As the centenary of the ill-fated Titanic was justly commemorated around the country, my home town had more reason than most to reflect on the tragedy. And being a northern mill town, real ale naturally formed part of the process.

One of the most memorable of many poignant accounts from the final moments aboard is the solace eight musicians provided as they played on to the very last. Their valiant bandmaster was one Wallace Hartley, a man born and bred in Colne, Lancashire. He and his fellow players sadly perished but he has never been forgotten by generations of local folk.

Hartley has been honoured by a handsome headstone, commemorative plaques, street names and a bronze bust outside the church where he began his musical career. And a respectful beery nod was forthcoming in 2008 when Wetherspoons acquired the former King’s Head Hotel and christened it the Wallace Hartley.

And to mark the centenary in its inimitable fashion, the Wallace held a Maiden Voyage Beer Festival spanning the dates the Titanic was at sea a hundred years hence. On tap were a multitude of beers fittingly supplied by Titanic Brewery.

Titanic Beer Festival Colne

The first I sampled was one-off collaborative ale by Keith Bott from Titanic and Mark Szmaida of Chelsea Brewing, New York, evocatively named Ship of Dreams. This burnished copper brew was nicely balanced with hints of damson giving way to a sweet and nutty malt finish. I enjoyed it while digesting a felicitously ripping yarn in the form of Treasure Island.

The interior of the Wallace Hartley is bedecked with dark bevelled tiling, wood panelling and bespoke sculptures and paintings creating a tenebrous maritime theme. Characteristically large and open-plan spaces abound with more secluded nooks and crannies for a quieter pint also around.

During the festival most of the dozen hand-pumps carried Titanic beers, with a smattering of regulars and other breweries efforts in evidence. Just some of the themed ales on offer were Iceberg, Lifeboat, Steerage, Black Ice, English Glory, White Star and Nine Tenths Below.

Wetherspoons Colne

Treasured pint

Ship of Dreams

Titanic beer list

I’m a stickler for sampling new stuff where and whenever I can, so I’d previously tested all of these nautical tipples, but one in particular stood out for another slosh: Titanic’s Cappuccino. This potent stout had an über-rich coffee and vanilla nose that really intensified in the mouth. A deeply delicious drink worthy of any occasion.

Although not a beer festival in the traditional sense, this formed a fitting tribute to the Titanic and its heroic home-town band leader. Let’s raise a glass to Wallace!

“I’m rat -arsed” our hero shouts to the whole pub. “And this is one of the greatest working class songs ever!” as the familiar block chords are joined by a familiar drum roll and a scrawling copycat voice. “Slip insiiiide the eye of youuur miiii-iii-iinnd…”

The pub is energised immediately: arms in air, hands aloft. White wine for the ladies, Carling Extra Colds for the men, a sprinkling of WKDs for those planning to make the most of the Bank Holiday tomorrow. Drinks are raised to Gallagher, Lennon, or Shane Meadows.

By the guitar solo – which Noel G spends rambling around the pub with the wireless mic and encouraging air strumming at each table – there’s a victorious feeling that the whole pub made the sing-along a success.

“A proper class working class director is Shane meadows” our hero explains when he triumphantly stumbles over to greet us and check that we know who Morrissey is. These things are important.

His mate calls him a wanker; he retorts “You’re just a fat Peter Kay”. Peter Kay wins the round with a “You just handed the league title to us” (they are both fans of Manchester you see, one of each club, and City have just thrown the towel in against Arsenal). Some sort of equilibrium is maintained until the next point of contention arises (less than sixty seconds away no doubt).

For a bank holiday Sunday, this West Yorkshire mill town is getting busy. Bouncers start in the afternoon, legs are on show, pitchers of cocktails accompany gaggles of girls from bar to makeshift dance floor. Men do the decent thing and stare for just.. long.. enough.

The bars are all about fun and the other sex. The pubs are about meeting and drinking, with the occasional splash of singing and eyeing up. This is on-trade pre-loading.

As we up to leave – and it’s because we have a train to catch not that we want to – we leave our comrades bouncing to A Town Called Malice just as a clown walks past from the toilets, quickly followed by a female Robin Hood.

