Leon Likes Velcro Dogs

 Last Wednesday, in pretty impromptu fashion, we headed over to Manchester for the evening to spend time with WiOrca. He’s an Ottawa based fur who happened to be in the city with work, only finding out a few days before his scheduled arrival. With the weekend being busy, a weeknight was all we could do so we planned one evening in Manchester and a further evening in Leeds, slated for last Friday. Alas, he ended up having meetings at work which stretched on to 10pm so we had to cancel, but at least we got to meet in Manchester.

 

I got the stopping service from Leeds to Manchester, with Wolfie getting on at New Pudsey. The train was absolutely rammed pulling out of Leeds, but I did manage to nab a seat, which was more than Wolfie managed to do when he embarked. Still, by the time we had gotten to Halifax, the train had started to clear and the carriage resembled something respectable. The rest of the journey went pretty smoothly and once at Victoria, it didn’t take too long to meet up with Orca who was slumped on one of the benches near the toilets. I then text Patter to enquire where he was, discovering to little surprise that he was in the station bar. We therefore met him there, waited while he finished his pint and then headed off towards the Northern Quarter, where we know the best bars are.

 

Our plan was to go to the Cloudwater taproom, having wanted to go there for a while, but they do not serve food so we dropped in on Pie and Ale, a real ale pub we discovered when out with my sister last year. We hadn’t tried the pies there before so this seemed a good place to stop, not least because it was halfway between the station and Cloudwater. This turned out to be an excellent choice, with the pies being particularly fantastic, with my four cheese one being exceptionally creamy. We also grabbed a sample tray from here - three thirds for £4.20 which represented exceptional value. Orca is a drinker and a member of the Brew Crew so it certainly was a good place to start as we got to sample three Halloween styled ales along with some tasty food.

 

It was then on to Cloudwater, which is situated on an industrial estate down one of the darker sides of Piccadilly station. We hadn’t been down here before and in the rain and darkness of an October evening it was a little bit spooky, particularly as there was no one particularly down here. Even at the address it was a bit eerie as we struggled to locate the bar and spent a lot of time wandering between a Parcel Force parking area full of red vans and a Toolstation. The bar, as it turned out, was on the first floor of a 1970s office building with Lino stairs, wooden banisters and everything you would expect of such drabness. And yet when you got to the mezzanine level, the whole place opens out, with a stage in one corner, a bar in the other and a warehouse full of aging barrels below. The staff here were particularly friendly and spent a lot of time discussing the Manchester beer scene with us, telling us about a list they have compiled of all the best places in the city. It was in the Cloudwater gift shop downstairs and they offered to get it for us, although they did admit that I knew most of the places anyway. I’ll admit, as did they, that in previous years Cloudwater were known for their dIPAs and little else but they have since started to diversify. To be fair, the two sours that we tried along with a 12% bourbon beer were all exquisite and a definite highlight of the year. It was great being in this airy bar with great staff, showing Orca one of the best bars in the UK. 

 

Indeed it was a shame that the place shut at 10pm but with our last train shortly before 11pm this may have been no bad thing. However, we still had to traverse the Northern Quarter again and the Cloudwater staff reminded me that Leeds’s own Northern Monk had just opened a bar in the city. As this was on our way back to Victoria station and we had a spare half hour we thought it remiss not to try it, so we headed back to pretty much where we had been before, finding it amongst the converted warehouses. This bar was not as good as its Leeds equivalent at the brewery but they had an excellent range of beers, with a few we hadn’t tried. We even bought a few cans too including the Dark City Collab and Don’t Mess With Manchester, brews we tried on the train down to London on Sunday. Sat in deck chairs near the main entrance, it was a great way to wind down the evening before we regrettably had to make our way back to our train. Patter stayed behind with Orca for a while, seeing him back to his hotel while we made it home shortly after midnight after a quick trip to ASDA where we ended up helping a guy push start his car. It was a great evening and it was good to see Manchester is doable after work, albeit one with a slightly late finish. Still, it’s something we should do again.

 

