Gold, Red & Black at Queen Mary 2's Golden Lion

I mentioned briefly, in an earlier post, and also referred to the fact in a several subsequent comments, that there was a pub on board Queen Mary 2. Admittedly not the most traditional of public houses, but an area on the starboard side of Deck 2, was set aside, and kitted out as a typical English urban pub. 

There was a bar at one end, which customers could sit, and drink at if they wished, and leading off towards the bow, were a number of alcoves, furnished with comfortable, leather-type, bench seating, and each with its own table. 

Named the Golden Lion, and complete with its own hanging sign, the pub was a popular part of the ship, providing not just a place where passengers could sit and relax, whilst enjoying a drink, but also somewhere they could be entertained at. This included, live music, from a variety of different acts, and representing several genres, the Golden Lion also hosted quizzes, and bingo sessions. Televised sports were shown, from time to time, with football obviously proving popular, with the large number of both Brits and Germans, on board.

One afternoon, on a rather overcast “sea day,” Mrs PBT’s and I inadvertently got caught up in a game of the latter, but not wishing to disturb the seriousness of the session, ended up staying as observers. We didn’t go thirsty, as we made sure that we caught the waiter’s eye, in order for him to recharge our glasses.

We’d originally called in at the Golden Lion for lunch, in order to sample the typical pub fayre menu, which included classics such as cod & chips, beef burgers, ploughman’s, plus a "pie special" that changed daily. The food is included in the fare, although drinks, both soft and alcoholic incur an additional charge. Alongside a number of international beer brands, three signature beers, specially brewed for Cunard by Salisbury-based, Dark Revolution Brewery, are available.

Sold as Cunard Gold, Red, and Black they are respectively, as their names suggest a Pilsner-style lager, a Red IPA, plus a superb dark beer, billed as a “Breakfast, biscotti-stout.” The later contains oatmeal, coffee, and vanilla, and at 5.7% abv, isn’t really the sort of beer you’d want to consume at the breakfast table, although when you are on holiday, who knows?

The Cunard beers are sold in canned form at some of Queen Mary 2’s other bars, but in the Golden Lion are available on draught. Regardless of their packaging and presentation, the beers are unfiltered and unpasteurised, so in effect are cask-conditioned, and as if to add to this uniquely British touch, the Red and the Black varieties are dispensed by genuine hand-pumps.

I know these pumps are genuine, as I popped down one afternoon – purely for research purposes, and sat at the bar, so I could witness my pint being pulled – and yes, muscle power was definitely involved! The beers were reasonably priced too, particularly in view of the surroundings. My pint of Breakfast Stout, cost me $7.10, equivalent to £5.90 at today’s exchange rate, and before you question the currency, everything aboard all of Cunard’s cruise ships, is priced in US dollars probably because of the large volume of transatlantic passengers they cater for.

To sum up, the Golden Lion was a nice place for a relaxing drink, and given its situation on Deck 2 being that much closer to the water than the accommodation and dining decks, you could sit there watching the waves, as the ship effortlessly glided it was through the seas. Service was largely by waiter, although as mentioned above, you could sit, or even stand at the bar and order, if you so desired.

Finally, the Golden Lion pub, is obviously popular with passengers as the name, plus the concept, extends across all three of Cunard’s current cruise ships, and may even feature on their latest vessel, the Queen Anne, which makes her maiden voyage in 18 months’ time.

Home at the cottage, with Young's

“The Young’s is drinking well,” are words you don’t often hear said, as a beer drinker, certainly not since the former, and well-respected London brewer closed its historic Ram Brewery, in Wandsworth, back in 2006. The closure stunned the beer world, and for a keen CAMRA members, as I was at the time, the move felt like a stake through the heart. 

The reasons for the closure, whilst unclear, must have related to the property value that such a large and prestigious site in the centre of Wandsworth would command. Young’s management, at the time, spun the story that the closure of the Ram Brewery had been precipitated by Wandsworth Council, as they felt an industrial site, in the heart of the borough, didn’t really fit in with their plans.

With hindsight, this story appears to be something of a smokescreen, but whatever the real reason, the Young’s site was the oldest operating brewery in the capital, and the proud producer of cask ales of real character, that were highly regarded, not just in London, but up and down the country. Young’s were also the company that stood alone, against the keg-tide that engulfed the capital at the start of the 1970’s.

