So, it has been over a week since I uploaded my ‘labour of love’, Bridport by Night, to YouTube. The video really took off in the first four days, accumulating some 8,000 views in that period alone. Hits from technology site Gizmodo and Anglotopia helped it along its way, but the majority of views were picked up by an organic sharing frenzy on Facebook and Twitter.
Throughout last week, I had people who I didn’t know from the local area following me on Twitter and adding me on Facebook. Many of them commented expressing their praise for the video. To date, the video on YouTube has had about 75 comments (and the same number of replies by me), 206 likes and 2 dislikes – a comment reading “Two dislikes for this video? The pair of you: YOU ARE DEAD INSIDE” made me chuckle.
Interest has died down at the moment. A few people have quietly complained about how much I was mouthing off about it, so I haven’t been sharing it around so much. But the other night, ITV West Country Tonight came to West Bay and filmed me for a piece they are running. And this Saturday, the film is being shown at the Bridport Arts Centre as part of a Spirit of Bridport event.
My target number of views for the video is 12,977 (which is Wikipedia‘s listed population for Bridport). It should soon surpass that. I already have plans to make a second, improved version of the video. Difficult second album?
The good folk of Bridport will be offered the chance to enjoy, for one day only, a delicacy that most of them will not have seen or tasted in decades. It is one that the vast majority of them would give their eye teeth to enjoy again, I know I would, if I still had any.
AS THE LEAVES of our calendars turn remorselessly onwards, the evenings lengthen, and the sound of Cliff Richard singing some nausea-inducing seasonal ditty drives us all out of shops around Bridport, excitement at the prospect of a new Mayor grips us all.
The new Eggardon & Colmer’s View website includes a tremendous picture of Colmer’s Hill by Higher Eype photographer Andy White, one of the best images of this famous West Dorset landmark I’ve ever seen.
Once – I am not a greedy man – just once I would love to see a single person actually working on the gas pipe holes at the bottom end of South Street in Bridport.
Brian Wood at Palmers Brewery in Bridport. His lorry has done more than 1.5 million miles. Above Brian's head is the trapdoor that leads though into Palmers' malt loft.
THIRTY years ago one of the unsung heroes of British brewing began criss-crossing the country with sacks of malt.
Brian Wood started carrying malt for Hugh Baird and Sons at Station Maltings in Witham in Essex in the Autumn of 1981. When Baird’s got taken over in the mid-1990s, he set up on his own.
I’ve met him a couple of times at Palmers Brewery in Bridport, where he’s been delivering malt since the early 1980s.
He’s a fine man, as I hope comes through in the video that I made about him for the Palmers Brewery YouTube channel.
Here, also, is a link to a story written about Brian Wood and Palmers.
What that story doesn’t contain is a list of all the UK breweries that Brian has been to.
It’s an evocative litany, so here it is. Fifty-nine different brewers, 63 separate breweries, some of them now shut for many years. Morrells’ Lion Brewery, for example, was converted into ‘luxury apartments’. Julia Hanson’s in Dudley was knocked down to make way for a Netto supermarket, turned this summer into an Asda.
Whitbread (Sheffield, Cheltenham, Salford)
Boddingtons (Manchester)
Joseph Holt (Manchester)
JW Lees (Manchester)
Timothy Taylor (Keighley)
Samuel Smith (Tadcaster)
Bass (Burton)
McMullens (Hertford)
Julia Hanson (Dudley)
Banks (Wolverhampton)
Hardy Hanson (Kimberley)
Brains (Cardiff)
Buckleys (Llanelli)
Felinfoel (Dyfed)
Wadworth (Devizes)
Hall & Woodhouse (Blandford)
Palmers Brewery (Bridport)
Otter Brewery (Blackdown Hills)
Butcombe (Blagdon)
Smiles (Bristol)
Hook Norton (Oxon)
Morrells (Oxford)
Fullers (Chiswick )
Tring (Hertford)
Adnams (Southwold)
Tolly’s (Ipswich)
Harveys (Lewes)
Hepworths (Horsham)
King & Barnes (Horsham)
Hull Brewery
Batemans (Wainfleet)
Robinsons (Stockport))
Thwaites (Blackburn)
Jennings (Cockermouth)
Moorhouse (Burnley)
Higsons (Liverpool)
Burtonwood Brewery
Everards (Leicester and Burton on Trent)
Marstons (Burton on Trent)
Ind Coope (Burton on Trent)
Castlemaine (Wrexham)
Oldham Brewery
Hart Brewery (Preston)
Mitchells (Lancaster)
Vaux (Sunderland & Sheffield)
Federation (Newcastle)
Courage (Bristol & Reading)
Crouch Brewery (Essex)
Gales (Horndean)
Devenish (Redruth)
St Austell (Cornwall)
Halls (Oxford)
Tisbury Brewery (Wiltshire)
Ringwood Brewery (Hampshire)
Shepherd Neame (Faversham)
Trough Brewery (Idle)
Brakspears (Henley on Thames)
Pilgrim (Reigate)
Mendip Brewery (Somerset)
Imagine going to the Trough Brewery at Idle for the first time! And seeing this, when you got there.
Nowadays Brian delivers mostly to Palmers in Dorset, Arkell’s in Swindon, Felinfoel near Llanelli, Harveys in Lewes, Elgood’s in Wisbech, Wadworth in Devizes and Fuller’s in Chiswick.
Good reason, I’d say, to favour those seven brewers.
