The thing I would most like to achieve in 2024 is to push my England ratings to over 20,000, so I need to find 627 more, which normally would be well within my grasp but a dose of Pneumonia has stopped my touring for the last couple of weeks. Worcester tomorrow should get me back on track.
I’d like to get a push on Swedish and Italian rates as they are the next to go through 100, don’t think I’ll achieve either this year but I’d like to get them close.
I’d like to get North Yorkshire through 1,000 ratings and maybe even Gloucestershire, at a push, this year.
I’d like to find a couple of new Beer Festivals, to me, as 2 of my favourites (Coventry and Rugby) seem to have disappeared.
Personally, my aim is for 1000 Welsh rates which I should get to by March I think (currently at 971)
English rates are at 7007. No goal for them.
Belgium rates are at 830, France is at 570. When I move to France this Autumn, I have an ambitious aim for at least 50 in each region, and crack the top 10 raters. For Belgium that’s harder, but I should sail through the 1000 mark some time near the start of 2025. Access to European countries will be much easier than in the UK so hopefully I can tip a few more over the 100 mark.
Will continue to rate / add places. Think I’ll be doing a lot of that in France. No real goal. I’m at 514. I suppose getting to 600 isn’t too much to ask.
Breweries stand at 2741. Managed to add a lot to that this year. Could I get to 3000? Only time will tell!
I went in 2020, visited about 3 brewpubs and the large national brewery, plus found a bar with a handful of local beers. Wasn’t much I missed in terms of venues
Beerwise I’m looking to cut down if anything, I’m trying to have a couple of days off a week, and I’ve found I’ve gone almost full circle - I gave up ‘ticking for the sake of it’ in 2016 i.e. stopped trying to drink every new beer on the bar in every pub I went to, and tried to focus on styles and breweries I like, now 8 years later even with massively cutting down my criteria there’s just too many beers to keep up. So gonna try to be harsher in cutting out brewers who don’t hit the mark (aim is no more ‘unsours’!)
Travelwise alongside a few repeat visits my big new territory for the year will hopefully be a trip through Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzystan, and Kazakhstan
Visit new places/locations. Usually hard for me as I have two young kids, but I will get to visit two new US states in February (Wyoming and Idaho). So will pick up some new place ratings there and definitely increase my rating totals for those states, though probably won’t get either to 100.
Focus on drinking beers I actually enjoy. So that basically means more traditional styles and less hazy hops and pastry stouts (both of which I only like in serious moderation).
Drink beers from the cellar. Made some good progress last year but still some work to do.
Drink less. I don’t bounce back the way I used to. I did OK on this last year and managed to NOT make the top 50 raters of the year, which was a goal for me as it meant I didn’t get too hung up on ticking and also just drank less in general. Think I’d been on the top 50 list for 10+ years in a row.
Continue to support local breweries and those I care most about. Certainly seems to be hard times for breweries so I try to be conscious about where I spend money.
Cheers Fin, getting there, really knocked me about at the time though.
Worcester is improving on every visit, I must admit. More than a days worth of places now with all the new craft bars that have opened and the new Cocky Anchor pub. Kept meeting a coach party from Derby doing the more traditional pubs and they were impressed.
I agree with you on Worcester. My mum still lives there (Kempsey on the outskirts) so I am still reasonably familiar with it, but not been back to Worcester for over 18 months so as you indicate there are probably further new places opening up.
I’ve done 2 crawls in Worcester in the last 16 months
A decent days itinerary … just be wary that unless you are doing a FRI/SAT crawl some places may not open or may open later on the other days
I still never made it to the Bull Baiters, the #1 rated venue on RB. I’m sure you know it, but with it being on the other side of the river and a good 15 minutes trek away (with little else near it) it never really fitted into our plans. Also … it doesn’t open until 1700 (all days according to Google) which put it completely out of the picture on my first crawl as we were heading away from town before 1800.
My goal is to remain the Conquistador of Mexico. Gotta go to the dentist soon, so should be able to boost my total.
I lost Colombia and Costa Rica, though still top 5. @nimbleprop passed me as Conquistador of Puerto Rico. Still holding down #3 in DR and Panama. @Lubiere always holds down a lot of Latin American ticks as well.
I think that the Bull Baiters is very good, but it has been a while since I visited, I gave it a high rating but nowhere near as high as Triple B. I completely agree that it isn’t an easy place to slot into a Worcester crawl, furthermore the bar regarding places is certainly much higher now in Worcester and I probably need to re-rate HopLords and one or two others, because I think that there are at least 2-3 places that would sit above Bull Baiters.
, sorry to hear about the bout of pneumonia mate, hope all’s well now. I hope that you had a great time in Worcester.
