Linlithgow to Bo'ness: 25th January 2014

It's always good to see pubs and hotels either opening up or being refurbished, not at all an easy or risk-free proposition in these tough economic times. This weekend, on Burns Night (OK, it was actually daytime), I decided to head to Linlithgow and Bo'ness where there were a number of relatively new establishments to have a wander between.


View Linlithgow 2014 in a larger map

Outward travel was as follows:-
  Train: Glasgow Queen Street to Linlithgow (15, 45 on the hour)

It didn't take me long to come to the first of said establishments - at the bottom of the hill from Linlithgow train station I found the restored Star & Garter Hotel. This 18th Century former townhouse & railway workers dormitory was engulfed by fire in 2010, with the interior completely destroyed and really only the shell of the building remaining.

Since then it has gone through an almost £1Million rebuilding & refurbishment and opened (after some teething Council-related issues) last November. As well as the main bar and the updated hotel rooms they've added a more modern coffee shop to the rear of the building.

I went in and really wanted to sit down for lunch and a beer but the 5 hand-pulls were substantially depleted, with only Deuchars IPA and Taylor's Landlord available, so was I going to stay and have lunch ? I decided not; there were too many other options in Linlithgow. However on the way back from Edinburgh the next weekend I stopped off in Linlithgow to try The Star and Garter again. This time they had 4 beers available on the hand-pulls, with Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted and Arran Blond available alongside a couple of Caley beers.

The main area at the front is really quite big with enough space for groups of people standing up at the bar and there's also a large number of tables at the front windows. The left side is quieter and more setup for food, whereas the right side leads off into a smaller section with a number of comfy sofas.

Upstairs there is a small room with a cracking pool table and what was that up on the wall? Only a signed shirt from Liverpool's Steven Gerrard - c'mon The 'Pool!

Their web-site does make reference to a proposed on-site micro-brewery but I'm guessing they want to get established first as a profitable concern before branching out in that direction. On the whole I was impressed about the way the place has been refurbished and I certainly couldn't fault the friendly service. Back on my search for lunch on Burns Night/Day I decided to wander along Linithgow High Street to another newly renovated pub, the Auld Hole In The Wall.

However a quick look through the window here indicated just Deuchars IPA available; so far this wasn't turning out to be that much of a successful trip. I could have gone into The Four Marys, a more than decent Belhaven pub which I'd been into quite often, but decided instead to walk along to the west end of the High Street. By now a mizzly cold rain had started and so I decided that my next and probably final possibility in Linlithgow was going to be the refurbished West Port Hotel. It's now owned by Maclay Inns who had spent £400K on a re-vamp of the place in August.

Again I managed a quick look through one of the windows and although the beer choice didn't seem that great the huge shards of half-frozen rain/sleet coming down drove me inside. It's a very long, narrow place with lots of different seating areas (some separated by frosted screens) and the bar at the very far end. The decor, the stripped back bare walls, the black-and-white pictures and the lighting very much reminded me of another Maclay's place, DRAM! in Glasgow, and I certainly liked the large hanging downlights at the bar.

I took a pint of Taylor's Golden Best (Caley 80/- and Taylor's Landlord were the other choices), a decent light citrusy bitter, ordered from the Burns Night set menu and waited on my main course. The staff were attentive, knew how to seat people and just generally nice and chatty. When it came my haggis, neeps & tatties was a bit of a surprise from a presentation point-of-view, but the haggis was peppery & had a great texture and the thick onion gravy really went well with it.

And since it was Burns Night/Day I decided to push-the-boat-out and try dessert; well it was Cranachan with loads of tart raspberries, sweet honey, oat flakes and masses of thick double cream (no skooshy stuff here) - it was pretty (OK, very) fabulous.