So I mentioned that Friday we had intended to go out with Orca and a few others in Leeds but he had to bail. This saw us at something of a loose end, particularly as I had opted to work from home to try and accommodate this plan. With Wolfie getting back and me finishing work around 7pm, we realised that we didn’t have any food in the house. Wolfie suggested that we go to a new place in Pudsey called “feed”, which had just taken over the pizza parlour opposite East. I was a little unsure, wanting to save money, but Wolfie convinced me to at least check it out so we strolled down there to take a look. With no menu outside, we decided to walk in, where we were met by an incredibly enthusiastic Geordie who turned out to be the general manager. He welcomed us to the restaurant along with a nice lady and upon ascertaining there were a few unreserved tables, he guided us to our seat. Looking at the menu, the prices were a little higher than I would have liked but we were here now and there was one beer we hadn’t tried. Upon inspecting their beer fridge however, the lady told us about a Chinese beer they randomly had from a tasting the owner had been to previously. This looked interesting as it wasn’t even listed in Untappd so they kindly let us have one for free. Some frantic googling didn’t turn up much about the beer although we did find out it was a supermarket own brand for the Phoenix chain that operates out of 46 cities. For a standard ale beer, this was quite exceptional with a sweet malty aftertaste and their mainstream house lager wasn’t bad either. This kinda sold us and so we decided to get some food - opting for the strip steak with sides of potato and carrots. What we didn’t realise was that the head chef here had worked in the Michelin starred restaurant The Man Behind the Curtain and had exported some of the philosophy here. Suddenly the prices were exceptional as was the food - some of the best I have ever eaten in my life. The steak came with long mushrooms and a sweet sauce while the feta cheese with the carrots was such a fantastic combination that I wish we could have had more. The roast potato with sweet potato mash was also fantastic and with fantastic indie tune after indie tune belting out - Nirvana, Kaiser Chiefs etc - we felt right at home. We even opted for a cheeseboard with three cheeses full of flavour with warm bread. The staff were delighted we were able to shed more light on their Chinese beer while we were rapt about having such high quality food literally down the road for £30 each. Even the bathroom with its pink toilet roll and graffitied messages on the white tiles added a character to the place, a place to which we will definitely return.  

A Problem In Ukraine

 Sunday was a pretty lazy day, at least until the evening when we had to catch a train to London ahead of our trip to Armenia. Patter has stayed over after Damnation, so it was a leisurely morning of tea, eggs and bagels before he headed off around lunchtime. This gave us time to do odds and sods around the house, not to mention pack, ahead of catching a bus at around 4:30pm. We were lucky we had got an earlier one as upon reaching the first floor, we noticed one of the windows had been staved in, with the glass all fractured but still largely hanging together. This state of affairs didn’t last long though, as the potholed roads forced the glass to shake free through its vibrations, with strains and cracking sounds highlighting its distress. By the time we got to the Gamecock, half of the window was out and we needed to get a replacement bus, which fortunately was only twenty minutes behind us. This made it tighter to catch our train but we did manage to get it, reaching our assigned seats just before the train departed.

 

These were table seats and sat on the same table near the windows were two guys who we quickly discerned had gone to Damnation too. Cue a two and a half hour conversation with them about a range of things, not least the festival itself, which was their first. Indeed it was their first ever time in Leeds and they were quite impressed, although I don’t think they went to the best places, including The Picture House which is quite a dive. They did enjoy rock bar Bad Apples though, a place we hadn’t visited for a while. It was good to hear they are likely to be coming back to Damnation again and I managed to obtain their contact details, largely to send them a link to this journal with its entries on Malta as one of them is planning a visit there in December. While we were chatting, Wolfie and I shared a few beers from our fridge - the two we had picked up in Northern Monk Manchester on Wednesday alongside a couple we had bought while down in Devon a few weeks back but which we hadn’t had chance to drink. Alas we had gotten through these with an hour of the journey still remaining so we had to resort to the train bar and Stella. I initially only wanted one but there was a two for £6 offer, so I accepted that without inquiring about the individual price. I’m such a sucker for these things.

 

The train journey passed surprisingly quickly, even as it was delayed, and once alighting at Kings Cross we said goodbye to our new metal friends. One of them was heading to Croydon, our ultimate destination, and I felt a bit sad we couldn’t go with him but we had plans to visit the new Brewdog in Canary Wharf and pick up our 42nd stamp. This saw us skid-arse down to Bank on the Northern line then the DLR to the City, getting off at Canary Wharf station and immediately getting lost inside one of the grand office buildings, which was bedecked in marble. Fortunately the kingly security guard led us out and pointed us the way, but the tall skyscrapers, all fantastically lit up in the darkness was playing havoc with our GPS and we spent quite a while wandering aimlessly. Still, this did enable us to see a scarcely used ice rink and a poignant WWI memorial which consisted of various metal pillars with different battles written upon them and a different helmet sat atop each one. This forest of rusted beams was quite moving and was an excellent tribute ahead of the hundredth anniversary of the cessation of hostilities this weekend.

 

We eventually found the Brewdog, around the corner and over a small man-made river. It turned out we had taken a wrong turn one block away from it, hence the subsequent pissing about. It sits in the imposing shadow of the Barclays building and I was surprised it was open on a Sunday in all honesty. The bar staff, the vast majority of whom being Australian for some reason, confirmed this too but did say it’s heaving on a weekday albeit with people who are after lager and little else. Still, they are trying to convert them to craft beer slowly. The beer range was good although there were only two we hadn’t tried, including one from Leeds-based brewers Northern Monk which was somewhat ironic. There was a London Brew we had too though and we obtained the stamp, which is what we wanted. We were delighted to see the beer vending machine in the beer garden, available 24/7 one would assume, along with the reader for Cybernaut which determines its price variation in line with the performance of the FTSE. Alas this only changes daily and not hourly or by the minute, but it’s a nice gimmick. The bar was incredibly quiet, as you would expect, but we did enjoy our hour here before getting lost again as we tried to find Canary Wharf Jubilee Line Station. We did discover it just in time though and boarded a train to London Bridge and then East Croydon, where due to the absence of buses we got a taxi to our hotel in Thornton Heath.

