County Stat Attack Week 43 - Northumberland

Regional Forums United Kingdom and Ireland
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Never been to Northumberland and also one of my lowest counties it seems with a very low 16 ticks - all of them from Allendale and all of those from bottles in our DK supermarkets a few years back, seems like allot were not available in the UK? https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/allendale-end-95-american-pale/498288/215924/

Probably another part of the UK to add once travel becomes easier, so many parts of the the UK to visit still :smiley:

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Nearly caught up on the county statsā€¦ just a week behind now! :slight_smile:

Northumberland is my 6th least-rated country, with 16 rates - astonishingly this is enough to make it one of the few counties where Iā€™m in the top 50 (albeit at a lowly #47).

Not really had any top notch beers from the county yet. My top-rated beers so far are:

Rigg & Furrow Owl Porter 3.7
Allendale Wanderlust 3.6
Lindisfarne Black Beer & Honey 3.5
Bear Claw Pooka 3.5

My 16 brews came from 8 different breweries and 1 meadery. The only producer with more than 2 rates is Allendale, with 4.

Iā€™ve rated 5 places (mainly on a week-long holiday I had up there in 2018 - none of them were good enough to warrant mentioning here.

However, beer and beery places aside, Northumberland is a gorgeous place, well away from the hordes and full of interesting places to go. The highlights for me were:

  • Northumberlandia, Lady of the North - a man-mide hill in the shape of a reclining lady. At quarter of a mile long, this is claimed to be the worldā€™s biggest landscape sculpture and is very impressive especially, um, the rather prominent boobs).
  • Cragside House, a fascinating country pile which in the 1800ā€™s became home to the worldā€™s first hydroelectric power station, and also features loads of ingenious and improbable Victorian tech.
  • The boat trip to the Farne Islands (make sure you go in puffin season, itā€™s really impressive). We were never sure how the skipper got us home - a sea fog came down on our return that was so thick that we didnā€™t see Seahouses harbour until we actually felt the gentle bump of the boat mooring!

The only walking Iā€™ve done in the county was on a previous trip to climb the high point. The Cheviot is, at 815m high, one of the highest and also one of the most remote of Englandā€™s county high points. I had one of my most surreal hillwalking experiences here. High up in the hills, we came across a chap in a three piece suit, bowler hat, shiny shoes and furled umbrella, with nothing more than a small bottle of water to sustain him as, looking every inch the perfect city gent he marched at high speed towards Scotland. We were so shocked that we failed to ask him whether this was his regular commute or if he was just avoiding the rush hour traffic!

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1 tick, a poor showing from Allendale Entrepreneur consumed at GBBF, presumably picked up to get the county tick, so job done I guess! :slight_smile:

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15 beers from 11 breweries. 13 of those were from the Northumberland Beer Box last year (12 per box but they chucked in an extra). Never been up there.

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Iā€™ve been on two family holidays in Northumberland, both since joining Ratebeer. The first was at Amble (2014) and the second near Blythe (2018). It is a beautiful country in terms of scenery.

A total of 170 rates makes Northumberland my 14th highest number for an English county.

The 170 rates puts me 3rd in the county - quite a distant from 2nd and also a fair distant from 4th, so thatā€™s likely to remain the case for a bit.

Iā€™ve tasted 2 beers that I deemed to be worth a score of 4 and these are as follows.

Bear Claw Oak Soured Wickety 4.0
Bear Claw Black Mage 4.0

Brewery Taps of interest - The Ship Inn - Lower Newton (if you canā€™t get in, the Joiners Arms around the corner does have a few offerings too), High House Farm, Twice Brewed Inn

Other Pubs Of Interest - The Sun Hotel, Warkworth,

Beer Shop - Taste of Northumbria, Alnwick

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