All told I was really quite glad that I'd stopped here for lunch (apart a couple of foibles with the bill, it's always worth checking and querying). When I emerged blinking from the West Port it had just about stopped raining/sleeting, but I decided that walking to Bo'ness via a couple of wet B-roads and muddy farm tracks was probably not a good idea. Instead I got onto the 46 bus opposite the side entrance of the West Port and stayed on until the Kinneil Estate stop on Bo'ness' Provost Road. From here I walked up the long driveway towards Kinneil Museum. It's open all year round with interactive exhibits about the area's long & colourful history and a small (but perfectly formed) gift shop. Today they were having an RSPB event, with the kids (and parents) tasked to identify as many species of avian life as possible (I think there were really only gulls, lots of low flying gulls about - see the next few photos).

Further on into the estate is Kinneil House, a mansion used by James VI of Scotland. The place is not occupied and now under the care of Historic Scotland, but there are certain days when the interior rooms and restored paintings can be viewed.

After circling the House I managed to cross a small burn by the walls of a flooded bridge and then squelched my way through some common parkland and away from the attentions of some (admittedly cute) young greyhound pups to the remains of a Roman Fort. Only the entranceway to the fort has been uncovered, the other markers really only show the extent of it. The fort was situated in the lee of the Antonine Wall which ran through what is now the Kinneil Estate but there are no real visible signs of the Wall anywhere in the Estate.

On leaving the Kinneil Estate I was able to clean my boots in one of the many large puddles and headed down to the main road into Bo'ness. After 15 minutes or so of walking I came to the Corbie Inn. I've been a few times now and it always looks inviting - food & beer boards out on the pavement, hanging baskets of flowers outside and it just looks generally well maintained and somewhere you'd want to spend a few hours.

Since I was last in they've managed to get a beer garden installed at the back of the pub (I don't think there will be views of the Bo'ness and Kinneil Railway Line through the trees, but you should certainly be able to hear the trains and smell the smoke & steam). The restaurant extension at the front is still to be done (and will be a big job) but hopefully they'll manage that in the next few years.

I arrived at the end of the lunchtime service and the staff were just getting their breath back (it does seem to be very busy, good to see). They always ask if you want to sample the beer first, so I tried the Tryst Cascade Pale Ale and it was fine (as I fully expected) - light and mouth-puckeringly dry & citrusy. It was also good to see the old style Alechemy Cairnpapple IPA pump-clip; the landlady supposedly prefers these (and so do I - sorry, James).

For some reason it's a complete EE/Orange/T-Mobile blackspot but WiFi access & automatic configuration is available through a QR code (which worked first time) and I spent a bit of time talking to the staff and some of the locals before Stuart Simpson, the brewer for the adjacent Kinneil Brew House, came along. Over a beer he told me all his water issues were now in the past (he now filters and adds salts as required) so the head retention of his cask beers are now fine. As well as his core range he's done some specials - Katie Wearie's was done for a Linlithgow festival (and is sold as CorbieHa' Pale Ale in the Corbie Inn - it's a Linlithgow/Bo'ness thing) and he's also had a car club come along and brew their own beer (or 2 or 3). As well as the Corbie Inn (where there should almost always one of his beers on, but not today obviously), he sells to the Station Hotel in Larbert, the Four Marys in Linlithgow and the Railway Tavern in Kincardine and normally has casks at the Alloa, Larbert and SRAF beer festivals. He also sells bottles through Ellies Cellar and Gift Packs (bottles and glasses), Minicasks & Growlers from the Corbie Inn.

It was good to catch up with Stuart but I eventually has to leave the Corbie Inn and walked along the shore to the town centre. There really are quite a number of wonderfully interesting buildings in Bo'ness and in particular I liked the A-listed Hippodrome Cinema with its circular auditorium which is meant to be the oldest purpose built cinema is Scotland. It closed in 1980, but has been restored and re-opened in 2009 after £1.8Million of work.

I took the bus back up to Linlithgow and managed to miss my train connection by only a few minutes. Thankfully there is another pub within hailing distance of the station, Platform 3. I'm assuming at one point it was probably part of The Star and Garter buildings, but it is now completely independent and the winner of a number of recent SLTN Awards.

