HAPPY NEW YEAR live from BRAPA Towers in York ........
It is time to take a month by month look back at the pubs and counties which made 2023 a vintage BRAPA year.
We'll hand out a few awards to the best (and worst) performers, have a few songs from the BRAPA playlist, so pop the beige snacks in the oven, open your furriest craft can, put on your dirtiest drinking vest, grab your nearest and dearest vegetable mascot, and enjoy. We even have a 'try also' section as a homage to those confusing early 2000's GBGs.
The Stats
563 pubs were ticked in 2023, slightly down on last year's 594 but I'm satisfied. I end the year on 2581. 57.2% of the way towards completion. The dream for a 2043 finish somewhere in the Gloucestershire / West Wales countryside is still on.
JANUARY
January dawned like all good January's do on New Year's Day but it was the following day when I banged out my first tick. Leigh's Wetherspoons, Thomas Burke. Glamorous or what? Very nice building and a lovely pint of Brightside. This was my 2,268th pub tick, so even allowing for the September Churn ™ it gives you some idea of my progress.
36 ticks in Jan was a modest start, but it is a notoriously difficult month to go and get a result.
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - Nottinghamshire
PUB OF THE MONTH - Horse & Plough, Bingham
TRY ALSO - Blind Monkey, North Sheffield / Lion, New Basford / Crooked Billet, Worsthorne.
BEST AVOIDED - Tan Hill Inn, Tan Hill
SONG OF THE MONTH - Sincere Engineer - Fireplace
FEBRUARY
The first BRAPA holiday of the year took me to the sunny pub capital of Norwich. Locals were grumpy husks of human beings, and the beer quality suffered at times (31 seems too many GBG entries for one town/city) but on the whole, it was a cracking week and I got out to some reet dead n alive holes.
Kent was another county I was getting a taste for, starting my tour of the coastline, and who was this coming over the horizon, was it Leicestershire for the first time ever? It was. Greetings Leics!
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - Norfolk
PUB OF THE MONTH - Fat Cat, Norwich
TRY ALSO - Artillery Arms, Ramsgate / Red Lion Hotel, Cromer / New Entertainer, Gorleston / Grove Tavern, Tunbridge Wells.
BEST AVOIDED - Lollard's Pit, Norwich / Split Chimp, Whitley Bay (no solid pooing allowed!)
SONG OF THE MONTH - Titus Andronicus - Give Me Grief
MARCH
Modest March, historically the month where I achieve fewest ticks struck again with a joint bottom 30. However, as the spring lambs and rabbits started frolicking in the BRAPA meadow, I saw an upturn in pub and beer quality (which was nice).
I'd taken Notts as far as I could and resigned on 91% completion, but the Kent push was on, and Lincolnshire ominously loomed into focus like yer pervy Uncle Gaz. A county which would haunt and delight for the rest of the year.
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - Kent
PUB OF THE MONTH - (Green) Berry, Walmer
TRY ALSO - Ship, Deal / Final Whistle & Old Coach House, Southwell / Lord Hop, Nuneaton / Terminus, Conisbrough / Handsome Sam, Whitstable / Crown, Belton.
BEST AVOIDED - Nope, nothing was shite. Parkerville Herne Bay and the King's Arms Haxey were weakest, but I'd still say pop in on the basis you might like them more than I did.
SONG OF THE MONTH - Spanish Love Songs - Kick
APRIL
A record breaking 75 (SEVENTY FIVE) pub month had me calling for a liver transplant by the time May came around. Will I ever beat it? It felt unprecedented, but then again, it was unprecedented, and will remain unprecedented until I beat it. The very definition of unprecedented.
Leicestershire, Lancs, Tyne & Wear and our old mate Kent all did decent bits, but it was a holiday in Salisbury in the final week which really captured my imagination. Some right hellhole towns and villages were experienced, but the beer was generally decent and the people a mixed bag, either hateful but more commonly joyful like these lovely lads below.
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - Wiltshire
PUB OF THE MONTH - Chapel at Whitehouse Street, Middlesbrough
TRY ALSO - Three Crowns, Chippenham / Three Brewers, Corsham / Horseshoe, Ebbesbourne Wake / Duke of York, Salisbury / Black Swan, Shepshed / Woodlands, Silverdale (despite being vaguely sinister!) / British Lion, Devizes.
WORST PUB EXPERIENCE OF THE YEAR - Swan, Enford. Where the landlady grassed me up for taking photo of handpumps, landlord stomped over, told me it was ILLEGAL, and was generally quite terse and rude, only to disappear, never to be seen again. Even weirder, landlady then had little joke with me about a breezy door, and the younger barmaid was one of the loveliest people I encountered all week. Overcompensating? Great pint too. But a bizarre place, and Pewsey was also odd. Aliens? Stonehenge? Porton Down? Culture of paranoia?
SONG OF THE MONTH - Lovely Eggs - Don't Look At Me (I Don't Like It)
MAY
There is something strangely life affirming about walking through the backstreets of Gravesend in the rain on your birthday to a Dickensian classic that looks like this ......
The new King got coronated, Kent continued to do well by me apart from shit beer whenever you got within sniffing distance of Gillingham, and 43 new pubs was a decent return for a month on the back of that bruising April.
