Number Seventy News

A quintet of eating and drinking houses.  The Lamb and Lion at Bootham Bar strikes me as gloomy, more bare wood than I ideally like, and an unimaginative lunchtime menu. c.f. The Guy Fawkes, reviewed a few weeks ago, which is much nicer.

Lo Spuntino on Blossom Street - cheap and cheerful Italian. Good variety.

Meltons Too. A favourite, well revamped. Good locally sourced food nicely presented. One waiter didn’t know how to pour wheat beer.

The Brigantes, Micklegate.  Wonderful range of beers, and they do know how to pour a wheat beer.  Good pub food. Particularly excellent chips. Their fish is good too.

York Spice.  The best Indian restaurant I’ve ever been in. The food does all taste different.  I love the Macher Jhool - fish curry, and the pasanda is good too.  Maybe I prefer Kingfisher to Cobra, but they have the latter on draught.

Have I ever mentioned the Exhibition on Bootham.  It’s on the pseudo-Victorian plush end of decor but always has at least one real ale, usually two, and does exceptionally good, if conventional, pub food.

So, actually, it’s six.

Before I forget, I should say that the Black Swan has Skipton Brewery’s Copper Dragon on tap - delicious golden stuff.

Tom McConville is an Iriish Geordie, which takes the more extreme edges off both caricatures and ends up with a really warm humorous presentation.  He plays a wonderful lively fiddle and sings some great songs - a wonderful version of “Beeswing” sticks in the aural memory particularly.  A pity the room wasn’t as packed as it was for Chris Wood last week; to my mind Tom is just as good.  David Newey must be 40 years younger than Tom.  He plays a very unassuming guitar, respectful of what Tom’s up to, and with some accomplished solos.

Ah, the West Riding !  All that Pennine weather. Actually pleasant enough for autumn as we wound into Wharfedale, stopping at the Wharfedale Inn at Arthington for Black Sheep and Fish and Chips (and mushy peas, of course).  But heading up from Keighley pst Haworth and Oxenhope - a glimpse of smoke down in the valley from the K&WVR - on the roads which gradually climb the contours along the side of the valley, fringed by millstone grit walls, we found deteriorating weather.  We entered the clouds and lost the scenery, except for 100yards of bleak and treeless moor on either side, and the occasional totally isolated row of cottages about which the only possible question is “why?”  But as we came over the top into Calderdale through the mist ahead appeared Heptonstall church tower, grey against a grey landscape and cloudscape.  Fortunately, once we got up to Heptonstall the rain was intermittent, although the grey clouds racing across the top of the valleys gave no hope of sunshine.  Noticed that the Methodist Chapel had numerous umbrella racks.  Also that Sylvia Plath’s grave in the overflow churchyard is sadly neglected, though a few wilted sunflowers and collection of plastic Venus of Willendorf nestled amongst the grass and weeds.  Out beyond the village onto the ridge and then dropped down to find Lumb Bank.  Hughes and Plath had a splendid view from there, in whatever weather, and even on such a grey day the turning leaves were a splendid sight.  Up an old stone trackand further along the ridge then via the hamlet of Slack to the other side where a wood-edge path above a precipitous drop led us back to Heptonstall.  

After tea and cake at Milly’s cafe in Mytholmroyd to the Ted Hughes Theatre at Mytholmroyd school, where Ian Duhig and Anthony Thwaite were reading.  Hadn’t expected to like Ian Duhig’s work much, and didn’t, though he reads much better than he used to, and had deliberately chosen poems which were fairly accessible on first hearing. But any poem which needs a longer introduction than poem is not really trying to be accessible.

And Anthony Thwaite was a disappointment.  He’d chosen to read only personal autobiographical poems but none of them seemed to rise beyond the specific to the universal, nor did they attempt to.  Rather a thin offering, like the day’s Pennine rain.  At least Ted Hughes had some guts to his poems.

Young’s Hotel, which used to provide a mean lunchtime curry back in the 70s, served by two ancient women, possibly twins, who stomped about the place from kitchen to table complaining loudly about customers and their own poor feet, has transformed itself into the Guy Fawkes Hotel.  It has long claimed to be on the site of GF’s birth, though this has been disputed, but only by a hundred yards or so.  It now has some cosy drinking rooms, a real fire or two, and a good selection of real ales.  Rudgates Viking was good on our visit.  The lunchtime menu had some variety also - I had faggots for the first time, which in this instance clearly included liver. As I had never had faggots before, I can’t tell you where they were on a scale of 1-10, as faggots go, but they were very acceptable, especially with mushy peas.  I can’t remember if GF was burned or hung, but I hope faggots weren’t involved.