 

We had chosen Croydon as it was a convenient stopping off point for Gatwick Airport, which is where we were due in the morning. It was just a shame that the ibis Styles was so far out of the centre. Still, there was a convenient direct bus, the 64, that we managed to use successfully the next morning meaning we got back to Easy Croydon and Gatwick Airport in plenty of time. I hadn’t realised just how big Croydon is, with trams as well as all the usual transport links. It definitely felt a major part of London and with its pop up restaurants and box parks around the station, it had an affluent bohemian feel to it. We had hoped to go to a bar or two in the evening but time was such that made it impossible on a Sunday. We had hoped to get a sandwich at the hotel, not having had dinner, but they had stopped serving and the bar was closed too. We therefore had to settle for a takeaway that they highly recommended although I personally thought the pizza somewhat doughy. The garlic sauce was exquisite though and it was great chilling and watching Taskmaster after a long day.

 

After a modest complimentary continental breakfast, getting out the next morning proved pretty straightforward and with the regularity of both the trains and buses, we actually made Gatwick earlier than expected. This was to be a bad thing as after we had sat down in Jamie’s Diner and had ordered one of two bottles of beer we had not yet tried, news filtered through that the flight was delayed by 25 minutes. With a two and a half hour layover in Kiev ahead of a flight to Yerevan, this didn’t cause much alarm and we filed into our gate pretty much on time. It was here though that things started going awry, with a technical fault initially delaying us for a further half hour, which then became an additional hour after that. The staff were quite poor in telling us what was going on and I did y fancy spending any more time in the dirtiest filthiest airport I had ever visited. Alas by 2:30pm, over two hours after our scheduled departure time, we were sent back to the terminal building with the potential of some food vouchers and a rough time of 3:30pm for boarding. Both came, with us having to wait in a fifteen minute queue to get our paltry £10 voucher each. Considering there were no main meals below about £12 in price, we did have to stump up the remainder but upon explaining our situation the restaurant were exceptional, delivering our meals inside six minutes and letting us pay in advance so we could just leave whenever the flight was ready to board. With just forty minutes between getting the voucher and when we were told boarding was likely to be, this proved to be most helpful and we gladly gave a significant tip.

 

Boarding did commence around 3:30pm but it wasn’t until 4:45pm that we took off, making this the second worst delay of my life (the first also coming with Ukraine International Airlines in 2011). This meant we were over four hours late into Kiev and this had missed our flight to Yerevan. Upon arrival in the Ukrainian capital after a long but eventless flight, we went to the International Transfer Desk who told us they had booked us in on the 10:15am departure the next day, Tuesday. This meant we had an unscheduled evening in Kiev so after passing border control, with one of the nicest customs officers with whom I’ve ever dealt, we went to the second floor desk of Ukrainian Airlines as instructed and got our hotel information. We were to be staying in the Hotel Liguna in Borispol itself, the town after which the airport is named. It was a shame it was already past 10pm as we do know a couple of furs in Kiev and it would have been good to have met up. Alas with no plan confirmed until so late and by the fact we had another half hour wait just to get the bus to the hotel, meeting up would have been impossible. As we were waiting, we met some of the seven other inconvenienced travelers who would be staying in the same hotel too. There were a couple of Irish guys going on holiday to Dnipro while we also met Tony, who works in Armenia on a number of internet projects. He’s a regular traveler to the country so was full of useful tips and advice, and he was interested to hear why we had chosen the country as a holiday destination. As well as speaking to him in the airport, we also chatted to him over dinner, which the hotel had generously provided to us at 11:30pm. I had forgotten how much I love Ukrainian food and the fact the hotels here just give you whatever’s on their menu and if you don’t like it, tough. We had a nice lukewarm soup and chicken with noodles, with Obolon the beer of choice. Over dinner we also met Tim, who works in the oil and gas industry in the region. He was interested I had a degree in geology and the meal with our new friends turned out to be a pleasant way to end a rather wasted day.

 

With a 10:15am departure, we decided to err on the side of caution and get the 7:30am bus from the hotel, hoping not to be too inconvenienced by the rush hour. So it proved on a bitterly cold and foggy morning, although the five hours of sleep was a bit of a kicker, not least because for a lot of the evening there were a number of strange clanking noises coming from right outside our room. We got the opportunity to take pictures of the rather drab brown soviet interior of our spa hotel, along with the interesting Georgian restaurant located in a wooden hut to one side. I’m not sure why the hotel was built and to whom it caters, it being in a non-descript town a half hour outside of Kiev. We also got to see some of Borispol too, a typical Ukrainian town of Soviet tower blocks and little shops lining the main boulevard. It was all very typical and served to highlight just how much I miss this part of the world. The bus journey was reasonably swift and we spent some more time with Tim and Tony, leaving them to check their bags in as we proceeded through security as we just had hand luggage. We were to see them again in the queue as we boarded out flight after we had spent a rather dull hour and a half just waiting. At least though there were no delays and we would finally get to see Yerevan, albeit fifteen hours later than we had anticipated.