That’s enough about the past, apart from saying we’ve got form as a country of turning our backs on some of our greatest assets, and even destroying them, not so much in the name of progress, but more so in the pursuit of a quick buck.

I’d more or less forgotten about Young’s over the course of the past 16 years, especially as we rarely see their beers in this part of the country. This is in sharp contrast to the situation I found, when I first moved back to Kent, in 1978. I’d only been away for five years, but much had changed during that time, and whilst the part of the country I moved back to was west Kent rather than the east of the county, where I grew up in, there was much to excite a beer lover, during those heady days.

Real Ale, or cask as I prefer to call it, had really taken off, especially in the county’s free houses, so it wasn’t unusual to see Young’s beers, either Ordinary or Special and sometimes both, on sale at the bar and being enjoyed by local drinkers. This situation continued for a number of years, but slowly, and ever so slowly at first, Young’s beers became less prevalent.

I didn’t pay much attention to this, as there were so many other, decent cask beers to enjoy, that the gradual disappearance of Young’s, made very little difference. Besides, any cravings for the Wandsworth brewer’s beers were easily satisfied by a visit to the in-laws. To explain, the previous Mrs Bailey hailed from the Wandsworth area – from Earlsfield, to be precise, and her parents’ house was just 10 minutes’ walk away from the Leather Bottle, a large and well-known Young’s pub in Garratt Lane.

No Sunday lunchtime visit to the in-laws was complete without a stroll down to the Leather Bottle, a few pints of Young’s (two ordinary, plus one Special), before returning to the house and sitting down for a large roast dinner. If we stayed over, Wandsworth itself wasn’t that far away, and during the course of the relationship, we must have visited every Young’s pub within a couple of miles radius of the brewery.

Fast forward 40 years, I found myself once more in a Young’s pub, not in south-west London, or indeed in the centre of the capital, but last Sunday afternoon I was passing through Redhill station, in Surrey, awaiting a 42-minute connection for a train that would take me home to Tonbridge.

I had been for a lengthy (for me) ramble, completing the penultimate section of the North Down’s Way. My walk had taken me from Gomshall station to the west of Dorking, all the way to Guildford, and after catching the 15.55 train back along the North Downs Line, had arrived at Redhill with almost three-quarters of an hour to spare. I had already decided to call in at the nearby Home Cottage, an imposing Young’s tied house, less than five minutes’ walk from the station.  I asked the staff member at the ticket barrier, if I could break my journey, as I fancied a pint.

“Of course,” came the reply, along with the recommendation of the aforementioned Home Cottage. “Much better than the Sun,” said the ticket collector, “and nearer, too!” I nodded in appreciation, as not only had I already decided on the Young’s pub, but I also really didn’t fancy the local Wetherspoons, or any Spoons for that matter.  Five minutes later I was walking up the steps and through the doors of the Home Cottage, for what must have been the first time since the Ram Brewery closed, 16 years ago.

When I first moved to Tonbridge and helped the local CAMRA branch get back on its feet, the Home Cottage was a favourite pub for a night out on the Young's, in a different location. Situated just 30 minutes away, by rail, with a last train home sufficiently late to allow for a good session, a visit to the Home Cottage was also a good place to meet up with members from the local Reigate & Redhill Branch of CAMRA. It was therefore with a sense of anticipation, tinged with a slight trepidation, that I entered the pub.

I knew from What Pub, that extensive renovations and alterations had taken place, but despite the disappearance of the former, individual bars, the Home Cottage certainly hadn’t lost its essential character. There is a large, and quite extensive, central serving area, but the thing that caught my eye first, was the set of three hand-pulls on the bar, offering Young’s Original and Young’s Special.

The former is the company’s Ordinary Bitter, re-badged, but with only sufficient time for the one pint, it was the Special I was hankering after. I had been dreaming about it, whilst on the train back from Guildford, and by the time I reached the pub, I was really gagging for a pint. I ordered the Special and was not disappointed, despite the £5.05 price tag, but the first thing I noticed, even before I’d raised the glass to my lips, was the colour of the beer.

It was far darker in colour that I remember Young’s Special being, but leaving this minor, and almost irrelevant consideration aside, the beer tasted divine. The nine mile walk along the North Downs, might well have enhanced my appreciation of the beer, but if anything, it only increased my enjoyment of it. Full-bodied and malty, but balanced with just the right amount of bitterness, that pint of Special Bitter was well worth the 4.5 score I awarded it on Untappd.

