All aboard the beer express
By Kate Simon
If we’re going to encourage you to embark on a beer odyssey around Britain, we might as well start at the train station.
A few years ago, I did PR for a train-booking website – so far so boring. Yet this website was different. Its green-minded aim was to make it as easy to take the train as catch a plane to Europe, which required some pioneering technical wizardry.
The website was run by brother-and-sister team Kate and Jamie Andrews and called Loco2 (see what they did there!). Well, these brilliant siblings sold it in the end and it’s now part of Rail Europe.
But while we were still working together, Kate gathered her thoughts about the best inns within railways stations for an article in the travel pages of the Daily Mirror. And knowing how Kate paid careful attention to every project she was involved in, I reckon it’s a good place to jump on board and head off around the UK.
You can still read the article with Kate’s recommendations on the Daily Mirror website. They included a fair few trackside taverns in major cities, such as the Sheffield Tap, on Platform 1B of Sheffield Midland Railway Station, which has an on-site brewery, Tapped Brew Co. There are outliers, too, such as remote Corrour Station House in Scotland (though you might quibble it’s more of a restaurant).
You can only get there by train – unless you’re prepared to yomp across the Highlands for 20 miles, in which case you might want to book one of the beds for the night in the signal box. Phil tells me he did the trek to the pub in the late 1970s and was able to finish his pint in comfort as he watched his train approach from the horizon.
I should add my own suggestion, which is The Tap On the Line at Kew Gardens station (pictured). It’s the only pub within a London Underground station and was spruced up by Fuller’s in 2013. Sadly, the door off Platform 1 is now shut, but you can still watch the trains go by if you take a seat by the conservatory-style window overlooking the tracks – an appropriate nod to the botanical gardens less than half a mile down the road.
Got a favourite pub within a railway station? Share it in the comments…