RAMBLING THROUGH ALBIONISSUE 1

APRIL/MAY 2015

Welcome

Thanks for taking the time to leaf through the first edition of Rambling Through Albion. In many ways this is a very personal project – it’s our way of documenting life in the UK, and we

hope it provides us with opportunities to learn new skills and to see things from other people’s perspectives. But we feel that new experiences and knowledge are nothing if kept to oneself, so we’ve decided to try to share our journeys of dis-covery with a wider audience.

The magazine will be published every six weeks, will focus on:

Travel – We’re based in London and love what this great global city has to offer. We’ll provide ideas for days out in the capital, starting, in this issue, with a look at the hidden charms of Crys-tal Palace. However, we’ll also endeavour to demonstrate that it’s worth your while visiting other UK villages, towns and cities to discover a wealth of history, diversity, eccentricity and in-novation. Last month we visited Bristol – in the future we hope to report back from Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and other parts of Eng-land, and discover what makes modern Britain great.

Art and architecture - We’re fairly open-minded when it comes to art, design and architecture, which is just as well given that it surrounds us and comes in so many shapes and sizes. We’ll therefore highlight a selection of the classic and the contemporary, but start with more of the latter this month - recounting a visit to 20 Fen-church Street, a relative newcomer to the Lon-don skyline; and learning more about how Bris-tol became the spiritual home of UK street art.

Food … – London’s diversity affords the oppor-tunity to sample food from all corners of the

globe without having to travel outside the M25. And while the immediacy of social media makes it more difficult to unearth hidden gems, we’ll do our best to find and highlight a few restaurants that at least offer value for money. You may also see the odd recipe – we know that Korean food is becoming more popular in the UK, or in Lon-don at any rate, but it’s certainly not inexpensive. So we’ll try to show you how to make your own Korean dishes at home, and we start this month with the one food that no Korean can survive without – kimchi.

… and drink - Britain is famous for its whiskies and real ales, and its variety of public houses. We’ll try to feature at least one noteworthy pub during each issue. But before we go down that road, we’ve had a chat with an expert to find out why beer is such an integral part of British life.

We’re also keen to highlight good causes dur-ing this journey. Some of these we’ll mention in passing, especially if we haven’t had direct ex-perience of dealing with the cause in question, but we’re keen to sit down and chat with anyone who wants a bit of extra publicity for their char-itable efforts.

We’re not experts in this journalism/publishing field, and realise that the magazine may still be a little rough around the edges. We won’t be offended by, and will welcome, any construc-tive feedback! You can connect with us through Twitter or Facebook, or drop us an e-mail at contact@ramblingthroughalbion.com. We look forward to hearing from you!

Team RTAAll the best,

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Inside this issueTRAVEL

ART & ARCHITECTURE

FOOD & DRINK

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CITY BREAK

Learn more

3 DAYS IN

4Window on Bristol, 2011 - Andy Council and Luke Palmer (aka AcerOne)

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Bristol - the basicsLocation: South-west England, on the borders

of Somerset and Gloucstershire. Population: Approx 437,500 (largest city in

southern England outside London)Motto: Virtute et Industria (By Virtue and Indus-

try). Universities: University of Bristol and The Uni-

versity of the West of England (UWE)Other: European Green Capital 2015

HistoryThe settlement of Brycgstow (an Old English word meaning ‘place at the bridge’) was found-ed sometime around the 10th Century and its growth and prosperity is closely linked to its proximity to the sea. It was well located to es-tablish early trading links with other European countries and later, in the 17th Century, with new British colonies in North America and the West Indies. Exports included woollen cloth, coal and lead; imports consisted, mostly, of wine, grains, and timber.

Regrettably, in their pursuit of profit, the elite merchants in Bristol lobbied heavily to be al-lowed to participate in the slave trade, and the London-based Royal African Company’s mo-nopoly on commercial activity in Africa was bro-ken in 1698. A ‘triangular trade’ between Bristol, west Africa and North America emerged - ships left Bristol laden with alcohol, cotton goods and weaponry which were used to purchase slaves in Africa. Those individuals were transported on-ward, in dreadful conditions, to America and sold to the highest bidder. This transaction complet-ed, the ships’ cargo holds could be refilled with rum, sugar, tobacco and other products, many of which would have been manufactured on slave plantations before making their way back to Bristol. From 1698 to 1807 over 2,100 ships left the city to engage in this sordid activity, car-rying half a million Africans into slavery.

It must be said that not everyone in Bristol was in favour of the slave trade, and a committee for its abolition was set up in 1788. This was led by non-Conformist (i.e. non-Church of England) Christians such as the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, who preached against the trade to his congregation at The New Room, in Broadmead. At a time when their influence the political sphere was negligible, Bristolian women also played an active role in the abolition move-ment. Some wrote anti-slavery poems and liter-ature, while others led boycotts of produce orig-inating from overseas slave plantations.

While deeply unpleasant, Bristol’s involvement in the slave trade is only one chapter in the city’s history. On a more positive note, during the first half of the 19th Century Bristol enjoyed a fruitful association with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the greatest civil engineer of his day. Brunel was not born in Bristol, but his legacy looms large. Three of his life-defining works - the Great Western Railway, the Clifton Suspension Bridge and the SS Great Britain - can be explored in the city.

In recent years, Bristol has become a hub for creative media and digital design companies. Aardman Animation - creators of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep - are based in the city, as are a number of games developers. And, of course, there’s a graffiti and street art culture that stretches back three decades.