Leicestershire made subtle progress, and East Sussex showed some quality with a trip to Hastings, which must be up there as one of my top 5 pub towns of the year.
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - Kent
PUB OF THE MONTH - Halfway House, Brenchley
TRY ALSO - New Plough Inn / Hinckley, Raglan Arms, Staplehurst / Jenny Lind, Hastings / Dolphin, Hastings / First In Last Out, Hastings / Louis Armstrong, Dover
BEST AVOIDED - Horseshoe & Castle, Cooling
SONG OF THE MONTH - Bombshell Rocks - Where We Gather
JUNE
Summer was here, and a sun-fuelled energised BRAPA sprang into life for 48 more ticks.
Lincs, Norfolk and Suffolk were the yokel yummies who most inspired me. The quality of beer, people and pubs was the best it had been since March. Tip top.
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - Suffolk
PUB OF THE MONTH - Black Horse, Thetford
TRY ALSO - Star, Wenhaston / Leather Bottle, Pleshey / Royal Oak, Snitterby / Racehorse Inn, Westhall / Green Dragon, Bungay / Red Herring, Great Yarmouth.
BEST AVOIDED - Blue Pig, Grantham
SONG OF THE MONTH - The Men They Couldn't Hang - Industrial Town
July
45 more ticks kept the momentum going through July, but if my Kent challenge was winding down at 87% completion, East Sussex was coming to prominence. But it was Kent that produced the most magical pub of the year .....
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - East Sussex
PUB OF THE MONTH - Red Lion, Snargate
TRY ALSO - Ypres Castle Inn, Rye / Rutland Arms, Grimsby / Bull's Head, Boreham Street / Plough Wollaston / Jolly Fisherman, Hastings
BEST AVOID - New Inn, Westfield
SONG OF THE MONTH - Street Dogs - The Comeback Zone
AUGUST
I'm always happy to take the 'hit' in the month of August, after all, with all those evil holiday twilds, twummies and twaddies stinkin' out every public space going, I'm quite happy to work through it and wait til September to take my next holiday.
37 ticks wasn't a bad outcome. Lincs really was making a push for glory now, we had a Kingdom of Fife debut which would offer a stark warning about Scottish beer quality before I hit Tayside the following month.
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - Lincolnshire
PUB OF THE MONTH - Grapes, Slingsby
TRY ALSO - Admiral Benbow, Chapel St Leonards, Black Bull, Donington
BEST AVOIDED - Auld Hoose, Kinghorn
SONG OF THE MONTH - Craig Finn - Birds Trapped in an Airport
September
A brand new GBG plopped on my doormat to signify the dawning of a new BRAPA era - the highlight of a wonderful September, which yielded a fab 61 ticks (my joint 4th best ever tally).
My holiday in Dundee wasn't far behind, a really positive week even if the beer in more rural outposts sometimes flattered to deceive .......
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - Tayside
PUB OF THE MONTH - Blue Boar, Leicester
TRY ALSO - Albert Tavern, Freuchie / Phoenix & Speedwell Tavern, Dundee / Three Horseshoes, Barholm / Dave's Pie & Ales, Kirkstall
BEST AVOIDED - Whey Pat Tavern, St Andrews
SONG OF THE MONTH - Jeff Rosenstock - HEAD
October
With that new GBG now firmly in my grasp (I received it a week later than some other longer in the tooth (but still young if you squint) tickers, boooo!), my ticking options were unlimited with all four Yorkshire quadrants back in focus, leading to a fantastic 52 pub month, not bad considering I only had half a week off work.
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - West Midlands
PUB OF THE MONTH - Pretty Bricks, Walsall
TRY ALSO - King & Miller, Deepcar / Shirkers Rest, New Cross / Turner's Old Star, Wapping / Halfway House, Birkenshaw (+ just about everything in and around Walsall)
BEST AVOIDED - George Inn, Southwark
SONG OF THE MONTH - John Zacherley - Dinner With Drac
November
Keeping up the strong recent form, 49 pubs was another great return helped in the main by a debut holiday to the oft neglected hidden gem of a county if you ignore Corby ..... Northamptonshire. With my Yorkshire mop up going great guns, County Durham got a bit of much needed attention, and county of the year Lincolnshire continued to amaze, baffle and bore in equal measures.
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - Northamptonshire
PUB OF THE MONTH - Alexandra Arms, Kettering
TRY ALSO - New Inn, Abthorpe / Red Lion, North Bitchburn / Albion, Northampton / Rushden Historical Transport ThingiemiJig, Rushden / Bird in Hand, Wordsley
BEST AVOIDED - Stanley Jefferson, Bishop Auckland
SONG OF THE MONTH - Dance Hall Crashers - Shelley
December
I'm not a big fan of December from a pub ticking perspective. Busy, fractious, fractured, and to get out of it alive with a joint record yearly low of 30 ticks going into the New Year felt like an achievement.
COUNTY OF THE MONTH - North Yorkshire
PUB OF THE MONTH - Rockliffe Arms, Whitley Bay
TRY ALSO - Bay Horse, Masham / Crown Hotel, Middlesmoor / Queen's Arms, Litton / Red Lion Inn, Stickford.
BEST AVOIDED - Pickled Parson, Sedgefield
SONG OF THE MONTH - The Pogues - Rain Street
