Tony Lea and I went to visit the lovely historic town of Leek. We visited all four of the GBG (Good Beer Guide) pubs from the 2018 guide. We drove there and stayed two nights in the very central Premier Inn which had a free car park attached.

On the Wednesday the first pub we visited was the Earl Grey Inn where we drank Sarah Hughes Ruby mild a superb dark beer but hardly mild at 6%, a good one to start with! We were then told about a café style micropub called the Bottle Lab that closed at 5pm so we hurried over to get there before it shut. No cask ale but four craft taps and we both choose to drink Redwillow Brewery's Faithless 87- Mango IPA which was very nice. Our third pub visited was the Wilkes Head and Brunswick Brewery Black Sabbath a nice dark beer again was drunk. The fourth pub visited was a Titanic pub the Roebuck which isn't in the 2019 GBG and I had Titanic Brewery Cherry Dark. Up next was The Green Dragon Wetherspoon and we both had Phoenix Brewery Wobbly Bob again another good beer. We then walked back to the Earl Grey Inn and finished the evening with a Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby. This pub is a splendid Victorian old corner local and we joined in the quiz night. We called ourselves the SHB (Surrey Hants Borders) Travellers but we certainly didn't win as the questions were quite difficult but interesting. I blame the Sarah Hughes starting to have an affect.

Thursday daytime we took a trip to Alton Towers

In the evening we walked to the Green Dragon Wetherspoon again and had a Curry and a pint of Titanic Brewery Raspberry Wheat. We then went to another Regional award winning GBG pub the Fountain Inn and drank DV8 by Deeply Vale Brewery and a second dark beer Facers North Star Porter well worth it. We ended our Leek adventure in a micro pub called Beyond the Pale and we each had bottle of beer Thornbridge Coco Wonderland for me and Ricetta Celtica Stout a little 6.8% Milk Stout for Tony. The micropub was only about 50 yards from hotel so an easy stagger across the road.

If the Titanic pub the Roebuck can fall out of the 2019 GBG it just shows the quality of the pubs in this area as this was a super pub as were all of them that we visited in the town. On the last morning we even spotted a Belgium Beer pub so maybe another reason to go back and visit.