The pub itself was relatively empty, with just one moderately sized group of drinkers, plus several couples enjoying a late Sunday afternoon drink, but it was the perfect ending to what had been a perfect day’s walking through the beech-woods and open downlands of Surrey. The walk itself is worthy of its own post, but I first wanted to share with you, my "welcome back to the fold moment," with Young’s Special Bitter.

 

Welcome to Norway - Ålesund,

The first Friday of our recent cruise saw our ship, the Queen Mary 2 slipping into harbour, and docking at the port of Ǻlesund. This was my first visit to Norway, a country I had wanted to visit for a long time, but for some reason had never quite got round to it. This might have been due to Norway being right on the western edge of Europe, but that shouldn’t really have stopped me, given the availability of cheap flights.  

Instead I put the reasons down to the geography of a country which is long, thin and extends right up to beyond the Arctic Circle. A country that at its widest, is only 237 miles across, and at it narrowest is just 24 miles in breadth. The aforementioned geography plays a major role in the country’s makeup, with the western edge that looks out over the North Sea to the south, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and at its furthermost northern extremity, shares a border with Russia.

The bulk of Norway is mountainous, and the margin where these mountains meet the sea is characterised by a deeply indented coastline, with inlets, known the world over as fjords, that extend inland for a considerable number of miles. It was some of these spectacular fjords that our cruise ship was taking us to, alongside the opportunity of visiting a few of the ports and coastal communities along this western seaboard.

So early that morning we watched from the cabin balcony as our ship manoeuvred, with the aid of a tug boat, into Ǻlesund harbour. Then, after a quick breakfast in our room, we joined the queue of passengers eager to disembark the ship. The process was quick, easy, and unlike our previous port of call – Hamburg, there was no passport control to bother with. The only checks that were necessary was the requirement to tap out with our ship’s smart card ID system.

Basically, details of all onboard passengers form part of the ship’s manifest, and whilst I don’t know if this information was shared with the local Norwegian authorities, it would almost certainly have been available, should it be required. So, with a relatively seamless stepping ashore and there we both were, stepping onto Norwegian soil for the first time.

Ålesund is built on a row of islands extending out into the ocean, at the entrance to the Geirangerfjord but it is most famous for its art nouveau architecture. The latter is the result of a devastating fire that broke out on the night of 23^rd January 1904. Fanned by a strong wind, the fire spread rapidly through the mainly wooden buildings of the town, making most of the 10,000 inhabitants homeless.

Assistance came from an unusual source, namely Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. The Kaiser knew the town well, as a result of his annual cruises around the area, and after the fire, sent four warships with materials to build temporary shelters and a barracks.. After a period of planning, the town was rebuilt in stone, brick, and mortar in Jugendstil (Art Nouveau), the architectural style of the time. To honour Wilhelm, one of Ålesund‘s most frequented streets was named after him, proving that even the Kaiser wasn’t all bad.

The quay where our ship berthed was right in the heart of the town, which meant the centre was easily accessible on foot. We had no set plan, apart from just wandering about and enjoying the ambience of this bustling port town. The weather wasn’t brilliant, in fact it was overcast and quite chilly, but at least the rain held off. The town itself was easy to navigate around, its footprint being determined by the shape of the indented and rather rocky coastline.

We did a spot of shopping, before
wandering back towards the quayside, disappointed that the craft beer bar overlooking the sound, didn’t open until 3pm, which was two hours after our departure! Talk about a missed opportunity, remaining closed when a couple of thousand cruise passengers turn up on your doorstep!

It’s worth mentioning here that at every shore destination a range of different tour excursions and activities are available. Mrs PBT’s and I have always been independent-minded travellers who prefer to do our own thing, and it should also be noted that these excursions need to be pre-booked and don’t come cheap.

That said, I did book an excursion for the final shore day of the cruise, which was the return stop-over in Hamburg. This was is a walking tour of the medieval city of Lȕneburg, which lies to the south of Hamburg. There will be about this excursion, in a later post

Ålesund, was our most northerly destination, a fact demonstrated by the sun not setting until 11.30pm. This seemed really strange, as it never became properly dark that evening. Prior to departing, we were given a New York-style send-off, with a fire boat moored nearby, spraying plumes of water, high into the air, as we left the town.

