Face Of Cheam

Went on holiday recently. Had a couple of days in the welsh resort of Llandudno followed by a night in Chester. Llandudno is a lovely place, a bit on the small side, but has a good beach and a pier. It also has the Great Orme, a high mountain looking over the Irish Sea. You could get a tram or cable car up there, I did the former, and have a great view and enjoy some solitude. Typically in the centre that is up there, there is a bar named after the boxer, Randolph Turpin. There were a few nice bars in the main town, The Cottage Loaf, being the pick of them, not only because there was a very nice looking barmaid. It reminded me of a country pub in some ways and a nice way to spend an evening. Besides the pubs and seaside amusements, you could walk down the Great Orme through some very picturesque gardens and look over the West side of the place.
My first impression of Chester was the two big shopping centres. Everyone, and I mean everyone, looked like they could be on Hollyoaks. Sadly this trend did not last through to the evening. The most pleasant pub here I found was the Frog And Nightingale, a music pub that overlooks the canal. As I was exploring Chester’s nightlife I didn’t stay for the music part of the evening. However, they appear to have things on most nights so must be popular.
The majority of pubs I found in Chester seemed to be old-style, and would have been very smoky, pre-ban. This is especially true of the ones round the market in Northgate. However to the east of the town, some trendy pubs have opened, all be it the best one being a Revolution, which had Okocim, on draught.
Another weird lager found was the day after at the Last Orders pub, which had Cains Liverpool Lager on draught. Better than Youngs London but not great!
The train journey home meant I had forty minutes in Crewe meaning I ould go to another pub called Last Orders. This was very much a family place, indeed I gave my £1.80 for my Carlsberg to a eight year old behind the bar as his dad poured it! It did have the cricket on with Anderson and Sidebottom bowling very well without reward.
As soon as I returned home, I was out again, this time to the Camra beer festival at Earls Court. There was a Bowie tribute band providing the entertainment focusing mainly on his seventies highlights, although there were one or two obscure tracks played. Six or seven beers were tried including a South African Pineapple Beer, Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat beer and an ale called Raspberry Belter. Managed to get a couple of new pub guides too, one of which focusing on pubs around Wimbledon Common. The clientele was quite mixed this year with the regular beardy-weirdies to groups of mid-twenty somethings and the odd attractive lady here or there, getting more attractive the longer the evening went on………

Went to Brentford on 4th August for Saints last preseason friendly. Brentford has a pub on each corner of the ground and I managed to frequent all of them before the game. The Griffin is a quiet Fullers pub. It has one TV at a high vantage point which showed the motor racing. An okish type place where I get the feeling the owners hardly ever leave. Done the road was the Royal Oak. Here they had four young barmaids serving. A long pub with plenty of room and a quiz machine near the entrance to the garden or what is now known as the smoking area.
The New Inn was next. An Irish pub with two distinct areas, a small area at the front and a large downstairs area with a couple of dartboards. Again looks like this is run by an old couple. Finally the Princess Royal was last on the list. Two friendly barmaids, both took it in turns to chain smoke in the garden and a nice pint of Fosters. In Brentfords ground they were actually serving small plastic bottles of Fosters at £2.50 a go. Saints fans were put in the upper tier of one end and had a good view. The other terrace opposite used to be sans roof was closed. This was because one roof has now been put on! The game was a fairly typical pre-season affair with Saints winning 1-0 thanks to Saganowski, a good bet for the Championships leading scorer this season in my opinion. Not sure bout our defence though.

Try to keep this as concise as I’m on holiday next week and can’t post during this time. Not that I have much time to post these days.
Since the last blog, I have seen Slade2 supported by the Bay City Rollers on Wimbledon Common in a bizarre location. Been bowling (Two games over a hundred both times) on a work night. Went to Watford, good crawl although fairly average chain-y pubs. Saw The Scorpians at Hammersmith (Superb, everything you would want in a rock show except the nine minute bass and drum solo) and returned to Cheam for a midweek crawl.
Last night I went to the Athletics at Crystal Palace. Hadn’t been for about 15 years and really enjoyed myself. The 100m record was supposed to be under threat but a headwind meant the winning time was only (sic) 10.02 seconds. Great Britain dropped the baton in the stick race!
Am off to Brentford later for my second Saints pre-season friendly (this from a man a few years ago at Wycombe vowed never to go to a pre-season game again!) and then Sunday off to Bedford for an open show involving Status Quo and The Quire Boys (This is rock and roll…….!). Then off to sunny North Wales. Shall let you know what I find there…………..