Our hero won’t let us leave without handshakes, promises to never give up on good music and checking he can’t tempt us with the variety club after nightfall. “Ka-ree-oh-key!” There’s a moment of reckless doubt…

Waiting for the train, maybe we’re just a couple of marketing managers seeking a dose of Common People, enjoying a rough pub safari in a working class area. Neither of us have ambitions to be the karaoke hero when we grow up.

After all Homeland is on in an hour, and there’s a spare supermarket beer in the fridge.

The bar is busy. The tables are full. The backroom is heaving and buoyant.

Welcome to the Sebright Arms, dimly light and vivacious.

We arrive from Soho at the fading of a sun drenched afternoon – four pubs, six pints, four hours.

Three and a half miles later, bellies demanding meat and bread and barley, we bundle over the threshold. A table is found, pale beers ordered, burger menus devoured by hungry eyes.

It’s a young crowd, an old crowd. It’s a quiet crowd and a rowdy crowd. Some here for the pub, some hunting out the resident Lucky Chip pop up kitchen.

Smokers tarnish the air outside, drinkers slop beer inside. The buzz is accentuated by beer (it’s a thin line between that and a booze buffer between the world and our senses, perhaps?)

The burgers perspire garnish, pint glasses soon sticky with the sweat of carnivorous satisfaction. And boy they taste good!

Another beer? Of course! The night is young, and the Sebright Arms is only just getting started.

The smell of beer slopped on wooden tables, the glint of light in the top of the chalice, the sounds of a deck of cards and the clink of glasses.

I’m in a bar in the north country but my senses are across the sea and howling winds, in the bustle of a backstreet bar in Belgium.

Four pm on a sunny Friday, sampling the beers of the Low Countries in a bar in Leeds, dreaming of being back in Brussels, Bruges or even Amsterdam. Or those other low cities I’ve not yet visited – Antwerp, or Ghent.

It’s North’s Lowlands Bier Festival and the fridges are jam packed with beers across a spectrum of prices and slapstick names: ‘Willy’ and ‘Klap’ are both (hopefully) lost in translation.

Even though the light of day is starting to fade, a winter ale seems wrong in the mild climate, but Dutch beers are on tap and that doesn’t happen often in the north of England.

De Molen Klap van de Molen (Hit by the Mill) is a dark viscous affair to wrap up in, dominated by apple skin sweetness and too much spice. Suffice to say it packs a punch (and nothing more sinister).

It’s quickly turned into an impromptu meal – add a cheese and meat board: a spot of raisin and walnut bread, a few slices of salami and a wedge of cheese. Sticky raisins and beer, peppery salami, mellow cheese umami; the beer is a prickly Calpol food softener and suddenly my mind is back in Belgium, in the evening din of yet another backstreet bar surrounded by stemmed glasses of dark sweet liquid and rye heavy bread, thick yellow cheese and pink elephants on the walls…

A cheeky kriek freshens things up (that’s the great thing about Belgian beers) and the menu is open wide once again.

Tripels, bocks, IPAs, Trappists, English bitters. The festival is nothing short of testament to the diversity of modern lowland beer culture. Add some Jupiler and it’s got almost everything! There’s a lot to celebrate here and celebrate it we do. Plus there’s time for a quick half of North’s very own exclusive beer brewed by the managers: a rasping Roosters style bitter.

As the darkness of night approaches we’ve drunk these beers in a topsy turvy order, and if we get stuck to into many more of the myriad lowland biers on offers, topsy turvy is where our heads will be too.

Meat & cheese & beer & bread

North Bar Lowlands Bier Festival

The Klap (van de Molen!)

Bar from the north country

Down a winding single lane road the descent to Shibden Mill Inn is not one to be taken with nonchalance. A careless clutch foot could result in an unexpected round of automobile tobogganing, even without the help of rain, ice or snow.

But survive the swooning approach and there sits a fine pub to be snowed in at: good beer, warm hearths and food fit for kings.

The pub is infected with sunny Sunday smiles. Gregarious family laughter shrieks, hoots and squeals around the dining room and through the thick bricked chimney breast. Not that Shibden Mill Inn is loud or raucous, nor large or imposing (though it does look expensive from the outside, which it is). It’s because it’s a place not just for meeting but rather gathering.

The inn sits east of Halifax’s strange topographically imposed footprint – the town;s urban area flares north-westerly like an Olympic flame from the shelf of Southowram. Hidden in the folds of the Shibden Valley it’s a sublime and homely setting for a country pub.

