South and North

This is the last of my posts about my trip to the UK a few weeks ago, mainly because I didn't really take lots of pictures of the many beers I drank while I was there. For example, I have no pictures from the wonderful pub crawl I went on in Inverness with a long time friend of mine, unless you are interested in Aitken founts that is (and if you are interested, Black Isle Bar & Rooms on Church Street is the place to go). Even for this post, I only have a couple of pictures.

With the conference over, we arranged to meet at Piccadilly Circus, but I had about 90 minutes before meeting up, so I dropped my laptop at my hotel, nipped to Westminster Abbey to get a key chain of the venerable building for one of my sons, and experienced unexpected garden envy.

To get to Piccadilly Circus from Westminster Abbey, I had decided to skirt St James' Park on Horse Guards Road, past the Horse Guards Parade - being an army brat it was instantly recognisable from many viewings of Trooping the Colour on TV. Before you reach the Parade itself, you pass Duck Island Cottage, which had the delightful garden you can see above, it made me miss my little garden back in Virginia.

I have to admit that walking around the City of Westminster was one of my favourite things, and the stroll from Westminster Abbey to Piccadilly was a delight, though obviously with a distinct lack of traffic cones on the statuary. Even so, I had badly mistimed how long it would take, and so ended up at Piccadilly Circus a good 30 minutes before I had arranged to meet everyone else. What to do then? Well, find a pub obviously, so I looked up pubs in the streets just off the Circus itself. St James Tavern it was then, a corner pub where Great Windmill Street meets Shaftesbury Avenue. Finding a spot at the bar, I may have mentioned this before, but I loved being in buzzing, busy pubs again, I squeezed in and ordered a pint of London Pride.

By this point in my trip, I was having an identity crisis, as I was actively enjoying pints of best made with crystal malts, and London Pride fresh from cask is such a lovely beer, even without a sparkler on the swan neck. Perhaps it is a case of absence making the heart grow fonder, and in many ways this is stating the obvious, compared to the stuff we get in Virginia, proper Pride is night and day. I reviewed my Old Friends post about Pride as I was drinking this first pint, and the biggest difference is the brightness of being fresh, and the hops are actually obviously present. Since returning to the US, I have longed to just sit in a London pub enjoying multiple pints of fresh Pride. As it was, I had time for a second before meeting up with the folks I was at the conference with.

I wish I could remember the pub that we went to immediately after meeting, but eventually we wound our way to a Sam Smiths pub called the Glasshouse Stores. This was the first time I had ever been in a Sam Smith's pub, and unfortunately they didn't have any of their famous beers on cask, everything was keg. Having got our orders in, I started on my trek through the various bitters available, we snagged a seat, all the while keeping a beady eye on the table in the charming bay window, so we could relocate once it was available. It wasn't long before we took our opportunity, and by this time I had relished the dark mild as my precursor to the bitters - a lovely beer from memory, the kind of thing that would make for a wonderful autumnal session with the rain pouring outside. I had also had the first of a couple of pints of Sovereign Bitter. Eventually though I would settle on the Old Brewery Bitter as my tipple of choice, no doubt lamenting aloud that it wasn't on cask.

Apparently we moved on to a few other stops, but I have no pictures of those, either mental or on my camera - yeah, drinking at scale happened and it had started to gently rain...I may have got myself a little turned around walking back to my hotel, but eventually I made it to my bed and gratefully collapsed in a heap.