New Parents- Get Thee to the Pub!

So I'm a mum now. It inevitably changes your life- new bits wobble, going to bed at 11pm feels like a late night and the living room floor looks like a Fisher Price catalogue. But it doesn't need to stop you going out and drinking beer. Not if you own a breast pump and a cosy pram.
We still go to the pub. A lot. I am not overly tolerant with friends who moan about not being able to go out since baby has arrived. It just needs a relaxed attitude and some forward planning.
And it is oh so worth it. Beer tastes all the sweeter when you have spent chunks of your mornings expressing your mum juice just so you can drink it guilt free. A single half pint in the pub after a day making googly noises into nappies feels like the ultimate reward; a bit of adult based fun, a glimpse into the child-free days of yore.
We have a little Friday night habit (and often Saturday night and Sunday afternoons too) of popping to our local in the early evening, the glorious place recently rescued from the brink of supermarketerisation, that is The Catford Bridge Tavern. Our little lady is welcomed lovingly by the staff, they love seeing her even more than us, despite the fact that we are are the ones spending the money.
My pregnancy and the birth of little lady coincided neatly with the huge growth in London breweries. An exploration into the link between baby boom and brewery boom is a task for another day. To me, this just meant I was severely out of the loop- reading on twitter about cool new breweries and funky beer events when I couldn't take part just felt like the ultimate carrot dangling . So the first time I read some beer blogs and logged onto twitter after the birth felt like I'd landed in an alternative universe. Cronx, Partizan, Shamblehouse... who were these strange sounding breweries? And even stranger- a brewery in Penge? Blimey.
The Catford Bridge Tavern, an Antic pub, has gone some way to guiding me about this new world, with beers from Cronx, Late Knights, and Clarence and Fredericks, as well as new brews by more familiar breweries and those from further afield- Summer Wine, Marble, Kernel, Dark Star and Hardknott. Little lady gets cuddles from  Francesca, the friendliest barmaid in South London, while we get to chill out and feel like more than just mummy and daddy for an hour, whilst drinking some damn tasty beer.
New parents- get thee to the pub!

Its good up North!

I had another moment of North envy this week. I can remember two occasions when I have suffered from this affliction before.

First, was North London envy, when for the only time ever, I wished I lived north of the river. Nothing to do with living near a tube station or any of the rest of that North/South of the river divide nonsense.No, it was because The Southampton Arms is in North London and I wanted to be near it so that I could go there everyday and bask in its loveliness at every opportunity. Life would just be so much better if spare moments were spent there, rather than Lewisham Wetherspoons.

Then, this Northern desire stretched a bit further, up into the North of the country, on a trip to Sheffield. Here was a city which knew what is was doing in pubs and brewing- even the student bars had a huge range of ale, and the city is bursting with pub heritage gems and microbreweries. I blogged about my awe and wonder at the time- here it is if you fancy it.

I wasn’t expecting to have one of these Northern urges this week. After five hours on a delayed, stinking, sweaty coach from Victoria, we pulled into Manchester Coach Station and I was fed up, not excited. I had discovered through Twitter, on the way, that The SIBA Great Northern Beer Festival was in town during the trip but we were visiting a friend who isn’t currently drinking much, who had also put thought into planning activities for our trip. I had the distinct feeling I wouldn’t be going to that festival.

And then, about seven minutes later, I felt like a selfish, ungrateful cow for even letting these thoughts enter my mind. Not only did he think we could fit the SIBA fest in, we were also scheduled a visit to the Didsbury Beer Festival, a Manchester city centre pub crawl, a drive around hard to reach village pubs in the Peak District, and to start it all off, a crawl from the City Centre to Didsbury, where he lives, stopping at six pubs between the two. I guess this friend does know us well- after 50 hours, when boarding the coach back down South, we had visited 25 different pubs, two beer festivals and had 69 different beers.

And here is where the envy sets in. I remembered the feeling from Sheffield- walking into a pub that from the outside looks like a dull old boozer which my have a couple of common ales on to please the old locals, only to find three, five, eight or more pumps with beers from local breweries seldom found in London, seasonal specials and rare delights.

The city centre to Didsbury crawl took us into the Friendship Inn, full of students watching football, and drinking Hydes’ Hubble Bubble Halloween special. In the Victoria, in Withington, we had Queen’s Peach Treat and Hornbeam’s Top Hop Bitter. The old blokes at the bar were drinking Guinness, even though Hydes’ Owd Oak was on.

The next morning, our not-drinking-much driving friend had devised a mother of a peaks drive, which took in swooping lanes, sudden fog, thousands of sheep and some absolutely amazing pubs.

My favourites were both called The Old (or Ye Olde) Cheshire Cheese. One was in Hope, with ales from Bradfield Brewery, 5 Rivers in Sheffield and Peak Ales. The other was in Castleton, a pretty, touristy village, absolutely brimming with pubs. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese had more from Bradfield and Peak Ales, as well Wincle and Thornbridge beers. Another village pub, The Nags Head, had a ‘Beer Tapas’ scheme, allowing you to try third of their ales, served in a nifty wooden glass holder. There are no Castleton pubs in the Good Beer Guide, proof that you can’t just live by the book.

Friday took us into Manchester City Centre, and there really are pubs everywhere you look. The Mancunians are a spoilt bunch, they really are- from cool beer dedicated bars like The Knott, Cask, The Port Street Beer House to more traditional boozers like The Ape and Apple and The Rising Sun, not to mention a beer haven in the Arndale Market, the Micro Bar (three dark ales on, in an indoor market!)

We made it to both the Didsbury and Great Northern Beer Festivals, by the way. There were fun, they had spectacular ranges of lovely Northern beer and they could easily warrant a blog post of their own. However it was all those pubs that really gave me the North envy this time; who needs beer festivals when you have this many great pubs on your doorstep?