Something's occuring in the background

The Bailey family have just returned from a three-day break in Wales. I desist from naming the destination we stayed at for the time being, as I want to write on a different topic, for the time being. I didn’t take my ancient laptop along, as I thought I could use the spare time to get stuck into a good book – as per last June’s cruise.

Foolishly, I was forgetting Mrs PBT’s “need” to have the television on, during every waking hour we spent in the hotel room, and when it’s 24-7 repeat BBC newscasts, then it’s not particularly conducive to reading. There are no prizes for guessing which major news event my good lady wife was following, and we were sitting having dinner, in the Beefeater Inn, adjacent to our hotel when news of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing, flickered up on a myriad of mobile phones. How did we ever mange without such devices?

Obviously, the Queen’s death is a sad occasion, not just for her family, but for the nation as a whole, and a new head of state is both an historic and momentous event, but returning to the main topic of this post, I distracted myself, as far as is possible with the TV blaring out, by catching up with a few of the numerous beer-related blogs that I follow, paying particular attention to prolific pub-ticker, Retired Martin’s recent posts.

Those who don’t follow Martin’s informative, and at times amusing posts, will be unaware that as well as being on “permanent exploration of places, pubs, people and new music,” there is one underlying passion that has guided his travels through our fair and pleasant land. This passion, which some might call an obsession, is Martin’s quest to visit very pub in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide. I obviously wish him well as this should be completion of a 30-year quest, but as I discovered whilst away, Martin is inching ever closer to  finishing this long-held goal.

As of yesterday evening, when I sat down to write this piece, Martin had just eight pubs left to tick. I mentioned at the time that he was up against the clock, although I should have known better, because I awoke this morning to the news that he had just one more pub left. That need for speed comes about because sometime soon, perhaps very soon, the 2023 edition of the Good Beer Guide will hit the nation’s bookshops, and according to the rules that govern this sort of thing, if he fails to tick those remaining pubs before the publication of the new guide, it’s back to the drawing board.

The reason behind this is that every year, the Campaign for Real Ale’s 200+ branches, carry out a systematic review of all 4,500 GBG entries, with each branch scrutinising the current pubs within their individual areas, prior to submitting revised and potentially new entries for the following years guide. Now if all those CAMRA branches were to change just two pubs from their allocation, this would mean 400+ revised entries occurring in each year’s Good Beer Guide. Some of them might have been in the Guide before, dropped out possibly from something minor like a change of licensee, and then reappeared, but if we discount these, there could still be a potential “churn” of 200-300 pubs each year.

Committed GBG “completists,” like Martin and a handful of others, will have this information carefully logged on spreadsheets, which enable them to keep an eye on and identify changes, but against such a background, it’s easy to understand how the whole completion exercise could fail, because of a handful of revised entries. In addition, when the remaining handful of outlets, are in the remotest and most far-flung corners of these islands, the task becomes harder still. Fortunately, our intrepid pub-ticker has completed the Scilly and Channel Islands, along with the Isle of Man, but with the Orkney & Shetland Islands still to go, will Martin finally complete the Good Beer Guide, this year?

One thing that is evident from Martin’s recent posts is the huge number of miles he has driven in pursuit of his quest. Having just driven 400 miles, on a return trip to South Wales, I don’t envy him all that time spent behind the wheel. Our recent trip was a reminder that I find long-distance driving tiring at best, and stressful at worst, especially motorway driving. The process is certainly not the pleasant and quite experience it once was! Owning a car does give one almost unlimited freedom to travel to wherever takes one’s fancy, but that freedom comes at a price, and isn’t without its own irritations.

The extremely flat, rear tyre I noticed on our first morning in Wales, was one such example, although fortunately the incident occurred overnight, in the car park, and Britannia Rescue were soon on the scene to change the wheel. The nearby branch of Kwik-Fit were also able to provide a reasonably priced, replacemnt tyre, so the only real damage was to my wallet, plus an hour or so of lost time. Such happenings are on the whole rare, and relatively and minor in their impact, but obviously the further and longer one drives, the more likely they are to occur.

I shan’t reveal, for the moment, whereabouts in Wales, we spent the past three days, but you might get a clue from some of the photos used to illustrate this post. Must go now, as I have lots to catch up on!