Shibden Brook runs through the garden, an unlikely source of geological carpentry. Its slow lapping pace complements the green and pleasant dale, but once it powered not only nature’s moulding of the valley but the corn mill that stood here before there was a pub (a mill which burned down long before it was rescued by (now deceased) local brewer Webster’s and turned into an eighteenth century inn).

Shibden Valley by Tim Green

Tucked in a little nook with all the charm and decor of a rural cottage, three candle lit tables are served by a hidden corner of the bar. The laughter is a distant and comforting hum, and we dine here sharing our bar with a clutch of other lunchtime visitors and a map-wielding drinker.

A local West Yorkshire bitter helps wash down a stodgy bread starter – four types of interesting nano-loaves with various homemade pickles and dips (a mini meal in itself, perhaps requiring a full two pints to wash it down).

Service is impeccable (all staff are suited and booted with smart aprons and pressed shirts or little black dresses); the food served is equally sophisticated – pan fried Cornish mackerel in oyster sauce melts at the sight of a mouth, pan fried scallops with artichoke the best scallop pairing since sliced black pudding. The staple fish and chips are completely unpretentious – chunky cuts of potato, a smashing big piece of haddock and generous pot of velvety mushy peas.

Perhaps I should have pushed the boat out and had the venison or Barnsley Chop? Only to raise fork to mouth again and wonder at how the chef made mackerel taste this good?

Mackerel

Fish & chips

Shibden Mill Inn

Country dining

Full, immensely satisfied, wallet subdued, we still can’t help but acquiesce to the dessert menu and find something sweet to finish our meal off. Perhaps by the time we’ve picked from the luxurious chalkboard a serendipitous snowstorm might have blocked the winding single lane ascent towards home?

The snow doesn’t come, and when we eventually rise to leave the pink-cheeked chap at whose expense the laughter erupted gets his revenge, via a red-faced gusty rendition of ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’ that announces the triumphantly arrival of birthday-sized dessert under a candle salute. And more people arrive to gather.

The blue logo can be seen for hundreds of yards. The windows that look out onto Hockley’s student-filled streets, opposite a tea room, cinema and acclaimed bistro, are plastered with huge crest shaped decals, archetypal generation Nike branding for a Starbuck’s influenced post-modern brand experience.

B R E W D O G

Reminiscent of the type of industrial themed sandwich shop found in downtown Prague or New York’s Soho, but with added chutzpah and a munificence for self-promotion, Brewdog Nottingham is a play centre for beer enthusiasts and anyone wanting something a little less serious from their atypical late night bar.

Like a sixth-form common room with a twist of intoxication and a desire to scare even the hardiest of wallets (the Japanese beer does not come cheap!) the formiddable brick building – once a factory but now housing flats and a restaurant as well as the bar – has been given an extra lease of life with BrewDog’s assertive style.

Wood and metal cover the industrially scarred walls which fleetingly appear in the entrance as a brutalist reminder of the history of this space. Unfussy wooden tables and benches circuit the room, gunmetal casks (branding BrewDog of course) are foot stools.

Borrowing from a hybrid of Ikea/Habitat urban chic and a dash of the school gymnasium (no really, try the recycled seat covers) this is a bar with equal amounts of character and faux-sawdust pretension.

Not that anyone meeting here gives two hoots about that because it’s a more than suitable environment for drinking beer and breaking bread. The high ceilings are filled with debate, discussion and de-briefing from the working week, perhaps even a frantic Friday night out, all sat sipping Punk IPAs and picking at mixed olives.

BrewDog Blitz 2.8%

BrewDog Nottingham

No CAMRAs allowed

The beer menu

Brash as the BrewDog brand can be, Saturday afternoon in BrewDog Nottingham is relaxed. There’s cheekiness rather than petulance in their chalkboard real ale bashing (we sit beneath notices that read “Open mic night”…”don’t be shy”… “no CAMRAs”).

And of the beer? Well it’s uncompromising. Hops dominate, BrewDog and their favourite breweries steal the show and if you want to dive into the bottled beer fridge and share a meat platter, expect little change from an Adam Smith.

The acid test, would I go back? I guess the post-brand experience must have done the trick… despite the stupid Robin Hood PR stunt.

