for a seven tick extravaganza to bring me down to 15 pubs required in the third 'pubbiest' GBG county (behind Greater Manchester and North Yorkshire). I've said it before and I'll say it again, if Kent is the garden of England, Sittingbourne is the backyard at 25 Cromwell Street. At least it wasn't the nearby 'Fount

Saturday 14th March 2026 West Brom away. I had no intention of going to the game so a Warwickshire NFFD (non-football football day) was on the cards. Nothing against West Brom, probably my favourite West Midlands set of fans, but it is an impossible area for pub ticking when you're a (fairly) experienced WM ticker. Weird you might think, with its proximity to both Brum and the Black Country, but it somehow never works. Plus they always gub us no matter our respective leagu

Greetings from an uncommonly clean and fresh smelling York Tap . The stout is drinking well, I'm wired for sound like Cliff and we are officially past the halfway point in the 2025/26 Good Beer Guide ticking year. 59 ticks (+ 10 pre-emptives) make March my most productive month since November. I've reached 3348 ticks, that is roughly 74.4% of the current GBG. Two 'exciting' landmarks are approaching: 12 more pubs will mean I'm finally in credit, having been forced to decl

Here we are, the final countdown on my recent Shropshire (& N Wales) epic. And if you were wondering about my Air B&B welcoming basket above, I ate the flapjack on day four, gave the Bakewell one to Daddy BRAPA, and never touched the hot chocs, Madri or Aldi G&T mixer. The rug and property as a whole both scored an 8.5/10, and yes I would return. Chilly bathroom too close to front door my only gripe but I didn't mention it on my review cos it sounded petty in grand scheme o

We're hitting the fun stuff now. Seven pubs for your perusal. All worth a visit if you're in the area. Stonehouse Brewery & Distillery, Weston Fully aware that I'd missed the last bus back to Shrewsbury which was some lame time like 6pm (Salop hates bus services, pass it on), I left Oswestry centre on foot and I'm amazed how rural it becomes so quickly. Pot-holed puddled country lanes, the smell of manure in the air, a sheep bleats and a cow maybe mooed behind a hedge, so