BRAPA is .... VEXED BY THE ANNEXE : COMPLETING BRISTOL (PART 7/8)

Thursday 4th September 2025

An anti-clockwise tour of Bristol was the plan for my penultimate day down here. Six pubs to go, and if you can work out what 1-6 are, or CS or SS or 'NB Pre-emp' without looking too far into the blog, congratulations, you are a Bristol pub king/queen.

Yet again, I failed to reach McDonald's in time for a breakfast muffin. They must've changed the menu at literally the exact same time I arrived. Double cheeseburger and fries for breakfast it was. Seemed wrong. But also very right. Susie K. didn't look impressed.

A bus north to a suburb called Bishopston was my first port of call, or so I thought ......

SHUT PUB ALERT! Nothing doing front or back. However, it is called the Annexe for a reason. Linked to a large sports bar next door, actually open, called The Sportsman. A barmaid sees my look of confusion from afar, so I wander in to ask.

What followed was a hugely frustrating example of poorly maintained opening hours as she breezily tells me Annexe opens at 5pm.

BRAP: "Oh, it's just that everything online says 12"

HER : "We know that Google is wrong .... but you say 'everything' ....what else is wrong?

BRAP : "Your Facebook says 12 too" (I point my phone screen in her direction showing the hours listed)

HER : "Looks like you are looking at Google there"

BRAP : "Err nope, definitely Facebook" (I go to their front page so she can see I'm not lying)

HER : "Ohhhh, I think that must be an old page from when the previous owners had the place .....

BRAP : "But there's recent posts from July ..... look, don't worry about it, I'll be back after 5pm".

(Problem is, I've already decided I hate the place and hadn't got inside yet). Maybe the pubs / beer in the interim would help me soften towards it? As I write this blog, I am pleased to report that Google, and CAMRA, has been updated in the past 3 weeks, hurrah. FB still wrong, mind.

So bus back into Bristol centre it was, followed by an uphill climb through a terrifying park where alcoholics and gacked up smackheads are bent double over park benches. I clamber up some crumbling steps, a bloke behind me drinking a can of Special Brew on his phone arguing with his girlfriend who wonders why it is taking him so long to get home, making him angry. I actually start running.

Whilst my neck which I don't like to talk about is 10% improved, but my left foot is 20% worse. I come out into a surprisingly cutesy suburb (8.5 on the BTI - Bristol Twee Index) called Kingsdown.

Highbury Vaults, Kingsdown, Bristol (3340 / 5826) cheers me no end after this awful start. Soothing, dark panels, snuggy alcoves. Barman eyes my hobbling, sweaty, stressed out form curiously from behind his superior coiffured Bristol moustache, he reminds me of a musketeer. Shame there's a rare bus in the direction of my second pub in a very swift 23 minutes, so I had to rush this experience, on a day where I'd generally be 'hanging around'. Thankfully, a grandfather clock is ticking solidly to keep my mind on the time. I'm not convinced this Adnams Mosaic is all it should be, my 'after-burp' is slightly vinegar. In the distance, a shiny bald head is convincing a non-judgemental Dutch chap that streaming online music isn't the crime against humanity that it was 10-15 years ago. When both leave, and I'm all alone, I really begin to notice just how 'loud' the silence is. That's when you know you're in a pub of incredible age and atmosphere. Very Seahouses Olde Ship in this respect.

At the bus stop, I nod at an elderly lady in a bright yellow jacket. I have a similar one from Zara, and suspect we could become fast friends, but being Kingsdown, she senses my northern oikishness from a mile off and turns the other cheek.

The bus takes me towards central Bristol, where I hobble down some steps to find pub two, my only other pre 4pm opener. Was gonna be a looonngggg afternoon!