It's a pretty small but popular place, with the bar at the top of the narrow room, ample standing room at the bar, a number of tables leading down to the front door, lots of exposed brickwork and a great McEwans mirror above the fireplace, but they also manage to have Deuchers IPA and 2 guest beers available (normally one from Stewart Brewing, this time the lovely NZ citrus of Ka Pai).

It seemed a really friendly place with the added bonus of a working model railway up high on the back wall near the ceiling any time anyone made a donation to the charity box (YouTube video clip here if so interested, not mine!).

Return travel:
  Bus: Bo'ness Stance 2 to Linlithgow (Service 45/46, 15/40 on the hour)
  Train: Linlithgow to Glasgow Queen St (04, 34 on the hour)

Linlithgow to the BRAAS Bo'ness Real Ale Festival: 5th October 2012

I'd not been to the BRAAS (Bo'ness Real Ale Appreciation Society) Real Ale Festival for a few years - it's a nice relaxed festival that normally doesn't sell out of interesting beer on the Friday evening. I thought I could combine a visit to the Festival with lunch out at a (fairly) upmarket pub just out of Linlithgow and then walk lunch off by heading out to Blackness Castle on the south side of the Firth of Forth.


View BRAAS in a larger map

Outward travel was as follows:-
  Train: Glasgow Queen St to Linlithgow (15 & 45 on the hour)

When I came out of Linlithgow station I headed up the easterly main road out of town along a decent pavement/cycle track. A mile or so out of town is the huge Oracle building (which used to be Sun Microsystems). I know a few people who still work there, in the OSC (Oracle Solutions Centre), but I think manufacturing for the high-end servers was transferred elsewhere quite some time ago.

Further on, just past the South Queensferry turning was my stop for lunch, the Champany Inn and associated Chop and Ale House - I assume at some point in the near past they used to be a collection of farm buildings.

I'd looked the place up on the web and checked out some of the reviews and decided that there was no way my budget could stretch to the main restaurant so instead I headed to the smaller Chop and Ale House. They don't have a booking system here, it's purely first-come, first served, but since it was only 12:15 I managed to get a decent table (although by 12:45 it was almost completely full). It's definitely a bit cramped inside, there's no sitting at the bar, the tables are pretty close together & there's a large chimney which takes centre-stage, but there's also a decent overflow alcove section at the side windows. There are lots of brewery & whisky mirrors on the walls as well as farming pictures, and the low beams had fishing rods, brass badges, stirrups and other farming tools attached or hanging from them - I don't normally mind all this type of stuff (at all) but here it was just starting to look a bit like 'clutter'.

For a self-styled 'Ale House' there really wasn't much choice in the ale, Belhaven Best or Stella - I chose the Best and at least it did come in a nice handled mug. Now onto the food - this is *expensive*, £11.40 for the cheapest burger (with steaks at £20+ and some seafood available as well) but I decided to push the boat out and went for the Champany Burger (£13.40) topped with a blue-cheese sauce & bacon from the on-site smokehouse. This was all taken with polite efficiency by the well-trained staff, although I don't think the old-fashioned 'tea-house' aprons worn by the young girls are really that necessary. From the sounds in the kitchen the burger was certainly cooked from scratch, probably took 20-25 minutes and when it came, it did look and smell fantastic.

And it did taste fantastic too - cooked to medium correctly, juicy & a nice depth of flavour, with the bacon being outstanding and the chips pretty damned good as well. My only slight complaint(!) was that there was so much to eat that the burger was getting cold by the time I was 3/4 of the way through it - a hot plate would have made such a difference here. So was it worthwhile - £18.05 for a burger & chips and a beer ? (£4.65 for a Belhaven Best certainly was expensive!) Probably not is the answer, but it was good to try once and if you could be sure of the weather and get a table outside in the courtyard it would be even better.