We steamed steadily southwards, through the night, towards our next port of call, which was an unscheduled stop, and a hastily arranged one that arose due to a change in circumstances that prevented from us from berthing at our original destination of the small settlement of Flam. I'm still not entirely sure what the reasons were, although I believe that the environmental impact of a cruise liner docking in a small, narrow fjord, had something to do with the decision.

A good read afloat

Our recent cruise gave me the opportunity of catching up on my reading – lots of reading, in fact. I normally have a book or two on the go at home, but “on the go” often means taking an age to complete, as a busy home and a still hectic work life (despite a cut in my hours), doesn’t leave a lot of time for reading. In fact, I consider I've achieved something, if I manage to read the odd chapter or two. This is a shame, especially if the book I’m reading is a gripping novel, or even a half decent one, but apart from when I'm in bed, there seems very little spare time for ploughing my way through a book.

I am a sucker for not going to bed at a decent time, and not getting enough sleep. Mrs PBT’s isn’t much better, although, it’s slightly different for her, as she doesn’t have to get up as early as I do of a morning. So, by the time I’m tucked up in bed, I’m lucky if I manage to get through the odd chapter prior to “lights out.” The obvious solution would be to go to bed earlier, but as I’m the person who locks up at night, I usually wait for my nearest and dearest to head up the wooden hill, before following suit. should be viewed against the fact that reading is a sure-fire method of drifting off into sleep.

Consequently, most books take me an age to finish, and this is where relaxing on board a cruise ship, comes into its own. There is something about just sitting there, up on deck, in a sheltered spot, watching the waves slip by as the ship glides effortlessly through them. Time seems to stand still, so what better excuse is needed, than getting your nose stuck into a good book, and totally losing yourself in its pages?

I took a couple of books with me, when we boarded at Southampton two and a half weeks ago. One was a lengthy and classic work of fiction, whilst the other was a recently published book about beer, and our relationship with it. It was a Christmas present, but one that until the cruise, I never managed to find time to read.

The first book, was one I’ve been making my way through  for the past year or so. I made some headway with it on our cruise to Liverpool and back, last September, but the most recent 12 night voyage, provided the perfect opportunity to get some pages of this novel, under my belt, and finally allowed me to put it to bed, so to speak, as I actually finished it on the final afternoon of the cruise.

The book in question was Anna Karenina, by the 19th Century Russian author, Leo Tolstoy.  It is a novel, which is nowhere near as well known as Tolstoy's most famous work - War & Peace, but after looking at a number of online reviews I discovered that the former, is far more readable and approachable than the latter. 

The book runs to over 800 pages, so is quite a weighty tome, and whilst Anna Karenina has a rather a tragic ending, Tolstoy tells an enthralling story that reveals much about the lives of a small, but fictional group, who are members the upper echelons of Russian society. The principal characters flit between city life in  St Petersburg and Moscow, before heading off to their estates in the country, and the life of one of the key players is said to reflect that of Tolstoy himself who, whilst a Count and landed gentleman, was someone who cared deeply about the countryside, and the people who lived and worked on his estate.

Despite its length, I found Anna Karenina easy to read, and this is largely thanks to the efforts of the two translators who corroborated on this latest edition of the novel. The only real difficultly I found was dealing with the names of the characters; a situation complicated by the Russian custom of having both  formal, and familiar version of their names. In addition several of the female cast, followed the convention that was in vogue at the time, of adopting anglicized versions of their names. Thus Katrina is known as Kitty, Darya is known as Dolly, and Elizaveta is referred to as Betsy, but only to their immediate families and close friends.

The other book I took with me is not a novel, but instead is an informative volume about beer – naturally. It was a Christmas present and is a publication that came highly recommended. Entitled “A Year in Beer - The Beer Lover's Guide to the Seasons," the book is written by Jonny Garrett, a London-based beer writer, author and filmmaker, who has picked up numerous awards for his work. One of these was for UK Beer Writer of the Year 2019.

Being back home, and back to work as well, I'm making slow progress, but the book is well laid out and, as its title suggests, follows the changing seasons, and the influence they have on the beers that are brewed and those that are drunk. Somewhat surprisingly, the season it starts with is winter, primarily because this coincides with the start of the year.