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Must visit

THE CLIFTON SUSPENSION BRIDGEBrunel didn’t live to see the completion of this incredible monument to his ability and ambi-tion. Spanning the beautiful Avon Gorge, the bridge opened to the public in December 1864. Visitors can view the bridge from the nearby Clifton Observatory or learn more about the structure at the Visitor Centre.

WHERE THE WALL STREET ART TOUR

A fascinating look at the origins and evolution of the graffiti and street art culture in Bristol. Your knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide will lead you on a two-hour tour of the city’s streets, high-lighting works by both local and internationally-acclaimed artists. You’ll learn more about the various street art styles, the relationships between artists and taggers and what’s legal and what’s not. Given the ever-changing landscape, no two tours will be the same! Read more about Where The Wall on page 30.

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BRISTOL MUSEUM & ART GALLERY

Located next to the impos-ing University of Bristol Wills Building, the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery houses an ec-lectic collection of local, na-tional and international art-works and exhibits. Expect to see everything from fossils, to crystals, stuffed gorillas and Chinese vases. Current exhi-bitions include works by David Hockney and Korea’s Suh Do-Ho.

SS GREAT BRITAIN

Another Brunel masterpiece. The first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic, the Great Britain was almost lost to the elements after being scuttled off the Falk-land Islands in 1937. The ship was towed all the way back to Bristol to a hero’s welcome in 1970 and, following an amazing restoration. Beautiful inside and out, the attraction evokes the joys and hardships of a Trans-Atlantic crossing in days gone by.

Must visit

M SHED Bristol’s history is laid bare at this colourful, interactive and highly informative museum. By focussing on the lives of citizens to chart Bristol’s his-tory, the museum reinforces an already palpable sense of cooperation between com-munity groups and city au-thorities which makes Bristol a great place to live.

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Eating & drinking suggestions

BREAKFAST

Arc Cafe at St. Mary Redcliffe ChurchThe Arc Cafe serves a great full English breakfast for a bargain £5. But the best part is that by eating here you’re helping some-one to get back on their feet - the Cafe was set up by the Ad-diction Recovery Agency to give volunteers a chance to learn new skills, gain qualifications and move on in life with renewed confidence.

The Bristolian, 2 Picton Street, MontpelierClaims to provide the best breakfast in Bristol. Staff and interior bright and cheery.

Cafe Kino, 108 Stokes CroftHigh ceilings, stark white walls and tasty vegetarian offerings. Described as, “a not-for-profit co-operative owned and oper-ated by its workers, and run in part by volunteers.”

Cafe Kino

LUNCHAlas, having stuffed ourselves silly at break-fast each day, we were never in the mood for a huge lunch. We did manage to find a seat at Al Bab Mansour at St Nicholas Market for a quick dish of lamb and couscous. Other market food stalls cater to a variery of tastes - from vegetarian at the veteran Royce Rolls, to a healthy portion of falafel and salad at Eat a Pitta, to good old fashioned pie and mash at Pieminister. Have a look at Bristol Bites and/or Bristol Foodie for further lunchtime inspiration.

DINNER

Seven Stars Inn

Graze Bar and Chop House, 63 Queen SquareLively Bath Ales-owned gastrobpub with a modern British menu. Decent steak, excellent pork chop with sage croquette and roast apple, and friendly and efficient service.

Bristol is home to a number of historic pubs, one of which is designated by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) as having an interior of national impor-tance (The King’s Head), and another 5 of regional importance. Another not on that list (and the only one we managed to visit whilst in the city) is the Seven Stars Inn, built in the 17th Century and owner of a proud history - read their website to find out more the pub’s opposition to the slave trade. It’s still hugely popular, and guarantees a warm welcome and a cracking pint at a surprisingly low price. We really liked the look of the Prince of Wales on Gloucester Road, but unfortunately didn’t have time to call in even for a swift one. Next time, perhaps!

DRINKS

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EntertainmentBristolians are spoilt for choice when it comes to options for whiling away their evenings. The city is home to numerous theatres and music venues, including the Theatre Royal, home of the Bristol Old Vic, which happens to be the longest continuously-running theatre in the UK. As well as staging their own original pro-ductions, the Old Vic runs a prestigious thea-tre school, providing an education in all aspects of stagecraft. Their three-year course in pro-fessional acting is particularly highly regarded (and fiercely competitive), so its no surprise that many of their students - Jeremy Irons, Olivia Coleman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Miranda Richard-son, to name but a few - have gone on to great things. The theatre will celebrate its 250th an-niversary next year.

The Bristol Hippodrome, by comparison, is a relative youngster, but has still been around for over a century. You’ll find something here for all the family - from classic musicals such as Annie and Oklahoma, to Broadway exports like Jersey Boys, stand-up comedy, tribute bands and various dance and children’s performanc-es. Tours of the theatre are available each Sat-urday morning.

On a smaller scale, the Tobacco Factory The-atre makes use of a space which played a part in Bristol’s industrial past and now showcases

a variety of performance arts, including a very successful collaboration with Shakespearian company which one critic claims is, “undoubt-edly … the most consistent and enjoyable pro-gramme of Shakespeare in the country.” Not a bad effort for a not-for-profit theatre company that relies on the generosity of sponsors, rather than any contribution from the public purse, to survive.

Although its stage plays host to the odd come-dian, the Coslton Hall’s stock in trade is music, and a great variety of it. The largest concert hall in Bristol, its programme for the remainder of 2015 is impressive - Mike and the Mechanics, Suzanne Vega, Bryan Ferry, Elvis Costello, Burt Bacharach, Joe Satriani, and Belinda Carlisle are just a few of the big names who will be per-forming at the venue between now and the end of the year.

