Spoons beer festival

The Tollgate on Turnpike Lane has been quite a revelation over the past while. The beer quality has been consistently good and the clientele has improved too. Managed to get 20 or so festival beers here in the past few weeks, all were in very good condition with the exception of the"Flying Dutchman" which must have been a mislabelled cask, nothing intrinsically wrong with it but it wasn't a wit bier by any stretch of the imagination. I hope that the new management keep up the good work that Stacey has down in the past few months.

Scene on the River Lea

The River Lea is one of my favourite parts of London. Stretching up from Leamouth at the Thames, up through Bow, passing the rapidly rising Olympic Park,Walthamstow Marshes, Tottenham, Enfield and on to Hertford where our cycle trip normally finishes.
The sad thing about this journey is the way that the pubs have been disappearing over the years. Since we started taking this route we've seen the following pubs disappear:
The Kings Head, The Ship Aground, The Blue Anchor, The Waterside, The Old English Gentleman, The Dolphin, Rifles and probably many more that may not have been visible from the tow-path. All that are left on the river between the Thames and Ware are The Princess of Wales, The Anchor and Hope and The Greyhound.

The Princess of Wales, formerly The Prince of Wales, renamed after Di died, was a regular entrant in the GBG, but sadly having been taken over several years ago, is no longer worth visiting. The beer quality dropped dramatically and we ended up drinking bottled Erdinger. The fact that it is a Youngs pub does it no favours either, as their beers, since they moved to Bedford have not been that good.
The Anchor and Hope was a decent Fullers house, run by an in-law of the Fuller family. Len was ex-army and ran the pub like a military operation. Sadly he died about five or six years ago and all the scrotes that were barred from the Council Estate behind started coming back in, lots of weed being smoked outside and the beer quality was very variable. Over the past year it seems to have improved, so come spring we'll give it another go.
We've never stopped at The Greyhound in Enfield, a McMullen's house as those drinking outside didn't seem to be the most welcoming crew.
On to Hertford and the Woolpack, another Mc Mullen's pub, but a very different class of establishment. By a tributary of the Lea, in the center of town with a pleasant beer garden,well kept Mc's beers and a changing monthly guest. I know that a lot of people aren't fond of McMullen's beers but I think that a well kept pint of AK is a thing of beauty..
Also well worth visiting in town is the Old Cross Tavern, which now brews on-site,two beers of their's I've tried were OXTale and Laugh'n'Titter both of which were excellent.
So there you go, the River Lea and its dwindling number of pubs....

                                                       Pints in Dublin Airport, and quite fine they were...
                                    Bicycles at Dover Priory BR Station, waiting for the train to London Bridge
                        Cherry beer in St. Omer at la Brasserie Audomaroise

Beer and bikes......

Thursday involved bikes and beers in The Oakdale

Milton Icarus was on top form

These photos have nothing to do with The Oakdale....

It just has a bikes and beer thing

The brewery on Fanø in Denmark, home of nice beer, unfiltered and unpasteurised, under top pressure, tasty...

Highlights of Tour 2008

                                                  Bremen beer.... tasty...
                                   Eilis in the North Sea on her birthday......
                                    The birthday tandem.... shaking just about stopped....
                                    Beware of cyclists....................
                                   Bikes and pirates and sunshine and beer to come.....
                                    Loaded up at Dover....
                                     Texel beer at the proeflokaal.....
                                                Texel beer at Pier 31, before the boat to Vlieland    
                                               Bikes, bikes, bikes. Oh and sunshine too............
                                    Waiting to board the big yellow bus.....

First post

Well, here goes nothing! The Princess of Wales on Lea Bridge Road was in the Good Beer Guide until 2007 and is now deservedly removed from it. It was our stop-off on the way home for a pint of Special or two; our last few visits had us drinking Erdinger Hefeweisse, the Special not being special, at all............

Jack the terrier is back to being his normal self (we passed him on the towpath on Thursday, happy as a small dog can be).