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A brisk day in March, wet but without rain. Ducking through the dripping steel railway bridge, carving through residual puddles, Sowerby Bridge seems jack-knifed between the twenty first century and the 1970s. It’s partly the lack of ubiquitous chain stores, partly the dubious puns of the shabby independent shops, but mostly the hues of a downtrodden day in a small Yorkshire town.

Out the other side of the town the road befriends the trajectory of the River Ryburn as it steers through the steep wooded valley, roaming towards the Calder. The Triangle public house, in the tiny village of Triangle, is boarded up, not the first dead watering hole on the winding roads that lead to the quiet, charming town of Ripponden.

At Ripponden, about as remote an urban centre you can get in the sprawl of West Yorkshire, time blends from 1970s into the eighteenth century in the shadow of the Victorian church. A few footsteps further on the day retreats to nearer the 1670s as a cold breeze rustles across the cobbles of the ancient humpbacked bridge that leads to a quiet, unassuming public house.

Packhorse bridge and Old Bridge Inn Ripponden

The Old Bridge deserves its name. The bridge from which it takes its name, just like the church whose shadow it lies in, has been rebuilt many times since the first packhorse crossing. The pub is as old, over 700 years as the oldest records attest too. In the 14th century the town were not even on the first of their four churches that the river or weather has razed along the way. Old broom, new handles, new brushes.

The Ryburn runs straight and narrow under the ancient structure, the pub nestles on the northern side, resplendent in bright white wash. Warm fires, real ale, fine dining, but with not an ounce of pretension. The Old Bridge is family run, locally revered, bustling with merry drinkers around the bar and belly-patting diners, content and perhaps a little dozy.

Since 1307 similar scenes may have been played out in this hidden pocket of hostelry. On the main York to Chester road, journey-worn travellers would have put their feet up here, may have knocked back unfussy ale and unfussy food, stocking up  on victuals and sleep. Curled up in a window nook in 2012 the beer is a little brighter and food is a little more fussy (but excellent) – scallops with parsnip puree, mackerel pate, sea bass with chorizo, crisp and luscious belly pork.

Bowed by time, oak beams run low in the sitting rooms either side of the cheery communal bar, warmed by fires or stoves and sitting under a cockeyed triangular roof that’s seen seven centuries of welcomes and goodbyes.

The river barely flows. A tear drop on the neck of a window box daffodil is frozen in the crisp Sunday air. Under these bows, between mahogany panelled walls, Airedale Valley Bitter meets chocolate orange brownie (scrumptious), and like that droplet, we’re immovable, resolved to enjoy the slowness with which two hours lumber by.

One hundred and twenty minutes. But a tiny percentage of the years and patrons that the Old Bridge has watched over in its lifetime.

A pint of AVB

Yorkshires Oldest Pub

Fine, fine food

The ancient roof

So the pint is done with we’re told!

Well what would they say in Prague, where refreshing pilsners stand proud in tall half litre glasses, quenching thirsts almost with their looks and frothy gusto alone.

Tell the football fans sinking a pint of bitter before the well trodden march to the ground that their beer will be served in flutes or tulips or whisky tumblers. “Like hell” they cry!

The ugliness of a nonik pint glass aside (does anyone use one at home?), the pint, and the pint glass, is an important measure of beer and heritage that should not be done away with.

The Humble Pint

The two third measure – and add to that beers of 2-3% ABV which are seeing a resurgence – will fill an important piece of the drinking puzzle in the UK, where a half never suffices and a pint can be crammed too easily into too short a space.

And we should firmly encourage the open embrace these opportunities extend to us, just as we should openly embrace a more diverse and appropriate appreciation of glassware. Any trip to Belgium will reveal the theatre and enjoyment of a beer drawn in it’s own peculiar glass served with the aplomb of an expensive long cocktail.

But beer isn’t wine or whisky or a white russian.

Beer is unique in its ubiquity and its diversity. And its price range too. There’s a beer for every occasion – refreshment, celebration, reverence, gastronomy, solace and lubrication.

A Belgian triple is undeniably better in a angular chalice with a volcanic head lifted by the incessant bubbles of strategically placed nicks in the glass. An aromatic IPA, strong and robust, requires a voluptuous curve to protect the aroma and limit the portion. Cherry beer fizzing and frothing in a flute would lose all it’s charm and pizazz transferred to a conical pint glass.

But none of these requirements demand the extinction of the great pint, all five hundred and sixty eight millilitres of it. It would be like recalculating the marathon, famously stuck at twenty six miles three hundred and eight five yards since the British tweaked and tangled with the route in the lead up to the 1908 Olympics in London.