The Canteen, at Hamilton House on Stokes Croft, boasts that it is one of only two Bristol venues offering live music every night of the week (not sure what the other one is). As you might expect, there’s an eclectic mix, and it’s all free (though you are encouraged to donate to the music bucket if you’re happy with what you’ve seen and heard, with every penny going to the performers).

ShoppingBristol’s retail sector provides another opportunity to see the various sides of the city.

The St Nicholas Market has been serving the city since 1743. The typical British in-door market is open 6 days a week, with farmers’ and arts and crafts stalls appearing once or twice per week.

The Clifton Arcade, in Clift-on Village, dates back to the 1870s, but spent most of its

life as a furniture warehouse. It was restored in the 1990s and now houses a variety of fairly upmarket retail units.

Cabot Circus is one of those mammouth modern shop-ping malls, where you’ll find everything - brand-name stores, cafes and restaurants and a cinema - under one roof. And what a nice roof it is!

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When to visitBristol is a city for all seasons, hosting a huge number of events and festivals throughout the year. Here are a selection of events taking place during the remainder of 2015 - check out the Visit Bristol website for more.

Eat Drink Bristol FashionQueen’s Square, 29 April - 10 May‘A pop-up festival of food, drink and music set in a spectacular tipi village.’

Bristol Food ConnectionsAcross Bristol, 1 - 9 May‘A citywide food festival that celebrates Bristol’s diverse food culture and communi-ty.’

MayfestAcross Bristol, 14 -24 May‘Bristol’s unique annual fes-tival of contemporary thea-tre. Dedicated to presenting a broad range of unusual,

playful and ambitious work from leading theatre makers from Bristol, the UK and be-yond.’

Love Saves The DayEastville Park, 23 - 24 May‘Combines the best of the city’s thriving underground with pioneering artists from across the globe, showcas-ing a huge variety of different genres and musical styles in one amazing space.’

Bristol’s Big Green WeekAcross Bristol, 6 - 21 June‘Environmental events for families, professionals, busi-nesses and Bristolians.’

St Paul’s Afrikan Caribbean CarnivalSt Paul’s, 4 July‘Highlights include a mas-querade, live music, street sound systems, a children’s creative area and a range of stalls.’

Upfest - The Urban Paint Festival 26 - 27 July‘Europe’s largest urban arts festival’

Bristol International Bal-loon FiestaAshton Court Estate, 6 - 9 August‘Europe’s largest ballooning event, now in its 37th year.’

SummaryBristol’s diversity, history, ar-chitecture and love for the arts makes it a great destina-tion for a weekend getaway, though it does deserve, and would require, a lot more of your time in order to see ab-solutely everything. There’s a real sense of civic pride, though this manifests itself in many different ways, and the collaborative spirit that can be felt around areas such as Stokes Croft is in many ways inspirational.

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Discovering the wonders of

Crystal Palace

AROUND LONDON

Don’t be put off by claims that Crystal Palace is too far off the beaten path to be worthy of a visit. This corner of south east London has so much going for it that you’ll want to return time and time again. But if you’re pressed for time, read on for how to make the most of a day amongst the dinosaurs.

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Getting therePrior to the re-locating of

the Crystal Palace in the mid 19th Century, the area was

know as Sydenham Hill.

Crystal Palace lies within five London boroughs - Bromley, Croydon, Lambeth, South-

wark and Lewisham.

At a height of 112m above sea level, Crystal Palace is one of the highest points

in London and offers great views of the city.

The Crystal Palace Transmit-ter (see cover photo) is 200m tall - the fourth largest struc-

ture in London.

Emile Zola, during his exile from France, stayed at what is now the Queen’s Hotel on Church Road between Octo-ber 1898 and June 1899. Sir

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was also a frequent visitor to the area.

“You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” - Michael Caine delivered this

oft-quoted line during a scene from The Italian Job which was

filmed at Crystal Palace Park.

The FA Cup Final was held at Crystal Palace stadium (on the site what is now the National Sports Centre) between 1895

and 1914.

The Park also hosted inter-national motor racing events

from 1927 until 1972.

Crystal Palace Park is the starting point for Section 11 of the south-east London Green

Chain Walk.

Improvements in public transport in recent years mean Crystal Palace is more easily accessible than previ-ously.

A direct train from Victoria sta-tion takes only 27 minutes; from Westminster, using a combina-tion of tube and Overground, the journey time is 34 minutes; and a trip from Highbury and Islington in north London will take just over 40 minutes.

If you’re happy to move at a more relaxed pace, the no. 3 bus from Oxford Circus winds its way to the Palace in just over an hour.

MorningShould you forego breakfast and opt to fill up on arrival, there are plenty of options. If trav-elling by train or Overground, steel yourself for the impending walk up Anerley Hill by calling in at Brown & Green at Crystal Palace station. The cafe serves Fair Trade teas and coffees, and healthy options such as muesli and porridge, alongside pastries, butties, toasties and full breakfasts. If it’s not too early (and, let’s face it, it rare-ly is), those with a sweet tooth, can indulge in the proprietors’ fantastic range of homemade cakes and bakes.

Cafe St. Germain on Crys-tal Palace Parade is perfect for those arriving by bus. Locat-ed directly across from the bus terminal, this establishment has been serving up all manner of French staples - pastries, ome-lettes, crepes, croques and ba-guettes - since 1997. If the

weather’s good, enjoy a seat on the terrace and watch the world go by as you sip on a tra-ditional cafe au lait.