Pretty well stuffed to the gills I was glad that I next had a walk down the minor road to the village of Blackness and then further on to Blackness Castle. This is a road that comes to a complete dead-end (unless you have a yacht, speed-boat etc...) but seemed to be popular with a fair number of visitors to the castle and those out to walk the dog(s). From the small marina/boatyard across the bay, Blackness Castle looked imposing in the clear, still air, almost like a stone battleship about to set sail into the Forth.

For some great aerial pictures of Blackness Castle see this blog here.

There is a pub in Blackness, the Blackness Inn, but it was shut and seems to have been up for sale for some time. Blackness really is a small place and with the Inn almost being at the furthest point of a completely dead-end road it really would have to be something unique and different to make the journey to it worthwhile and so be able to run the Inn on a commercial basis (see, for example, The Oak Tree Inn at Balmaha).

I then started my walk along the Firth of Forth foreshore to Bo'ness - this took just under an hour and went past a few shingle beaches and a lot of mud-flats before I reached the industrial estates of Bo'ness, but it was a lovely day for this and I really enjoyed the exercise. There is a Motor Museum just on the outskirts of Bo'ness but it looked a bit too child-friendly so I kept walking until I came to the centre of town. Just past the bus station on a patch of common-land is the Bo'ness Memorial to Mining, a huge coal pit wheel, together with a number plaques with pictures drawn by school kids about how they see mining in the past & in the present.

I wanted to see how the Corbie Inn was getting on after being open almost 12 months - see my blog from last year. There didn't seem to be too much of a difference from the outside but I liked all the flowers and hanging baskets, especially the large sunflowers which were taller than me.

Inside it was starting to calm down after what I suspect (from the debris) was a quite a noisy Birthday Party lunch. They aim to have 6 real ales on all the time (and I guess they must go through this amount which is fantastic to see) but today there were only 5 available. The Kinneil Brew House Bridgeness Slab was still settling, but the landlady, Gail, agreed to let me try a sample, and although the aroma was great, it tasted slightly astringent and possibly needed another day of conditioning which Gail was going to leave it for. They still plan to open the far side of the building up as a dining area and are also still waiting on Falkirk Council to give them permission to fully utilise the beer garden at the rear (and have been waiting all summer - that's red-tape for you). I like the fact that they put little knitted hats on the hand-pulls to indicate that the beers are fresh on and so to pull the first pint though through & discard it - nice.

I then climbed the hill to Glebe Park & Bo'ness Town Hall where the BRAAS Bo'ness Real Ale Festival was taking place.

The Festival was split into 2 sections - the main hall housed the long bar (I think this was specifically built for the BRAAS Festival, and I've seen it used at some of the CAMRA Forth Valley Beer Festivals as well) and a fair amount of tables, although not too many people stood at the bar (except for me - I prefer standing at bars, years of practice). Only Scottish beers were available, but it was good to see beers from new local breweries Alechemy, Fallen (their new Dragonfly was an excellent biscuity, spicy amber ale) and, of course, Kinneil Brew Hoose, as well as a fairly fair rare appearance on cask from Traquair Bear Ale (an interesting malty, almost bran-like 'Old Ale', definitely not a 70/- or 80/-). And I'd have to say that the BRAAS people running the bar were excellent - chatty, polite but firm with the young guy trying to get a pint of 6.7% Broughton Old Jock with a single 1/2 pint token and quite willing to talk about pubs, local landmarks and beer.

In the other smaller hall were bottles of European (Belgian, German & Dutch) beer (the previous year they had American bottles) and they were running a couple of tastings for these over the course of the weekend. In addition on Saturday afternoon Stuart (owner & brewer) from the Kinneil Brew House was performing a Home Brewing Masterclass (complete with a lot of the brewing paraphernalia that he has acquired over the years) and I just caught the end of this.

