Another restaurant go-to!
I had this in an Italian restaurant last night. Fairly ubiquitous; fairly similar to Magners (maybe a bit drier). Perfectly good cider, but not particularly exciting.
Category: Drinking
2018 Ciders #21: El Gaitero
Geth and I went to our favourite tapas restaurant with my parents last night, which meant an appropriately Spanish drink:
The restaurant was dark and my camera flash was acting funny, hence the terrible photo, but that is Asturian cider! I can’t pour it from three feet high in the air like the waiters do in Asturias, but I gave it a good go from six or seven inches so it could breathe a bit. It’s not quite as good as the stuff you get in sidra land, but it was very tasty and went extremely well with my tortilla española.
Phone Box Thursday: Waverley Bridge, Edinburgh
While visiting home for Burns Night in January 2016, I took a photo of the phone box outside Waverley train station, which was looking sad, neglected and stuck in the middle of a building site:
I was a bit worried that the phone box wouldn’t be long for this world, as there seemed to be something new being built on the site. But! Lo and behold, the ‘something new’ turned out to be a Wetherspoon (isn’t it always?), and when I went in with Geth and my friend Sharpy for a pre-train pint in July of that year, guess what had taken pride of place in the beer garden?
(Coordinates 55°95’18.4″N, 3°19’17.9″W.)
I really like the way that the Wetherspoon designers have made a lovely feature out of this phone box, showcasing the beers that you can buy in the pub. Another way to maintain old unused phone boxes!
(Update April 2022: I’ve added coordinates for this box, and the Google Street View clock slider is one of the best I’ve seen in terms of showing the timeline of a place – lots of pictures from between 2009 and 2021! Apparently the Wetherspoon isn’t the first pub garden it’s been part of…)
2018 Ciders #20: Kingstone Press Classic Apple
I went for Easter lunch with the in-laws on Sunday, and so was able to enjoy a new cider alongside the pretty seasonal table display:
This was a nice light cider, fairly medium dry. Quite similar to Strongbow in taste and I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing it in pubs more often. Apparently they do other flavours as well, so I’ll have to look out for those!
2018 Ciders #19: Thistly Cross Real Ginger
There was a couple of years where Geth and I were having a lot of trouble tracking down Thistly Cross Real Ginger, which is our favourite of the Thistly Cross varieties. They sell it at Tebay service station, but we only ever have cause to go there when we’re travelling with my parents (it’ll be a different story when we have our own car, but that hasn’t been the case up till now). However, recently a new beer and cider shop opened at Newcastle Central train station, Centrale, which sells every single variety of Thistly Cross (among many other tasty, tasty things). As such, I pick up a bottle every time I happen to be in the train station.
I’ve always loved this one. The ginger taste is really sharp and tangy, and it goes so well in a cider that I’m amazed I’ve not seen it by any other brand. They’d have to work pretty hard to beat the Thistly Cross version though. Probably in my top three ciders of all time.
2018 Ciders #18: Thatchers Stan’s Cheddar Valley
Geth and I went for a slightly ill-fated Maundy Thursday pint the other night – our favourite pub was absolutely rammed, so I started to feel ill and had to leave without finishing my second drink, which was Stowford Press, already logged. I did, however, enjoy my first, which was a rough cider I’d not tried before – Cheddar Valley, one of Thatchers’ ‘Stan’s’ line.
It was a nice change to have a rough cider – I usually only drink those in the summer – even if the taste of this one was a little dry for my liking. I’m interested to try the other ciders in the ‘Stan’s’ range now.
2018 Ciders #17: Strongbow Original
I’ve been drinking Strongbow for the last couple of weeks, since I ran out of the Thistly Cross my parents brought down from Edinburgh, but it’s something I drink so often I’d assumed I’d already logged it. Apparently not, however, so let me rectify that now.
Strongbow is my standard home drinking go-to (and often a pub go-to as well – if it’s the type of pub where there’s only one cider available, it’ll almost always be Strongbow), as it’s always cheap and available in supermarkets. It’s what I consider the ‘baseline’ for cider – it’s a very generic taste, ubiquitous for as long as I can remember (even back in the ’90s when cider was still seen as a bit of a hobo drink, before it became semi-classy in the ’00s with the introduction of Magners and Bulmers and the irritating move to serving it over ice). Perfectly tasty and refreshing, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Retail therapy
I’ve been buying a lot of stuff the last few weeks. At first it was all house stuff, but lately it’s been mostly treats for me. New clothes for my almost-at-target figure! New makeup for my new makeup storage unit! New shoes (quite a lot of new shoes) for…uh, they’re not for anything in particular, I just love shoes.
I mentioned before that I always feel a bit guilty if I go on a spending spree, but I’ve found it difficult to resist these last few weeks. It’s mainly because I’ve been carrying out a ruthless cull of my entire wardrobe and so the state of this particular collection is always on my mind at the moment. Post-cull, the gaps in my wardrobe are far more apparent, and there are a few areas (underwear, jeans, skirts) where I genuinely do need to buy new things.
I’m not delusional enough to think that’s the case with the shoes, obviously. But I did get rid of an awful lot in the cull, and shoes are pretty, and shoe shopping makes me feel better at the end of a difficult day. I’m very aware that I’ll need to replace this habit with something less expensive soon. Seeing as I can’t go back to binge-drinking now that I’m (sort of) healthy and slim, I imagine it’ll be baths, especially as the bath in our new house is so awesome. I just have to hope I don’t develop a ‘luxury bathing products’ obsession instead, although in fairness it would be cheaper than shoes. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks.
2018 Ciders #16: Thistly Cross Whisky Cask
Due to spending the second week of my Christmas holiday in Edinburgh not drinking much (partly due to an alarmingly big gain at Slimming World after the first week and partly because my brain wasn’t coping with the booze very well, hence my decision to do Dry January), when I left to go home to Newcastle there was still a large undrunk quantity of the Thistly Cross cider that my parents had bought in preparation for my visit. They kindly brought some of it down with them when they visited earlier this month, which was highly appreciated.
Whisky Cask is my second favourite of the Thistly Cross varieties (and would probably be top if Ginger weren’t so rare and hard to find). The whisky taste is gorgeous and really gives the cider a delicious richness. I’m not a huge fan of whisky itself but I love this. One of my all-time favourites.