Less continental and more gut-bustingly British fare can be found at the Crystal Pan-try Cafe on Church Road. The Cafe is a throwback to the days when no-one worried about calories and just wanted to fill their stomachs in preparation for a hard day’s work (or to re-pair the damage from the night before). A mega breakfast - egg, bacon, sausage, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, chips and toast, washed down with a tea or coffee - will set you back about £6. Vegetarian options and salads are available too.

Cyclists may be interested to know that as well as offering bike fittings and repairs, and fit-ness testing and coaching, the Cadence Cycling Performance Centre is also home to the Feed Zone Cafe. A wide range of speciality Fee & Brown teas are available, along with coffees, cakes and other tasty treats for the health-conscious.

After a hearty breakfast, you’ll be in need of some exercise, and where better for an ener-getic stroll than a wonderful and historic park?

Crystal Palace Park, cover-ing 200 acres, was opened by Queen Victoria in 1854. There’s more to the park than immedi-ately meets the eye - to learn more pay a visit to the Crystal Palace Museum which can be found on the edge of the park on Anerley Hill.

Suffice to say, the park is a great space for the whole family, and is particularly picturesque in the

Did you know...?

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Nspring and summer. It’s home to a diverse range of wildlife including geese, ducks, moor-hens, squirrels, a gorilla and several dinosaurs. While there is a childlike pleasure to be gained from spending a good few minutes feeding most of these, neither Guy the Goril-la nor the dinosaurs will bite. That’s because they’re stat-utes, the former the work of the wonderful British sculptor, David Wynne, while the latter (of which there are over 30) were created, on-site, by Ben-jamin Waterhouse Hawkins in the mid-19th Century. When unveiled to the public, these particular statues were viewed with some awe, and they have since been placed on the Na-tional Heritage List for England as Grade 1 monuments.

Aside from marvelling at these national wonders, visitors to the park can amuse them-selves as they attempt to find their way around, and out of, London’s largest maze (which, again, dates back to the 19th Century). From April to Octo-ber, and when the weather is good, one can also hire a pedal boat and circumnavigate one of the lakes. There’s also am-ple space for a game of football and the park is a popular spot for joggers and dog-walkers. And, thanks to the hard work undertaken by the Friends of Crystal Palace Subway, there’s a good chance that a new arts venue will be open to the pub-lic by early 2016 (you can read more about this from page 24).

ace triangle where there are no shortage of excellent in-dependent restaurants vy-ing for your custom. At the southern point of the triangle, where Church Road and West-ow Street converge, you’ll find opportunities to sample British pub fare, or something more diverse, be it from Venezuela or Vietnam.

The Alma and The White Hart pubs have been serving the area for many years. With its near-floor to ceiling windows, The Alma , which was built in 1854, is a bright and inviting es-tablishment. The owners are committed to using as much local produce as possible in the kitchen, and while the menu varies depending on what’s in season, you can always expect to find the traditional - fish and chips, ham and eggs - along-side more contemporary offer-ings.

Across the road at The White Hart, there’s a similarly season-al menu, but with the inclusion of some good, old-fashioned British comfort foods such as sausage and mash, fish-finger sandwiches, and sticky toffee pudding and fruit crumble for dessert.

Opposite the White Hart on Westow Street is one of our fa-vourite south-east London eat-eries - Urban Orient. If you’re after for an authentic Viet-namese meal that won’t break the bank, look no further. The summer rolls are huge, stuffed full of fresh ingredients, and one bite will fool your brain into thinking that you’re back in Hoi An. The noodle soups are magnificent - the broth in-cludes 24 different herbs, and the Bun Hue will test the taste

buds of even the most fervent spice lovers. The other rice and noodle mains we’ve tried have always been of a high standard and, as mentioned, are great value for money - not one item on the menu comes in at over £10 (and there are extra discounts to be had during the week). The decor is non-pretentious, the atmosphere wonderful, and we’ve never had reason to fault the service.

There can’t be too many Ven-ezuelan restaurants in Lon-don, so if you may as well check one out while you’re in the area. Admittedly, we’ve not yet found the time to vis-it Mi Cocina Es Tuya, but the reviews we’ve read vouch for its authentically good food.

Lunch

Around the TriangleNow that you’re on Westow Street, you can begin a prop-er exploration of the Triangle. And what a refreshingly differ-ent and independent place it is! With a handful of exceptions, the streets are full of charming retail establishments that you won’t find elsewhere.

If you’re one of those cool kids with a penchant for vintage (or vintage-inspired) clothing, then Crystal Palace has a load to of-fer. If you need a new trilby or cravat, a genuine 1950s flying jacket, or a 1930s-style party frock, you could do worse than poke your head into the likes of Bambino, Crystal Palace Vin-tage, CrazyManCrazy or Violet Betty’s.

And it’s not just old-school clobber that the Palace has in

If a picnic in the park doesn’t tickle your fancy, head to the much-heralded Crystal Pal-

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abundance. There are a num-ber of stores where you can get your hands on classically de-signed furniture and lighting, that has been restored, recycled or re-purposed and would look great in your retro home of the future. The largest such ven-dor, Crystal Palace Antiques & Modern, can be found just off Westow Hill. Although there’s room for some contemporary Scandinavian furniture with-in this old, four-storey high warehouse, the space is most-ly packed full of antique ward-robes, G-plan coffee tables and sideboards, sofas, dining tables and chairs, and countless other bits and pieces. You’ll find more of the same along Church Road, at Cartwright’s and Flaming Nora, as well at Jake Dunn De-signs where the proprietors will also be happy to assist with any bespoke furniture requirements that you might have.

