Moose On The Loose In York 2024 Part 1 - Vikings, A Minster and BRAPA!

 

York has always been one of my favourite cities. It’s full of history, great coffee, fun walks and of course pints! Going every December has become a sort of annual tradition, though I’d prefer not to be there when the Christmas market is on! Here’s what I got up to! 

Pub ticking legend and lead pub mascot keeper, BRAPA Simon (Simon’s Blog!) lives in York. We had spoken many times on Twitter and Untappd, but never met. That was about to change as Simon recommended that we meet him in The Fox! 

The Fox is simply incredible! A characterful and multi roomed delight with amazing beer, mostly from Ossett Brewery. Star of the show was Bad Kitty, a porter from Brass Castle, packed with chocolate and vanilla flavours! We enjoyed a few pints and chatted away. Simon is a top bloke and I highly recommend you read his blog. 

Simon recommended that visited The Volunteer Arms next, it was only down the road! 

Another stunning pub with a good selection of beers, including a festive milk stout from Thornbridge. I normally swerve the festive beers due to them usually having cinnamon in them. Weirdly, despite the cinnamon taste, I really we enjoyed Sugar & Space! 

Thank you Simon for showcasing these two excellent pubs!

The next morning we ate breakfast at the magnificent Rise cafe. Top tier scrambled eggs with salmon: 

I needed to walk breakfast off, so headed to York’s most famous landmark: 

Now for years I’ve trying to get into the smaller House Of Trembling Madness, and always found that it is so packed I cannot squeeze in. I had a plan this year, arrive for midday and it worked! 

Since I enjoyed the festive beer last night, I decided to risk another one. Northern Monk’s 2024 Festive Star wasn’t quite as nice as the Thornbridge effort, but was still very tasty! It then became lunchtime and I fancied another pub cred! 

I’ve never rated Pivni, but have wanted to visit Valhalla for a while! I found Valhalla to be a pub of two halves. 

The first halve is beer (by half I mean the whole pub of two half’s thing, as that’s clearly a pint). I didn’t rate the beer here. Lacking in both taste and condition. Food is the second half and that was excellent! 

A serious contender for best loaded fires of all time! Drenched in sweet and spicy honey sauce, hot and topped with a good amount of meat. 

After some more walking and dinner, we headed to The Market Cat. An old favourite of mine, but a let down this year. 

Both beers, mine is Lord Marples, average at best. We headed for hopefully better things at another old favourite, The Falcon.

I love this pub. It’s got a modern charm and plenty of great beers! I had Stay Grounded from Trig Brewery and it was delicious! There was so much coffee flavour! 

Round the corner and across the road from The Falcon is The Ackhorne. If you look in the dictionary for back street boozer, you’ll probably see a photo of this pub!

The one rule of coming here is that you must drink Ruby Mild. As you can see, only one of us followed that rule at first! The Ruby Mild here is simply unbeatable. I had another! 

Our final pub of the night was The Swan: 

I hadn’t noticed The Festive from Turning Point Brewery until I was already holding a pint of Chomp by Ossett. Guess I’m staying for a second pint then, how terrible. 

We ended our night with a little pub buffet, imagine if they did a mix bag of bacon and scampi fries. What a time to be alive that would be! 

Thanks for reading, part 2 soon! 

I’ll leave you with this terrible hotel beer:

It’s yours now.