Oxford - Staying In

The blog acts (in a very haphazard way) as a diary of trips I've made and places I've visited.  So, lest I ever look back and wonder why there so much inactivity in the Spring of 2020, this post is to remind me of Lockdown Britain.

Supping a pint of Young's Special in the back rooms of the Kings Arms...
Taken for granted until a few weeks ago.

Back on the 14th March I was in Wantage, the relaxed atmosphere at the beer festival (the last of those for a little while) providing a shred of hope that life could carry on as normal.  Everyone just needed to learn to wash their hands properly whilst singing happy birthday twice, then everything would be alright, wouldn't it?

It really took Wetherspoons head honcho Tim Martin publicly proclaiming that pubs should stay open for me to realise that they really probably shouldn't.

Closed.

We're in super-strange times, practicing 'social distancing', a concept which would have been completely alien a few months ago.

Words like covidiot have come into the vocabulary.

And I've learnt that what I was doing just prior to being instructed to stay at home was 'doom-scrolling'.  I've now restricted myself to one update on the news a day, spending the rest of the time on intellectual pursuits, such as watching all the Friday the 13th movies and daily doses of Richard Osman's House of Games. 

An eerily empty Oxford is looking lovely...

Pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants throughout the country shut on the evening of Friday 20th March.  No propping up the bar for the time being, just topping up the bottle collection for consumption at home. 

Back at the end of March we pushed the boundaries of our daily exercise a little, walking across the meadows to North Hinksey and to the Tap Social Brewery.  At the time they were operating a pop-up off-licence. (This has since shut: having sold-out of beer, they've understandably decided not to ask their staff to travel in to brew and package new products.)

Pop-Up Shop at the shutters of Tap Social.
Picture borrowed from Tap Social's FB pages, 'cos it's better than mine.

They were running low on stock when we arrived there, but we managed to fill the backpack with a few goodies, including a delicious Imperial IPA, 'Too Cold to Skate', from Alphabet Brewing Co.
I surmised that Gareth must have been there when they opened the shutters, snapping up all the remaining bottles of 'Grebe's Procession'.

In the vicinity of Oxford we have Church Hanbrewery, Loose Cannon, Lovebeer and Little Ox, offering home deliveries of great beers.

Here's our weekend selection, kindly brought to the door by the folks at Little Ox...

Support your local brewery.

Retired Martin is doing a wonderful job of trawling his blog archives and making the likes of Ilkeston and Newport look like essential pub-ticking trips.  Great for planning excursions for when we come out of the other side of this crisis.

In the meantime, let's hope that everyone stays safe, and that the closed pubs can spring back into life when they're eventually able to open their doors again. 
That first pint is going to taste great!

It's Easter, the sun is shining, and here's some daffodils at the bottom of South Park...
Take care.