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 Town who'd just beaten Arsenal in the Champions League final (AGAIN!) Then it all kicked off at Worcester City away in January due to naval taxes. Match abandoned! Godwin did some exciting Bannan-esque bits in central midfield and became club captain, but up at Bamburgh North End on a wet Tuesday night in March, Eadwulf was sent off after a tight VAR call by corrupt ref Siward Eckhart, and was subsequently murdered, which the EFL condemned, kicking them out of the playoffs. #BRAPAFact
Breaking down my remaining ticks into three sections (cos this is how my brain copes) :
Counties with 0-9 ticks remaining (i.e. 'happy so far') = 33 ( 106 pubs)
Counties with 10-19 ticks remaining ('needs a bit more work') = 22 (307 pubs)
Counties with 20+ ticks remaining ('unacceptable Si, what ya playing at?') = 16 (628 pubs)
I'm not too concerned with 'county completions' at the moment. I'd rather get as many counties down to single figures as possible.
I also managed 13 'pre-emptive' ticks, many of which were rather speculative, but you just never know. In fact, the only guarantee to totally eliminating all GBG churn come September is to visit all of the circa 39,000 remaining pubs.
Hooting Owl Distillery & Lounge Bar, York. Highly speculative though it does have the top 3* CAMRA rating for ale
I'm still stuck in late April blog-wise. That's annoying but I might catch up by Christmas if I stay indoors / we have another pandemic.
Right, let's conclude this blog by having a look at the counties where I've made progress with a bit of commentary and a pub of the month where appropriate. Then a final look ahead to June.
Staying in Aberdeen for my birthday week, this was my last Scottish county which isn't impossible, though it was hard enough!
In hindsight, I'd have stayed in Aberdeen for perhaps three nights, Inverness for two and Dundee/Perth for two, because the sheer vastness and scale of northern Scotland found me with far too lengthy daily commutes.
But the scenery was incredible, beer pretty sound on the whole, people decent as they always are up here, and the pubs had good age to them.
I won't give you a pub of the month because I'm going to do a five part 'Scottish countdown' blog soon ranking the 37 pubs I did across the week so here's Andy Murray enjoying shortbread at Elgin station.
Having stayed a week in Dundee just three years ago, I was disappointed to find myself down to 50% this year although to be fair, I spent as much time on the 'Kingdom of Fife' back then .
But once my Aberdonian options got skinnier towards the back end of my holiday, Dundee and Perth became good ways of keeping my numbers up, even if an Aberdeen - Perth day return was over £50, ouch. At least I never wasted any money on Uber's this week, cos they don't have them up here.
Both places were gloomier than Aberdeen and Inverness, but Peterhead was gloomier still!
Again, I won't do a pub of the month but here's the time I hid in the saloon bar at the Star & Garter, Dundee. But how was the beer quality? Find out soon.
'Ohhh wanky, wanky!' My best English county of the month was the always good value for money Lancs.
Two classic Daddy BRAPA Saturday's, one north of Blackpool and a North Lancs one going up into the southern tip of Cumbria.
Ansdell I only missed due to laziness. Mere Brow might pair with Southport (Merseyside) if I can be arsed. Wrightington was in last year's GBG too so should probably have a stab of it, but I'm pretty content if I declare for the year on three remaining. Bigger fish to fry.
Pub of the month - Cask, Bispham
Honourable mention - Old School Brewery, Warton
Dishonourable mention - Beer Shed, Fleetwood
Can Daddy get inside five mins before official opening? Wait for my blog in May to find out
Highlands & Western Isles (6 ticks, 25 left, 26.47% completion)
Easily the most enjoyable day of my holiday was the Bank Holiday Monday. Such a positive buzz about Inverness, my return visit here after a 2013 trip.
Arguably the hardest county to complete in the book, I can see myself needing a week in both Fort William and another one in Inverness, and even that probably won't be enough.
One glimmer of light. My new boss at work, a Scouse Glaswegian. He seems fascinated by BRAPA, is proper outdoorsy, and is always on about his adventures out to the Western Isles. In fact my last 'catch up' with him was 10% my work performance, and 90% a sort of '999 Michael Buerk' style story about nearly drowning near Benbecula. And he likes driving. I couldn't ask, could I?
Again, I won't give you a pub of the month to spoil future blogs but here's some merch in the touristy fun post-emptive MacGregor's.
Essex (5 pubs ticked, 17 left, 84.55% completion)
My recent trip to Harwich et al brought me back to 'acceptability' (under 20 ticks) although I'm still not happy with 17 having fully greened the whole damn thing as recently as 2021.
Thankfully, my ole local contact Si D. is driving me n Daddy B. around later this summer. And I've not totally ruled out a Southend / Leigh related day although maybe the lovely Ian from Leigh Brewery Tap isn't talking to me after we beat Millwall in the playoffs! I might run out of available Saturday's in any case.
Losing my wallet on the Wix-Colchester bus service (it was never recovered) threw me off my stride and I lost confidence in Wivenhoe, but it was a typically high quality pub day in this underrated county otherwise.
Pub of the month - Stingray, Harwich
Honourable mentions - Alma, Harwich / Waggon, Wix
"You're getting barbed by the Stingray" (with apologies to S.Irwin)
Edinburgh & The Lothians (5 ticks, 1 left, 97.78% completion)
If Aberdeen et al was a generally positive experience, the same cannot be said of E and the L. Two caskless pubs, and although my pre-emptive crawl of York two days previously seemed highly speculative at times, every single one was a better ale pub than the five we did yesterday.
But allocation, allocation, allocation. This is why you'll never get 4,500 top ale pubs in the GBG all at once, because CAMRA want all regions of the UK represented. If I wrote the GBG, York would have like 50 entries, though I guess that'd look kinda suspicious!
It is Daddy BRAPA I feel sorry for. I can deal with any amount of short term pain if I'm taking five new ticks out of the day, but he's no ticker, just an innocent bloke along for the ride.
Dishonourable mentions - Tower Inn, Tranent (and also Linton Restaurant with Rooms, East Linton but at least the folk & Guinness were nice in there).
Cumbria (1 tick, 23 left, 73.86% completion)
Darn tricky county is Cumbs, though I'm hoping to bring it down into the realms of 'acceptability' (under 20) before September with another trip, possibly two.
Arnside was more of a Lancs afterthought, but JJ Crossfield's deserves some love because for an unashamed Lancaster brewery cafe bar, it was pretty classy, just ignore Dad's thumb and my shirt that def shrunk in the wash and rubbish new shorts with shallow pockets that cause wallet loss!
So that leads us nicely into June tomorrow, in the section we now know as 'Where My Head is At'.
Over to you Rachel .....
Thanks Rachel, great contribution.
June is my key month between now and September because it contains my main summer fortnight off work, and I have booked myself to an area with plentiful ticks. A back up liver might be needed too. I can't tell you where I'm going. But it isn't Scotland. It could be North or West Wales. It could be Norn Iron. It could be the Channel Islands. It could be somewhere in the South West, even Dorset or Wiltshire. It could be a W/E Sussex, Hants & Surrey combo. It could even be Norfolk or Suffolk.
Star Inn, St Just. Classic Cornish BRAPA summer holidaying, July 2017 (tick #1174)
A few landmarks I'd like to pass:
3465 - just two pubs from now I'll hit 77% of the GBG for the first time,.
3501 - psychologically exciting this one, as it'll mean I have 999 pubs left in the GBG, under 1,000.
3510 - 78% of the GBG. I'm expecting / hoping for a big month so I'll be disappointed if I don't pass this number.
Let's aim for 60 bare minimum. Go on, I've said it now. Not deleting it.
Comments