There are a host of other treas-ure troves in the area. Hayes Lane Market, for example, is a two-storey bazaar, where bookworms, film buffs, vinyl enthusiasts, bone china collec-tors and, frankly, anyone else can while away the hours look-ing sifting for a second-hand bargain. It’s pretty well organ-ised and the vendors are all very

helpful (if not always up for a bit of haggling!). Weekend stalls at Westow Street (adjacent to, and organised by the aforemen-tioned Crystal Palace Vintage) and in Carberry Road afford similar opportunities to pick up some bric-a-brac that you didn’t know you wanted until you saw it!

We rarely walk away from Crys-tal Palace without stocking up on a few second-hand books from the charity shops that serve the area. Mind Enter-prise on Westow Street usual-ly has some ridiculously good offers on second-hand books. Living Water Satisfies, is slight-ly more expensive, with Shelter and Cancer Research pitching their prices somewhere in-be-tween. Of course, unless you’re in absolutely desperate need of what these stores have to of-fer (and they all sell homeware and clothing alongside books, music and DVDs), then one shouldn’t baulk at the prices.

While you can pick up some battered paperbacks from the charity shops, Bookseller Crow is the place to head for the lat-est releases, signed copies and high-quality advice on your next literary purchase. We can only imagine how difficult life

must be for a high street book-seller these days - digital ad-vances must make competition in this sector particularly fierce. But as soon as you walk into this fantastic establishment, you can sense the proprietor’s passion for the written word. Not only are there notices highlighting a range of literary events and a book club hosted on the premises, but the books are displayed in a highly engag-ing manner, with an attention to detail which must require a fair degree amount of thought and effort.

If it’s something new, but de-lightfully unique, that you want for your home, try: Do South, for furniture, lighting and oth-er accessories; Smash, Bang, Wallop for toiletries, fragranc-es and some amazing SE Lon-don-themed art work and tea towels; Glitter & Twisted for something bright and cheery for your kitchen and dining rooms; Coconut Trading for crafts from south east Asia; and In A Space Gallery or The Pic-ture Palace for that piece of art to tie the room together.

The Palace is home to a week-ly food market. Although it has only been in operation for a couple of years, the mar-ket has been well received

AROUND LONDON

18Crystal Palace Vintage; Westow Street Market; Crystal Palace Antiques & Modern; Haynes Lane Market; and Smash Bang Wallop

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AROUND LONDON

and supported, quickly estab-lishing itself as an asset to the community. Indeed, the mar-ket in the running to win the BBC Food and Farming Award for Best Food Market in the UK (winners to be announced on 30 April). No mean feat. Stall holders must meet a fairly strict set of criteria in order to ensure that the market meets its aim of supporting and promoting local producers and encouraging fair trading in sustainable produce.

Foodies might also be inclined to call into Good Taste on We-stow Hill to stock up on speci-ality cheeses and charcuterie. The store also stocks a wide selection of wines, and beers from the locality and across the UK.

Joanna’s has been operating for over 30 years - we did have one slight issue on our, thus far, only visit, but we could easily see why it has been so success-ful for so long.

When we’ve saved up and de-cided to treat ourselves, how-ever, our go-to restaurant has been The Crystal Palace Mar-ket. It’s not too formal, but nor is it so raucous that a roman-tic evening would be spoiled. We’ve always enjoyed the food (usually opting for the fish dish-es), and have found the waiting staff to be well-trained and ap-propriately attentive.

Domali is another long-estab-lished Crystal Palace institution and is the perfect spot for veg-etarian and pescetarian cuisine. Again, there’s usually quite a buzz about the place in the evenings, but the waiting staff are usually well on top of things and the chalkboard is frequent-ly updated with seasonal spe-cials.

Further honourable mentions go to those restaurants offering something a little bit different - Numidie (Algerian), Gurkha Cottage (Nepalese - and mas-sive brownie points to them for offering a huge discount to members of the Emergen-cy Services and Armed Forces), Mediterranea (Sardinian) and A Torre (Portuguese). We’ve tried all but the last of these and would be happy to return at any time.

Take a breakDon’t worry if you find yourself in need of a cuppa while doing the rounds - there are plenty of interesting options. Boyce da Roca, Braziliana, La Bruschet-ta and the Blackbird Bakery all have lots going for them, and if you are keen for your mon-ey to go to a good cause, you can always nip into the Living Water Satisfies cafe and choose something from their extensive (and interesting!) tea menu.

DinnerIf you’re not stuffed to the gills by this point, you may as well hang around for your evening meal. The list of great eateries in Crystal Palace appears end-less, so it’s not surprising that there’s a venue for every oc-casion. If you’re celebrating a special occasion, opt for a fine dining experience at Joanna’s or the Exhibition Rooms. We can’t vouch for the latter, but

From top: the extensive tea menu at Liv-ing Water Satisfies cafe; factual signage outside Good Taste Food and Drink;; and awaiting the main course at Numidie.

One for the roadRound the day off with a well deserved drink at one of the lo-cal pubs. If you’re heading back to Crystal Palace train station, or

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Nto the bus terminal, you could drop in at Westow House or The Grape and Grain, located on opposite sides of the road at the tip of the triangle at An-erley Hill. The Londonist listed Westow House, which is part of the Antic Group, as one of the ten best craft beer pubs in the capital last year, while the G&G has earned a reputation for the quality (and quantity) of its live music evenings.

