My #Twissup

So the day started at 6am, I'm excited, it feels like Christmas, my attempt to call it #twissmas on twitter was pretty much ignored, hay-ho, back to being excited then.
I miss a bus by seconds and had to wait 10 minutes for another bus to Brixton, 10 minutes which felt like an eternity. A 333 finally turns up and we're off!

I get to Brixton and the Victoria line tube I got on seemed to be clean and new, bit bright for that early in the morning but it doesn't smell of piss so it's ok. Euston here I come! I'm meeting up with Mark Dredge and Chunk for the two hour train journey to Manchester and #twissup.

I'm there before my two journey mates and by this time I am starving, I really need my daily bacon fix. I head upstairs to the Britannia for a coffee and a bacon sarnie!

Dredge and Chunk turn up, we grab a breakfast or two and head onto the train, we're due into Manchester Picadilly at 10.49am. At this point it must be pointed out that I think Dredge and Chunk have worms, I've never seen two skinny guys eat so much and then complain about being hungry!
We discuss the various stuff on the train including t-shirts for next time, plain white with Twitter names, followers, blogs(if applicable) etc... what do you think, would you wear one?


People I am looking forward to meeting on this trip are Leigh who writes about good stuff and of course the beery legend that is Cooking Lager. There's also the guys and gals who I haven't seen in a while or even since the first twissup in January and are great fun to be around, Baron Orm, Fletch, Moggy, Zak, Tandleman & Richard MBT to name but a few!

Twadges

We get into Manchester on time and meet up at a coffee shop, even though there was a perfectly crappy bar we could have started at instead! Baron Orm unexpectedly dishes out our 'Twadges'(Twitter Badges). Not t-shirts but welcome nonetheless.

We have a 10 minute walk from the station to our first stop which will be the Marble Brewery just down the road from the Marble Arch Pub, somewhere I am looking forward to getting to later. We're greeted at the Brewery by Colin who's dishing out glasses of Dobber, an absolutely great beer with no need for sparklers, eh Tandy?

Marble Arch, Interior

We get a tour of the brewery, another glass of Dobber and head off to the Marble Arch where most of us begin with either the Pint or the Bitter, mine was a couple of Pints, then a Manchester Bitter then half a Lagonda, great beers all of them! Just as we're were preparing to leave Cookie turned up, top bloke, and finally, out of the...er...'closet'?

Then it was time to go, predictably I wanted to stay at The Marble Arch all day, such a great pub with good beers in great condition, I look forward to visiting the pub again!

Next up was The Angel just down the road from the Marble Arch, there seemed to be 30-40 of us, so the poor guys at The Angel must have got a bit of a shock, especially when we all started ordering the Pictish Centennial. Yet another example of a superb beer served oop north. I've not had the pleasure of many Pictish beers but I have heard lots of good stuff about them and, the two that I have tried have been top notch! Anybody know who can get them down to London? A couple of pints later and it was time to go again, this time we were off to the Fringe.

This is where things got a bit fuzzy for me, all I know is that there are pictures that I remember having been taken of myself and posted on various social networks. I have no idea what I had to drink there but soon enough it was time to move on again and since people were heading towards Huddersfield, it was time for me to make a move toward home. We got back to Manchester Picadilly and I partook of the Burger King before getting onto the train and passing out. God only knows what the other passengers went through with my snoring but I woke up about half an hour out of London and got back home, hangover well and truly intact!

Another good day with like-minded beery folk, as Hunter S. Thompson said 'good people drink good beer' I couldn't agree more!