Not all things are worth saving in the name of habit or nostalgia, but neither should we do away with something so useful and iconic when the pint is such a well worn part of our daily drinking.

Half pints at the Grove

With handle and I

Chalice or pint?

Two pint take home?

It’s a drinking hole essentially, underneath it all. For all the domed skylights and stained glass, people come here to let off steam, to pass the time, to forget the day. To drink.

But to say that is to do York Tap a disservice as it stands resplendent next to the revived station complex. Like its Sheffield counterpart it was born in an old resting room, and the 104 year old building suits its new life as a pub, with big windows and plenty of seating space.

It’s the prettiest of the Taps, painted pink on the outside and showing off a bar cradled in curves. Large windows scatter light towards the central bar where you might expect the beer to be served on starched doilies in pristine hand painted china cups.

Attention gravitates towards the mahogany island in the centre of the bar, which is heavy with beer engines displaying an array of local and national cask ales, mostly renowned models from the most revered manufacturers. And though the bar is also heavy with the broad smiles of scooping punters the service doesn’t falter (not even when interrogates as to why they don’t serve John Smith’s Smooth).

Tonight the glistening keg fonts are the focus as Camden Town Brewery have taken over with their refreshing Helles lager, their broody Camden Ink stout, and Bleedin’ Hops, a black IPA that haemorrhages bitterness. Camden’s beers are excellent; particularly the staple wheat beer, noble and nubile in its tall narrow glass.

Locals test out guest beers; visitors inquire about the local beers. Tasting glasses pile up, halves and conics stack high. The night draws closer, the conversation brisker, louder, vivacious. In a place like this Rose de Gambrinus (spontaneously fermented sour beer from Brussels) is served in the same round as Great Heck’s latest mash in (a Yorkshire bitter brewed just down down the Selby Road). A limited edition beer from London is sampled alongside an old favourite from California. Tradition and progression sit side by side in this boozy chapel of rejuvenation.

Beers are shared, stories told, lives catch up with other lives. A night here is a journey and as the clock strikes somewhere just before midnight everyone heads for the train, lubricated for the last leg home.

Pretty in pink

Beautiful domed roof

York Tap as a tea room

York Tap's interior

Due to a broken camera lens (and possibly inebriation) our photos of the York Tap are useless, we borrowed some official ones. And Turnip Rail wrote about the Tap’s history as the railway station’s tea room. Thanks to both.

Home at 11.30 on a school night, sniffing my coat. It’s been a good few months since I last let a cigarette pass my lips.

Tonight’s a school night, a strange night to jump off the nicotine wagon, but conversation was deep and my companion had Marlborough Reds.

There’s nothing beneficial about smoking, not one bit. Perhaps a temporary relief of stress, or a short-term substitute for another vice, but ultimately each cigarette is a minor health hazard.

Booze is different, especially beer.

Tonight both feel good, regardless of the facts. Each over-zealous drag is a rebellion against the toils of everyday, against the norm and all its nagging restrictions. Each gulp is two fingers to the meetings in the diary and the moaners moaning about their moronic new year resolutions.

We don’t let fiscal concerns or our Tuesday morning alarms constrain our smoking or our week night drinking. We have plenty to discuss: from the finer arts of Thierry Henry’s cool finishing to the inner torments of cyclical depression. We touch on the genetic susceptibility to alcohol abuse as I bring back alcohol heavy American IPAs from the bar.

Putting the world to rights demands concentration, at least two cigarettes (or was it three?), a robust beer and somewhere warm to sit.

And then, just as we get onto the interesting stuff (who was fit from school, or uni or long forgotten workplaces) the science hits me. The protracted but relaxing inhale becomes a forceful, lingering exhale as my mind beats the spell. Each puff turns from a moments escapism to a contrived act of fakery. “Don’t let a gasp of that cancer smoke remain in your mouth” my mind tells me.

“Fuck off brain” says the drink in me; says the petulant child wanting to stay up past his bedtime on a Monday, wishing he could afford to miss the last train.

Luckily beer is synced with the angels, and with a dry glass and just over ten minutes spare, reason wins over. Soles of boot hits stone floor (thump, twist!) and another nicotine grave stains the floor of the heated beer garden.

Now where’s that train ticket?