Burton upon Trent - 1

I'm just back from a few days in Burton-upon-Trent. My previous visits to the town have been mainly by boat - I called in on a number of journeys along the Trent & Mersey Canal on Starcross - but this one was by train and bus.

My first port-of-call was Derby, where I was meeting up with my fellow traveller for the weekend, Hugh. Our planned schedule went haywire before I'd even set off with my train from Lancaster being fourteen minutes late departing. This made a 10 minute connection at Crewe into a minus-4 one and so, unsurprisingly, despite the driver pulling back a couple of minutes en-route I missed it. But every cloud has a silver lining and I enjoyed my hour at Crewe watching an impressive procession of fast modern trains passing through - or stopping at - the station.

A  Your Bus  Y5 at Long Eaton

My train to Derrby was neither fast nor modern, but it did arrive on time and after a quick lunch in the Brunswick Tavern we were almost back on track for the afternoon's travelling.  The plan was to sample one of the two competing bus services, both of which were operated by modern, high-spec vehicles, to Long Eaton and transfer there to the equally modern and high-spec "Skylink" service to East Midlands Airport, thence by the relatively obscure 155 route to Coalville that is operated by a small, local company and then on to Burton for the evening.  This involved a couple of moderately-tight connections but it quickly became apparent that my planning had failed to take into account the Friday afternoon traffic!  We were a good five minutes down before we'd even left the bus station and congestion on the way meant we were even later at Long Eaton. There we realised from the Real Time bus stop information display that the Skylink was running even later out from Nottingham and that our connection into the 155 at the Airport was in jeopardy.  As with Virgin Trains' driver earlier in the day our man did his best to regain some time but unfortunately our arrival at East Midlands co-incided exactly with the 155's departure!  There was no alternative but to return to Derby, albeit directly on the Leicester - Derby version of the Skylink route network.  This service calls in at Derby railway station where we bailed out and made up some of the time we'd lost by getting a train on to Burton which took 13 minutes instead of the advertised 45 minutes by bus (traffic not included).

Burton is known as the brewing capital of England, although it is nowadays dominated by giant international brewing companies pumping out mass-market lager and keg beers, but its easy enough to avoid these.  We opted for a tour of the pubs just on and off the Derby Road, getting off to a good start with the Derby Inn, a very traditional locals' pub (although the beer came from Keighley). The next couple of pubs were a bit of a let-down but after a quick pit stop for a takeaway pizza we ended the evening in the splendid Coopers Tavern. 

The Coopers Tavern (not during our visit!)

This used to be the Bass brewery tap, but is now oned by Joule's Brewery. Ironically the original Joule's Brewery was bought and closed down by Bass in 1974 and whilst it was resurrected a few years ago with new owners and is now thriving, Bass as a brewing company has disappeared into the maw of one of the multi-nationals (don't ask me which one, I don't reaaly care) and even its best-known brand "Draught Bass"  is now brewed by Marston's in a different part of the town.