15 years of writing about beer - a potted history of Paul's Beer & Travel Blog

I've been writing this beer blog for the best part of 15 years, with the first post appearing on the 23rd of November 2008. Apart from a lull during 2011 when, due to illness not much appeared online, I've managed to keep up a steady output, and for the past decade or so I've striven, and mainly succeeded to write a minimum of 10 posts per month.

I was tempted to take the plunge and start my own blog, by an excellent fellow
called Paul Garrard, who at the time lived in Norwich. Paul produced an excellent blog, titled the RealAleBlog, as well as a couple of other blogs, including one which reflected his general outlook on life, and his slightly left-leaning politics. Paul had a similar background to my own, even to the extent of running his own beer shop. I'm not quite sure when this business ceased trading, and despite talking to him about his shop, I’m not sure what his reasons were for winding it up.

I met up with him, in 2009, for a few pints of Goacher’s, at the unspoiled Rifle Volunteers pub in Maidstone – a town which Paul and his wife were visiting at the time. We enjoyed a good session on the Goacher’s, and you can read about it here. Paul encouraged other writers, or in my case aspiring bloggers, to write a guest post on his blog, and I can remember writing at least one such piece. From memory, my post was generally well receive and this encouraged me to take the plunge and start my own blog, using Google’s Blogger as the platform to host it.

Looking back, my initial choice of Paul Bailey’s Beer Blog for the title wasn't very imaginative, especially as there are some far wittier, and less personal titles floating around, than my own. I'm stuck with the name now, and despite my early reservations, the name I chose has, generally speaking, served me well over the years. I took a look back at those early years, and it seems that the last entry on Paul’s RealAleBlog was made in 2014. As with the beer shop, I'm not quite sure what happened, whether Paul just lost interest, or whether something more profound took place, but the beauty of Blogger, as opposed to self-hosted blogs and websites, is that the information is still out there. So today, 9 years on from the last entry, the pages of Paul’s RealAleBlog are there, and with a little bit of searching, they can still be accessed.

What people may not know is I have been writing about beer and pubs for much longer than the past 15 years, although strangely enough it was a complete accident as to how and why I became a writer in the first place. I described the reasons here, in this post written in November 2016, so I won’t repeat them again, but for several years, back in the mid-1980’s, I was editor, and chief copy-writer of Draught Copy – the newsletter of the Maidstone & Mid-Kent Branch of CAMRA.

Draught Copy is still going strong today, but instead of a couple of folded A3 sheets, it has evolved into an enlarged and much more professional looking branch magazine, which is published on a quarterly basis, and distributed free to local pubs and clubs.  As well as covering the Maidstone & Mid-Kent branch area, Draught Copy now takes in pubs served by the Gravesend & Darent Valley, Bexley, Medway, and West Kent branches of CAMRA, as well.

In 1985, for business and personal reasons, I moved to Tonbridge, some 15 miles from Maidstone, but in a different CAMRA branch area. After a few months, I was approached by the CAMRA area organiser for Kent, and asked to help resurrect what was then the Tunbridge Wells branch of CAMRA. The branch had become moribund, but with the able assistance of three other CAMRA enthusiasts, all of whom lived in Tonbridge, we were able to get the branch going again, hold regular meetings, and start surveying pubs once again for the Good Beer Guide.

Several years later, the revived branch which by this time was known as West Kent CAMRA, started its own branch magazine, called Inn View, and once again, your truly was editor, chief copy writer and this time around advertising manager as well. Although I was never much of a salesman, I can still remember hawking Inn View around local pubs, plus the odd brewery as well, trying to sell advertising space in order to finance the magazine.

This wasn’t quite as hard as it sounds, because quite a few pubs, especially those that made a thing of offering a good selection of cask ales, were only too happy to splash out for a half, or sometimes even a full page. Some were even business minded enough to supply their own camera-ready artwork.

In 1991, I stepped down from my role as magazine editor, and also from the branch committee, as with the birth of our son, I’d acquired the responsibility of being a full-time parent. I didn’t stop writing though, as for many years I wrote articles relating to beer and pubs, with the plan of eventually publishing my own book. With the working title of “Memories of a Beer Drinking Man,” my magnum opus was going to be a semi-autobiographical look back at a quarter of a century of enjoying pubs and beer.

Before I became a father, I also dipped my toes into the world of self-publishing, with a book called “Country Pubs of the Kent Weald.” The book described 50 unspoilt, rural pubs, scattered across the Weald of Kent, all selling cask ale of course, and most of them with a history dating back several centuries. The book was illustrated, either with photos I took myself, or with line drawings sketched out by a local artist.

The book was printed by a neighbour, who had his own small printing works. He was the same individual who printed Inn View on behalf of West Kent CAMRA. Copies were supplied, on a sale or return basis, to all featured pubs that wished to take them. I can’t remember the size of the print run, but we sold virtually all the copies. Starting a family, and later running our own specialist beer shop, largely put paid to my writing activities, and it wasn’t until we sold the business, and I moved back to a career in healthcare products, that I began to write again. Writing articles and hosting them on my own blog seemed the logical way to go, and 15 years on, I am still doing it!

Footnote: I tried, unsuccessfully as it happens, to find any images for either "Inn View", or its successor "Inn View News,"  the latter being the title of the resurrected magazine, which appeared for several editions, following my departure. I probably have the odd copy, laying around somewhere at home, but none have surfaced so far. The copy of WK CAMRA's former webpage, will have to suffice in their absence.

I do remember someone bringing a few old copies along to a West Kent CAMRA social, about five years ago, and the branch secretary asking to borrow them. I shall have to chase up on that, as it would be nice to have a small reminder of my efforts.