If it’s easier for you to get home from Gipsy Hill Station, check out The Sparrowhawk be-fore you begin your descent, then discover what’s on the menu at Beer Rebellion op-posite the station. You’re likely to be spoiled for choice - the bar boasts of a different weekly line-up of eight ales and fridg-es full to the brim with over 50 different bottled beers.

Summary

thing a little bit different and to brighten up our lvies. These places are deserving of support. There’s no doubt that those who live there know that they are in a special place, and once you visit, you’ll understand why.

When to visitIt’s unsurprising that a week-end provides the best oppor-tunities to see the community at its liveliest. The Crystal Pal-ace Food Market is open only on Saturdays, while the vintage market at Hayes Lane is also a weekend-only affair. A number of the restaurants appear to be closed on a Monday - it’s al-ways best to call in advance.

A number of larger events take place in Crystal Palace throughout the year. The Lon-don to Brighton Mini Run, or-ganised by the London & Sur-rey Mini Owners Club, departs from Crystal Palace Park on 17 May.

The automobile theme contin-ues the following week (24 and 25 May) with the now annual Motorsport at the Palace event. A throwback to the days when Crystal Palace Park was a reg-ular venue for motor sport, the event brings together scores of

While we’ve tried to give you some flavour of the area, and suggestions for a one day itin-erary, the reality is that Crystal Palace deserves much more than 24 hours of your time. It’s an area with a great independ-ent spirit, and there are count-less establishments that have made the fort to offer some-

classic car owners who sprint around the course, hoping to post a winning time.

Crystal Palace is home to south-east London’s biggest film festival. Held over two weeks, usually in November, the Crystal Palace Interna-tional Film Festival brings the world’s best independent films to new audiences in un-usual surroundings. A judg-ing panel, which last year in-cluded comedians Mark Steel and Johnny Vegas, hand out awards for the very best en-tries.

The biggest event on the Crystal Palace calendar, how-ever, is the Overground Fes-tival, which takes place in June each year. Organised and run entirely by volunteers, the Fes-tival is held primarily in West-ow Park, but with traders and community groups around the triangle also entering into the spirit. Although the 2015 programme has yet to be an-nounced, expect plenty of music, dance, comedy, poetry and film, as well as crafts work-shops, and plenty of excellent, locally-inspired and produced art, gifts and food and drink.

London to Brighton Mini Run, 201421

The Alma (Pub)95 Church Road; 020 8768 1885

A Torre (Portuguese)19 Westow Street; 020 8653 9895

Beer Rebellion (Pub)128 Gipsy Hill

Crystal Palace Campaign

Crystal Palace Park Communi-ty Stakeholder Group

Crystal Palace Foundation

The Crystal Palace Sphinx Trail

Crystal Palace Transition Town

Friends of Crystal Palace Dino-saurs

Friends of Crystal Palace Park

Friends of Crystal Palace Sub-way

Picture Palace Campaign

Upper Norwood Library Cam-paign

Blue Door Bicycles5-7 Central Hill; 020 8670 9767

Bambino (Vintage store)32 Church Road

Bookseller Crow50 Westow Street; 020 8771 8831

Cadence Performance2a Anerley Hill; 020 8676 8825

Cartwright’s (Antiques)34 Church Road; 020 8768 5370

Coconut Trading (World crafts)73-75 Church Road; 020 8771 0700

Crazy Man Crazy 18a Church Road; 020 8653 6548

Crystal Palace Food Market

Haynes Lane Market

Crystal Palace International Film Festival (November)

Crystal Palace Overground Festival (24-28 June, 2015)

London to Brighton Mini Run (17 May, 2015)

Motorsport at the Palace (24-25 May, 2015)

CRYSTAL PALACE DIRECTORYCOMMUNITY GROUPS

FESTIVALS & EVENTS

BLOGS & NEWSLETTERS

MARKETS

RETAILERS

CAFES, BARS & RESTAURANTS

Crystal Palace Antiques & ModernJasper Road; 020 8480 7042

Do South (Furniture)2 Westow Street; 020 8771 0500

Flaming Nora40 Church Road; 020 7175 0111

Glitter and Twisted (Vintage and modern design)25 Westow Street; 020 8771 9493

Good Taste Food and Drink28 Westow Hill

Piast Deli (Polish deli)3 Westow Street; 020 8768 5166

The Picture Palace65 Westow Street; 020 8771 1966

Smash Bang Wallop (Home-ware)40 Westow Street; 020 8771 5517

Violet Betty’s (Vintage-inspired clothing)85 Church Road; 020 8771 4998

Crystal Palace Project

Crystal Palace Underground Toilets Renovation

London Inspiration

Photos by Julian Davies

The Transmitter

The Triangle

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Living Water Satisfies Cafe46-48 Westow Street; 020 8653 4011