I managed to get a bit of time with Stuart after he'd finished and found out that he'd been seriously worried about the head retention and quality of his beer in the last couple of months to the extent that he'd stopped selling the beer outwith the Corbie Inn. He'd only just found out that Scottish Water has been adding extra Chlorine into the reservoir where Bo'ness gets its water and he'd had to buy extra filters to combat this. Certainly the Caer Edin Dark Ale that I was drinking as I talked to Stuart was great - a head that stayed until the end of the glass, good body and a nice chocolate and coffee taste. He's still working on his local gruit beer and will also be starting to bottle his beers which definitely makes sense in this current economic climate - local bottled ales definitely do sell.

It seemed as if I'd been talking more than I had been drinking during my hour and a half or so at the Festival so I was surprised to find myself having to walk fairly rapidly down the hill to Bo'ness bus station to catch the bus back to Linlithgow. This dropped me off at Linlithgow Cross, almost at The Four Marys, and only a couple of doors down is the recently opened Beer, Wine & Spirit shop Ellies Cellar, substantially larger than the shop I'd be into a few times when I was staying in Crieff earlier in the year (the shop used to be a restaurant).

As per the Crieff store they have a really impressive selection of bottled beer - this included the very new Williams Impale IPA & their 2012 Edition Nollaig as well as all the 2012 Octoberfest beers. I had problems fitting a couple of bottles into my small day rucksack so one of the the young girls behind the counter volunteered to wash and dry my Beer Festival glass and then line the inside of the glass to allow me to put the bottle of Impale into this - many thanks indeed for this!

Return travel:-
  Bus: Bo'ness Bus Station to Linlithgow Cross (45/46 First in Scotland East)
  Train: Linlithgow to Glasgow Queen St (04 & 33 on the hour)

Corbie Inn/Kinneil Brew Hoose to Falkirk: 10th December 2011

I'd heard good reports about a new pub in Bo'ness in West-Lothian, the Corbie Inn, which has only been open for a couple of months - a largish cask range, decent food and nice decor (I must be getting old - I'll soon be mentioning soft furnishings!). That's always great to see, but in addition there now seems to be a small microbrewey called the Kinneil Brew Hoose in a separate out-house behind the pub. Since they were due to 'out' their first brew this weekend I decided a visit to the pub and (weather permitting) a walk to Falkirk via Grangemouth seemed a good idea.

View Bo'ness in a larger map

Outward transport was as follows:-
  Train: Glasgow Queen St to Linlithgow
  Bus: Linlithgow Cross to Bo'ness Bus Station (46 First in Scotland East)

A slight covering of snow and freezing fog had made the east of Scotland look really festive (if somewhat Baltic) today. This was Linlithgow Loch in the morning waiting for the bus.

From the 'bus station' at Bo'ness it was only a couple of hundred yards or so west along the shoreline past the railway track of the Bo'ness & Kinneil preservation railway to the Corbie Inn. I'd been to Bo'ness a few times (mostly for the BRAAS Beer Festival) and I think I'd noted the site of the Corbie Inn before. The transformation to the bright, modern Corbie Inn is quite impressive.

Inside it's just as welcoming (and new - that helps!). At the moment there's only a combined bar/dining area, but a separate restaurant is planned in the New Year. There were 6 beers on hand-pull, mostly from Scottish micros (Tryst, Inveralmond, Stewart, Kelburn), but also a token beer from south of the border as well (Rudgate Honey Stout). The prices for the beer and the home-cooked food were certainly great value to my Glasgow city centre mindset.

I found what I was looking for straight away - the Pennvael Amber from the Kinneil Brew Hoose (the name's a Pictish derivation from Kinneil, the Bo'ness local area). I had assumed it would be a fairly standard Scottish-style 70/- and initially it was. But then a definite load of bitter hops kicked in - surprising and very welcome.

I ordered some of the chicken and vegetable soup and got talking with the landlady Gail. The brewer, Stuart Simpson, wasn't around but (without any prompting on my part) she volunteered to give him a call - really nice of her. When it came the soup was great, thick and really spicy. 99 times out of 100 I need masses of pepper in my soup, but not this time - supposedly this is normal for the soup of the day and I really started to like both the place and the chef.