So, the pedallers 2008 season came to an end a few weeks ago with a very gentle ride first to the Fox and Roman, which does good food judging by the well-filled and swiftly emptied plates of two of our number, but where the choice of drinkable beers was not great. (Better, however, than the Black Bull on Hull Road which has an impressive array of shiny pumps selling nothing one would want to buy, or drink). But off into the dark of the night and through the utter blackness of Knavesmire Wood, faith and the trusty dynamo showing but a short way ahead, and into Bishopthorpe, where I have already forgotten the name of the pub (could it have been the Woodman?) but which did have drinkable beer and a pleasing not too crowded ambiance. (I seem to remember the decor was striking in some way - but not necessarily a positive one).  And so via the Millenium Bridge to the safe haven of the Welly, where we were joined by those for whom even such a modest excursion is too much to contemplate, and where the Sam Smiths went down very nicely and cheaply.  Watch this space for reports of the pedestrian season, starting after the clocks go back. 

Katy M at the Black Swan folk club this time - stretching “folk” a bit maybe, more country I would have said - but she has a vigorous delivery, pays a mean guitar that sounds like it’s a bass (some musician will know the technical term for that) and looks like Piaf might have looked at her age if it wasn’t for the booze and the drugs and the other nasties.  Like most country singers, Katy’s dog hadn’t come home from the movies, which makes for a jolly evening of train wrecks, car smashes and marital infidelity.  The last number in the second set though (before encores) was “The Highwayman”  (Phil Ochs out of Alfred Noyes).  It’s such a wonderful song, so full of evocative images, a beautiful tune, and for me, lots of memories of evenings with friends at University - a few years ago now (over 30).  Katy sang it beautifully.

Briefly, we were enchanted by North Norfolk.  Not only the North Norfolk railway, which completes the landscape just like a railway should, but also the wide marshscapes of Blakeney, the rich woodlands, the fine country houses, and the excellent pubs and pub food. And most of it isn’t flat. !  PS - saw avocets for the first time, and a barn owl hunting towards the end of the afternoon.

By what serendipitous telepathy I know not, but something told me to head to Elvington and Sutton on Derwent via Heslington, rather than cut across to Murton after leaving yet another tedious evening meeting at the office.  A light summer drizzle was falling so I had donned the much abused and down-at-brim Tilly hat as protection.  Now, at 8.45 or so, one would expect the Portland Street Pedallers to have moved on swiftly from their first port of call and be cosily ensconced in the second, so my glance into the beer garden of the Charles XII was intended to be no more than that. However, sheltering from the barely noticeable drizzle, there were the pedallers, getting in another pint. Anything, even the negligible charms of the Charles, to keep them from the damp and the prospect of a further few miles in the balmy and by this time extremely pleasant evening air.  So we huddled there amongst the student masses, who clearly have either no taste or no ability to get off their backsides to find a decent pub, until we agreed to pootle across the Stray to the Wellington, where it was a relief to find a well-kept pint and a bar full of real people.

Cognoscenti amongst my readers will note that this hardly qualifies as an evenings cycling (even taking into account advancing age and infirmity).  Perhaps our highest aim should be to breach the ring road.  Onward !

What a delight a May evening can be ! Especially after staying late at the office for a meeting of the Audit Committee, surely one of life’s non-pleasures, but heigh-ho, we still need the bacon.

So off into the north-westering sun and a serendipitous rendezvous with the rest of the peloton outside Moorlands, where the rhododendrons were not yet out. A short ride between burgeoning hedgerows to the Jacobean, a quite undistinguished building pretending it was once a royal hunting lodge and with only one acceptable ale - Last Drop. The inside of the pub is quite plush, even over-stuffed, but outside in the smokers shelter on the verandah (not because we had any smokers with us but it seemed a shame to miss the birdsong and the 15% waxing moon) there were some relatively comfortable cast iron chairs and benches.  (Inside there had also been some local boors who probably do a lot to curtail trade).

Off to the west on the ride back towards the city the horizon red and smoky - and the air rapidly cooling.  So after navigating the shopping-trolley-booby-trapped underpass at the A19/ring road junction some of us were ready to settle into the fake rustic charms of the Dormouse - only to be encouraged outside by someone who wanted a ciggy.  Real rustic coolth out there, gazing at the ersatz 19th century terrace (c.2002).  

The Portland Street Pedallers set out in search of the original pickled egg once again !  A modest start, taking in the Deramore at Heslington, which I missed, but then I found the intrepid foursome sitting outside the Blacksmiths at Naburn, discouraging the ducks and glimpsing the first bats of the season. The beer was good enough, although I can’t remember what it was.

Then off to the Selby-York cycle path, the traditional stop on Naburn (former) swing bridge where the trellised fisherman had got his catch tangled round his rod, and a leisurely spin back to the homely comforts of the Golden Ball, where a pint of well-kept Deuchars, a comfy chair, and the sound of live blues from the public bar were about all a chap could wish for out on a Thursday night.  If the Golden Ball were the only pub around one would never feel the need to go anywhere else.