Mediterranea (Sardinian)21 Westow Street; 020 8771 7327

Numidie (Algerian/French)48 Westow Hill; 020 8766 6166

The Postal Order (Pub)32-33 Westow Street; 020 8771 3003

The Sparrowhawk (Pub)2 Westow Hill; 020 8761 4831

Westow House (Pub)79 Westow Hill; 020 8670 0654

The White Hart (Pub)96 Church Road; 020 8771 9389

Blackbird Bakery71 Westow Street; 020 8768 0357

Boyce da Roca (Cafe)28 Church Road; 020 8771 2682

Braziliana (Cafe)72 Westow Hill, 020 8761 3090

Brown and Green (Cafe)Crystal Palace Station; 020 8761 6409

Cafe St. Germain16-17 Crystal Palace Parade; 020 8670 3670

The Crystal Palace Market (Modern British)3-7 Church Road; 020 3475 7080

Domali (Vegetarian)38 Westow Street; 020 8768 0096

The Exhibition Rooms (Modern British)69-71 Westow Hill; 020 8761 1175

The Grape and Grain (Pub)2 Anerley Hill; 020 8778 9688

Gurkha Cottage (Nepalese)17 Westow Street; 020 8771 7372

Joanna’s (British/American)56 Westow Hill; 020 8670 4052

La Bruschetta (Cafe)52 Westow Street; 020 8771 7478

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HIDDEN DEPTHS

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Take the bus to Crys-tal Palace and there’s a good chance you’ll pass by an architec-tural wonder. But

you can be forgiven for missing it - not only is the Crystal Palace Subway tucked away under-ground, but it hasn’t been open to the public, on a regular ba-sis at least, for nearly two dec-ades. But a group of volunteers - The Friends of Crystal Palace Subway (FCPS) - are working to both heighten awareness and to make the space available to the community on a regular basis. We caught up with FCPS committee members Sue Gio-vanni and Jules Hussey to talk about the subway’s past, pres-ent and future.

Learn more

Photo credits: James Balston

RTA: Let’s begin by reflecting on the The Crystal Palace it-self - it must surely have been a revelation at the time it was moved to Sydenham Hill.

SG: Somebody that I spoke to recently described the Crys-tal Palace as the O2 of its day. We now have a romantic view of it as some kind of big green-house, or would compare it to Kew Gardens, but at the time no-one had ever seen anything like it. Crystal Palace Parade would have looked complete-ly different - at that time there would have been two hugely imposing buildings on either side of the road, and the sub-way would have linked the two in a suitable style.

Some of the best photographs of the area at the turn of the 20th Century were taken by Emile Zola while he was in ex-

ile in Norwood. But the most imposing view of the station would have been as you ap-proached it on the train, from the tunnel. It was three storeys high, but only one of these was above road level, so the view from the train would have been the most magnificent.

JH: You see a lot of photos and paintings of the Palace, and although it dominates the view, I think it’s only when re-development plans are talked about that people start to con-sider just how enormous the structure was. And when you mention the High Level Station, which was a stunning building in its own right, lots of people are surprised to learn not only that it was there in the first place, but also that it was even-tually completely demolished.

The photos of the subway are

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Nstriking. Do you have any idea who designed it?

SG: We’d always thought that the architect was Edward Mid-dleton Barry, because the style of the building was similar to his own. Our main source for that information was printed in the Illustrated London News, but during our research last year, we found a four-line cor-rection in a later edition of the same newspaper saying that it was Charles Barry, Edwards’ brother, who was the architect. That was always a possibility as it was the Banks and Barry company who were accredited with the work, of which Charles Barry was a senior partner.

Why did the subway fall out of use?

SG: By the time the station was opened in 1865, the Palace was already falling out of fashion. The station was never as busy as the operators would have liked, because certain parts of the track were single track, so you were limited in the num-ber of trains that could get in and out, and requests to Par-liament to extend the line were never approved. So revenues were never as great as might have been expected. The sta-tion was also closed during the Great War in order to save money, and the line and the roof of the station were dam-aged during World War II. But, of course, the most significant factor was the Palace burning down in 1936. From that point onwards, the subway didn’t re-ally serve much of a purpose, and hardly any at all after the station was demolished in the early 1960s.

JH: And so many people walk

over the subway every day and have no idea what’s down there. It’s an amazing space - it has been used as an air raid shelter, as a place to store stat-ues, as a venue for raves - and since we’ve been involved with Friends of Crystal Palace Sub-way, there has been a lot of in-terest, but our aim is to make it available to inspire more peo-ple in the future.

The subway looks to be in pret-ty good condition considering its age and the fact that it has been discarded for so long. Is that all down to your efforts over the last few years?

SG: We couldn’t find any writ-ten evidence of any repair work being done to the structure of the subway, but if you look at the Norwood Society website and the photos taken by Nick Catford, who has document-ed the site over many decades, you’ll see that there’s been a lot of work done to clear rub-ble and bricks, and stairs have been fixed and so on, but there is no written evidence to say who was responsible for carry-ing out that work, what permis-sion they had, or what materials they used in their attempts to tidy the place up.

The subway was closed to the public in 1996, but it’s probably fair to say that more work has been carried out there in the last few years than was done in the last few decades, as far as we’re aware. A survey carried out by English Heritage and the London Borough of Bromley resulted in four stages of sug-gested works, and although that report has yet to be published, there is a now strategy for look-ing after it and some pretty se-rious investigative work done to

gain a better understanding of the structure and a greater understanding of the risks.

JH: There’s no suggestion that the space has been de-liberately neglected it, but the local councils already have a huge job on their hands to maintain Crystal Palace Park, which is a huge space with numerous heritage con-siderations - the dinosaurs, sphinxes, terraces, the sub-way - and people may not always appreciate the effort that goes into running a park that has none of those fea-tures in it! But both Bromley and Southwark Councils are now fully engaged in this pro-ject and they realise that the way to get money to maintain these assets is to get the com-munity involved, and to use so-cial media to that end. They’re not passing on the burden, they just realise the benefits of getting the community behind these types of spaces.