At this point Stuart the brewer arrived, and asked me if I wanted to have a look around the brewery - great - and we must have spent the best part of an hour chatting away (I must admit I'm sometimes quite amazed at the generosity and helpfulness of brewing people!). Stuart's Kinneil Brew Hoose has been 3 years in the making and is pretty compact and bijou (only ~2 BBL), but has all equipment necessary to make great cask ale. Access to the brewery is through a door in the corridor leading to the ladies toilets - only the corridor mind, not the toilets themselves!

Stuart explained the reason for the bitterness of the Pennvael Amber - a significant amount of Saaz hops are used as he deliberately didn't want a standard 'boring bitter' type ale. As well as the Pennvael Amber he's hoping for a golden summer beer and, more interestingly, a non-hop based gruit beer, based on local herbs - great to see the inventiveness. Whilst he was showing me around the place, Stuart was also at the brewery to check on the condition of the beer. He thought the beer wasn't producing a 'perfect' head, and was trying out a couple test changes - one with additional yeast and another with additional priming sugar - not really required as far as I was concerned, but he's such a perfectionist that he absolutely had to get it 100% right - damned impressive.

He'll be targeting the cask-only market at the moment (no bottles) and delivering within ~30 miles of Bo'ness if at all possible, all of which means Edinburgh and the mass of pubs (new and old) which currently sell cask ale are within range. There will be an official launch of the beer and the brewery in mid-January and here's hoping it goes well - he's certainly put a lot of time and a lot of effort into the fledgling business.

When I left the Corbie Inn I had a partial-walk, partial-bus journey to Grangemouth. After the Kinneil Estate (Museum, Mansion, Roman Fortlet and park gardens) which overlooks the main road just out from Bo'ness, there's only the huge number of petrochemical works until you get to the centre of Grangemouth - these are really, really, really big and must cover the coastline and the mud/salt flats up to the Forth for 3-4 miles.

The bus dropped me off in Grangemouth almost at the front door of the Earl of Zetland - a JD Wetherspoon's church conversion (original name - The Free Church of Zetland (Shetland))

I always like church conversions - they seem to force the Wetherspoons people slightly out of their corporate monoculture to work around the church features - here the organ pipes are used to great effect.

I was hoping for a decent Christmas beer at the Earl of Zetland, but both the Highgate Stocking Filler and the TSA Turkey Stuffing were 'Coming Soon', so I had to make do with a TSA Festive Blond - not too much winter spice in this one.

It was then a pretty straight road back into Falkirk. The route took me past Falkirk FC Stadium - Falkirk were playing Hamilton today and the place seemed to be fairly busy.

When I reached Falkirk I sought out Behind the Wall. It's both a trendy restaurant/wine-bar and also a self-styled 'Ale and Whisky House' upstairs. Rather than fighting my way through the wine-bar I made use of the sneaky wee back door around the alley way to get to the Ale House.

Inside it's a bit of a cavern with lots of wall mounted TVs in addition to a huge projected screen - all tuned to the football results. On hand-pull were Ruddles (GK), Herok & Howell’s Tantallon Sunrise (GK/Belhaven) and Eglesbrech Ochil Mist. The last of these is pretty confusing (at least to me and to the barmaid when I asked). It seems to be a throw-back to their own beer brewed on the on-premises microbrewery, but that (supposedly) closed down a few years ago. Barney's Beers are now (also supposedly) brewed on that equipment, but there were definitely no Barney's Beers to be seen anywhere on the premises. So the Ochil Mist is a bit a mystery - I'd be interested to know if anyone has any information about it. It wasn't great today, perhaps a bit yeasty, but I had the same beer 6 months or so ago and it was a nice, well balanced amber ale - whoever brews it should definitely keep on doing so.

Return transport:-
  Train: Falkirk High to Glasgow Queen Street