Ben Welsher | Writings

Pub review They say: "This has been my local pub for over 7 years now and I've unfortunately visited a few times because I keep thinking it must have got better. Sadly it never does. It is an abysmal dive of a pub with the most miserable, surly staff I've ever had the misfortune of meeting. My advice would be to go literally anywhere else." --Florence 1/5 I say: A Wetherspoon. In Bridgwater. The only surprise about this is that it is the only one out of the 35 pubs on my list. With the economies of scale the company can bring to bear I would imagine they'd corner a market like Bridgwater. They have a beer on the handpulls for 99p, not far from off I'm sure but you get half cut on that stuff for the price of one beer in London. Hell you could get 3 pints of it for the same price as a Carling even in this place. But, as I look around, it seems to not be a deal that anyone wants to take. Carling to the left of me, Stella to the right, here I am sipping my st...

A cool, hazy morning sunlight illuminates the landscape as it plunges into valleys and rolls up into ridges. Red-tiled houses with tiny personal vineyards that have been carved into the slopes billow up white smoke here and there from burning piles of prunings. The leaves of the vines are starting to wear their funeral colours but November in the Douro is still verdant in the main. The vineyards soon turn more commercial in size though they too stand quiet, browning at the edges, the work done for the year. The train chugs through them and they ebb and flow on both sides broken by scatterings of buildings. Wispy groups of tall and elegant maritime pines look down beneficently on the shorter trees huddled around their base. The train stops at empty stations in quiet towns about which the tour guide sat behind offers superlatives to his curious guests. "This town has a large hospital" - thrilling stuff. We hurtle through a tunnel, the noise and reverberations of the old carri...