An airy little cafe bar, Lime Kiln, Bristol (3341 / 5827) reminds me very much of the Golden Star in Norwich. Initial promise as I'm greeted by two blokes, and more excitingly, a cat called Simone, sitting on the bar. Gravelly meow. A Bristol pub journeyman of a cat, cut her teeth at the Bag o' Nails academy like so many ..... the Crewe Alexandra of Bristol pubs ... hopefully there isn't a cat called Barry Bennell "oi, he licked my bumhole but Dari-meow Gradi claims he didn't see". Simone then moved onto another pub, I've forgotten which one, before signing here on a 15 year leasehold deal. I say that as a cat lover, I find it important to let them come to you rather than go in all hot n heavy, which leads me to rant about those idiots in the Bag o' Nails way back on my 2nd day who put lego blocks on poor Sally and I was like 'leave the poor creature alone'. "Yeah, but it is funny though!" protests the younger guy quite sulkily. Sadly, the older chatty guy leaves. I try and nurse my Sex Pistols themed ale from Northumberland best I can. Avg. quality. And thank the lord for the plinky plonky background music, because it'd be awkward just me and lego block cat lover sat in silence for 45 mins! Was quite happy to leave.

But how to fill in time until 4pm? I really should've heeded the comments of all those helpful TwXtter and BlueSky folk telling me that the Seven Stars was a pre/post emptive worthy of a visit.

Still, not like it is going to get straight back in the GBG in 2026 is it? Well, about that ......

(And this folks, is why I never deserve too much sympathy for the #CruelChurn I encounter)

Instead, a choose a pub solely on name alone. The Christmas Steps. How cool is that? Down some steps, probably also called Christmas Steps. Disappointingly black un-festive frontage - I'd been expecting something more Churchill Arms, London (Notting Hill Gate?)

A largely tourist dining hovel, downstairs bar is shut but you can take your (vinegary) real ale down there. Too many handpumps, not enough cask drinkers. Bristol CAMRA def right to omit this one. Highlight was the 'bantz' with brunette barmaid. Very jolly, very sparky, wish I had this level of clickage with every staff member I encounter. And I BET she doesn't think terrorising pub cats is appropriate. She was however, wearing a t-shirt bearing the slogan 'Mind Control Made Easy' so I may well have been duped.

4pm was still a way off, and Christmas Steps, despite an 8/10 rug, is not the pub you'd want to linger long, unless you were eating their overpriced grub and drinking lemonade. I didn't want to drink too much, so went off to Starbucks to fill some time. Aren't pub mascots getting more expensive these days? And patriotic!

Colin was well under £20 and that included Chinese shipping from Wuhan in April 2020. The highlight here was making a tit of myself trying to get into the toilet without a code, which you have to pick up from the counter in a dick move made popular by Doric Arch and Mad Bishop & Bear. Parcel Yard would never. Long live ESB and easy wees.

4pm finally, I thought it'd never come. Onto pub three .....

Good things come to those who wait, even when they are hammering metal music out a zillion decibels. A cover of 'Blue Monday' by a band called Orgy is playing when I enter. I like it. New Order? You are finished! Proper biker pub is the Gryphon, Bristol (3342 / 5828). In keeping with the general ambience, most beers are black and strong. I tell the guv'nor I approve as I get on the Stancil Black because South Yorkshire felt right in this moment. He passes me a leaflet and tells me there's plenty more upstairs because they have a beer festival on. Danger team! Colin takes a few sidesteps to the right, and goes off to explore but I'm staying downstairs, where a gentle stream of balding elderly ale nerds wander in, grimace against the music volume, then get to work on their halves of every beer available. I'd have definitely stayed if circs were different, but sadly in BRAPA, the circs are so often 'come on ya dickhead, you've got work to do and a bus to catch, no slacking'.

'Don't Dead, Open Inside'

Three pubs to go. All outer Bristol's. All late openers. The time was nigh to catch a bus north east across the city. I trot back down some steps adjacent to the Christmas Steps called Zed Alley. I even see our marvellous mind control barmaid from earlier disposing of what suspiciously looks like a human head wrapped in polythene into an outside bin. That could've been me.

St Werburghs ranks highest on the BTI (Bristol Twee Index) yet. Coming in at a whopping 9.75. I find the pub tucked into the backstreets, definitely not camouflaged ......