I'm drawing this post to an end now, as I'm sure you will appreciate I've got a book to read and it's getting close to my bedtime!

 

An old laptop reveals its secrets

 

I took my old laptop with me on the cruise. It’s a rather dated Toshiba Satellite model, which runs on Windows 7. It belonged to my late mother, and I remember her asking me, before she went into hospital, whether I wanted it. I said "no" at the time, but after she passed away my sisters and I were sorting through various effects of hers, and the subject of ownership of mum’s laptop, came up.

This time I said “yes,” especially as neither of my siblings expressed any interest.  I also thought it would come in handy for blogging activities. I soon discovered though, that it was extremely slow – something to do with not having sufficient RAM – computer geeks please advise! I plodded on with it, and even took it with me when I attended the 2016 Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference, which took place that year in Amsterdam. Regrettably 2016 turned out to be the last such conference, in Europe at least. A combination of rising costs and dwindling attendances meant such events were no longer viable. 

The conferences continued for several more years, in the United States, and I attended the one that was held in 2018. Loudon County, Virginia was a great location to host such a conference, with some really good beers and equally good places in which to drink them. I was equipped with a laptop again, but it was a different one that I purchased from a work colleague. He was something of a computer geek, and the instrument he sold me was a Hewlett Packard machine that he had refurbished. 

It was certainly much faster than my mother’s laptop, and everything seemed fine until it meant with an unfortunate accident. In the autumn of 2018, and just a few months after my Virginia trip, the family and I were staying at a Premier Inn, in Bingley, West Yorkshire, when after somewhat carelessly leaving the machine on the edge of a chair in our hotel room, the laptop slid off and landed with a bit of a clump on one of its corners.

The impact shattered one of the protective corners of the casing, and whilst it seemed to have done little else in the way of harm, it soon became obvious that it had. All sorts of weird, random things started happening, including the system shutting down without warning. I asked my colleague to take a look and the diagnosis was a problem with the hard drive. Unfortunately the problem was terminal, and eventually the machine just died.

So, to cut a long story short, this is why I’m sitting here tapping away on a laptop that’s probably over 10 years old. But old technology can sometimes prove superior over new, as I’m not the only member of the Bailey family to have experienced problems with a laptop – Matthew gave up on them after a couple of total system crashes, when he was a student, and Mrs PBT’s is now on her umpteenth model.

This rather long-winded pre-amble brings me onto the main topic of this post, which is the surprising things you can find on an old computer. As mentioned above, I took this particular laptop to the Netherlands, for the 2016 European Beer Writer’s Conference, and I stumbled upon several part-written posts, that are particularly interesting.

Unfortunately none are complete, which is a real shame, as several of them read as though they would have been really interesting. The trouble is, my memory is not it once was, especially after a gap of six years, so unless I can find the notes I made at the time, I will be unable to finish these pieces. I might be able to cobble something together from the multitude of photos I took at the time, but there will still be gaps, and if it’s facts and figures you are looking for, then there is little chance of accuracy.

So what are these partially completed posts, and are any of them still relevant six years down the line? Two of them relate to presentations given by a couple of beer-writing luminaries, in the persons of Tim Webb and Martyn Cornell. Tim is best known these days for his knowledge and writing on the beers, breweries and bars of Belgium, along with the various guides he has produced on this niche. Martyn is an extremely knowledgeable and highly respected, beer historian – again with a several books and numerous articles published under his name. 

Looking at what is saved on my laptop, Tim’s talk is salvageable-or at least the gist of it is, but unfortunately only a couple of paragraphs of Martyn Cornell’s talk exist, so we will have to kiss this one goodbye. There are also two brewery-related posts, concerning Jopen and De Molem breweries, which we visited as part of the 2016 EBBC weekend. Both companies acted as very generous hosts – both beer and food-wise.

With regard to these two breweries, I noticed that I had published a detailed write-up on the blog, of our visit to Jopen Brewery, but apart from a very short mention, I can find nothing about the trip we made out to De Molem. That excursion took place on the Sunday, after the conference had finished, and although I wrote up the beginnings of an article I’m not sure there is sufficient material to finish it. 

 I will give it a go though, as the photos I took at the time are probably sufficient to jog my memory and fill in the missing pieces. Watch this space, and to all those wishing to write off old computer equipment, just remember, "an old laptop won’t ever let you down!"