With spooky dolls in the window, a tiger print coffin probably just right for Ken Houghton, and much more which I've subconsciously blanked out, the quirk continues inside the Duke of York, St Werburghs, Bristol (3343 / 5829). Do I like it here? I'm more torn than Natalie Imbruglia after a difficult birth. Because strip the whole damn thing back, and at its heart, you've got this beautiful backstreet boozer selling great ale, community vibe. In that sense, Golden Ball in York - vaguely irritating if you submerge yourself in the subculture. A 'Free Palestine' Dad brings his blonde Midwitch Cuckoo kids in straight from school, and asks if they can play in the skittle alley. It is 'booked', but okay then, just until the skittle gang arrived. Martin, yesterday's Lyons Den TwXtter hero out at Kingswood, encourages me to explore upstairs where I find even more rooms, pool table and a glowing Amy Winehouse. Can't deny it is an impressive place, just 'a lot'.

An Uber cheat is required next as I couldn't find a direct bus from here to Horfield, despite them both being different flavours of north Bristol.

And what a fascinating chap Mohamed is. Studying nature vs. nurture in serial killers at uni. Jeffrey Dahmer had a nice Mum, he says. (Help, please let me out! I promise I'll give you a five star review!!)

Ominous raindrops are falling as I enter the pub, you know those blobby slow movers. After 24 hours without rain, a record for this holiday, normality had resumed .....

Everything a micropub should be, I was feelin' the love the moment I walked into Drapers Arms, Horfield, Bristol (3344 / 5830), the first (and best?) of all Bristol's micros. Helped enormously by ordering a 6% Baltic porter from Good Chemistry in league with the Abbeydale devil. Takes me a year to drink, but only because I'm treating it with the respect I'd normally give to a red wine on a Wine, Western, Wotsits night (though pairing red wine with Wotsits might irk the purists I admit). There must be something about Drapers which turns BRAPA on, because the Peterborough pub of the same name is one of my favourite Wetherspoons, and where I had my earliest BRAPA pint 7:40am. Mine host Tom, in a shirt which I would wear, is a friendly guy, The tanned dude low down to my left remarks 'you came in at just the right time' and I look out to see what can only be described as a Malaysian Monsoon hammering the awning and having all and sunder running for cover. Me and tanned-low-down-dude video it on our phones and say 'wooooo'. An angular middle aged couple come to sit with me, all apologies for dripping on Colin, rain actually is dripping off the poor lady's nose. Cute duo, but they neck their halves super quick and are straight off. I drank about a thimble of my porter in that time. One of the rowdy corner group is next to come over, he's called Matt. "I recognised you from your cabbage!" he says. Colin's fuming, but accepts a later online apology. Proof perhaps that Colin's retirement is premature. But lovely Matt chat, top bonhomie. By now I was wishing that this was my final Bristol pub as it would've really been going out on a high. Presuming this gaff didn't exist when we used to play Bristol Rovers circa 2003. All I missed was an exciting billboard which quotes pub reviews. 'Nice food, if you like pickled eggs and crisps' for example, great stuff!

The rain had stopped, I'd miraculously remained a dry babe and I deserve that luck after the week I'd had. And our final pub (where today was supposed to start) is a shortish walk. And my foot and neck were numb anyway after that 6% stout, hooray!

Take two ..... almost identical, but less sun .....

But more notably, open! I give it a sarcastic cheer like you do when a Sheffield Utd player trips over the ball. I want to dislike the Annexe, Bishopston, Bristol (3345 / 5831) despite my 'open minded' claims. Human nature I guess .... and to quote Sister BRAPA (not a nun) a few weeks back, 'forgiveness is an overrated Christian construct' which is too deep for me. But annoyingly, I approve of the low-key clubby interior. A tardis too. Ironwork linking stuff together, wheels, benches, an unfussy lounge lizardy low-lit atmosphere full of old grumps. The bar is a pain because all the beers are on the back wall and you've got to squint to see what is on .... and the barmaid (not the same one as this morning) is far from helpful, a harsher pub reviewer than me may say 'fucking useless' acting like I should have 20/20 vision or an innate knowledge of their ales. Arbor Mosaic I think. 6.8% says Untappd which seems like bollox as it didn't taste more than 4.5%. Should've packed my binoculars. Anyway, main thing is, Bristol is done. Hurrah!

So to the burning question .... how many of today's six made the 2026 Good Beer Guide cut?

Answer was five. Annexe binned. Ha! Even though any churn is bad for me, sometimes it feels like just desserts.

Join me Thursday or Friday for our final part, which now feels like an after-party. In Bath. 'Bath-ter Party?' Does that work? I'll sleep on it.

Keep it pub, Si