How successful have you been in raising awareness regarding the subway?

JH: There’s always work to be done, but we’ve got a healthy following on Twitter - 2,500 followers; we’ve got a Face-book presence; and we do a lot of leafletting to spread our messaging to those who don’t venture online. We’ve probably done too well, because nothing is a surprise to anyone around here anymore - they all know about the project! But that is good. And although we’re a tiny organisation with little funding, we’re doing what we can to make the space acces-sible again. We got some fund-ing from the Dulwich Com-munity Council and Southwark

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Council, and we’ll put that to-wards reinstating a gate on the Southwark side of the subway, hopefully later this year in time to mark the 150th anniversary of the opening of the subway. Once that’s in place we’ll be looking at a whole schedule of community, heritage and arts events, on a small scale - there’s no power, water or lighting down there, so anyone get-ting involved will have to work within those constraints. But actually that’s pretty exciting because in any creative indus-try those restraints add to the challenge and make you work that bit harder, so there’s a real buzz and awareness there now.

For me, having worked on this project for three years, in a community that’s very political

and very divided, and contin-ues to be so, the subway has brought a lot of warring organ-isations together. To get that gate in and literally throw open the doors for tours or arts and theatre events once per month, and work with local residents and businesses - who are very, very supportive - would be an amazing achievement.

How difficult is it to find vol-unteers to either assist with one-off events, or to join the committee?

JH: We have a good bank of 30 to 40 returning volunteers, and it’s important to have that foun-dation of people who already have some background knowl-edge, and who are aware of the health and safety considera-

tions. They are great, and each year we know there will always be others who will step up to help with events such as Open House London. But it is more difficult to get volunteers for the more long-term stuff. For example, the position of Treas-urer will be available soon, and we will get someone to fill that slot, but it will be more difficult.

SG: I feel spoilt in a way be-cause motivating people to come and help in the subway is quite easy, compared to other heritage projects who struggle to get and maintain volunteers. We were almost flattened in the rush when we asked for help. There were no shortage of peo-ple who wanted to help with researching the history. We’re also pleased that it’s a project

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which really interests young people. We had one person in his 60s who thought he would be the youngest person to vol-unteer, as that had been his ex-perience elsewhere, but he’s probably one of the oldest in our group. We have people in their 20s and 30s, which was something of a surprise.

JH: While we have a diverse group of people helping out, one of the most unfortunate things about the subway is that it’s a long, long way off getting disabled access. The new gate will go some way to enabling people with limited mobility to get down there, but it still won’t benefit those with no mobility, which is an issue with a lot of heritage sites. But we are do-ing a lot of targeted outreach work. If you look at events around Crystal Palace, it is still very white and middle-class, so we’re trying to reach out to groups - older people, BAME [black, Asian, minority ethnic] groups, people with mental health and learning disabili-ties - and just reminding them that the subway is the gateway to the Park, which serves five boroughs in which there’s huge diversity, and we really want everyone to be aware of it and use it. It’s hard to get the word out there, but we are trying to bring more people through the doors.

SG: The subway has an inter-esting narrative curve. It was originally intended for first class passengers to use when they got off the train at the high level station and made their way into the Crystal Palace. And even after the Palace burnt down, there were still lots of people who daren’t use it because they

didn’t feel it was their place to do so. But then during the Sec-ond World War it was used as an air raid shelter, so it would be used by anyone who could get a ticket to use it. And we also know, from speaking to the park rangers, that it was also used by homeless people. So part of our heritage project was to record that history, and recognise the role of the space through the years, and that it’s not an exclusive space. In a way it’s common land, and it is a space for the people.

JH: We’ll always find a job - ei-ther for an hour, a week, or a year - for any volunteers who simply show a bit of enthusi-asm. We have a fantastic com-mittee at the moment, but we will definitely be looking for a new marketing and PR person, fundraisers and a treasurer over the next few months. We are looking for people who can commit a bit more time, but equally we need some funding to ensure that those people are rewarded for their efforts, or at least not out of pocket for the work they do on behalf of the organisation. And you don’t need to be based locally - a PR person, for example, could do the job remotely. So if anyone around the country, or even overseas, is interested, they should get in touch and we’ll see what’s possible. It would be quite exciting to have peo-ple beyond our doorstep work-ing with us.

SG: I think the main skills are creative thinking and patience! You have to be able to go with the flow. Things will happen, they might just take a long time!

I assume that you work closely

with other community groups in Crystal Palace?

SG: It’s important to take the time to build relationships with other groups, and what you gain from that is well worth the effort, because you find help from unexpected sourc-es. When we first started work-ing on our heritage project, we didn’t have an office, so we were having meetings in ca-fes, and so we had a very public presence around Crystal Pal-ace. And the more people you meet, the more connections are suggested, and its amazing what you find out.

JH: There is a great sense of community here and when you’ve earned the trust of peo-ple in the area, the results are fantastic. I feel very honoured that having lived here for just under four years I can walk round this triangle and know virtually every shop owner, know that people will help me out if I need it. To give you an example, I was walking around recently with our local police sergeant trying to organise an Easter holiday event and within two paces I had prizes donat-ed by the bookshop, the shoe shop and others, everyone just helping out. It’s great to be able to do that and to know that people appreciate that, as an organisation and as an indi-vidual, you’re just trying to help others and not get anything out of it yourself other than a sense of pride. There’s so much go-ing on in Crystal Palace - with the Overground Festival, Tran-sition Town, the dinosaurs, the Library Trust - and people are learning the benefits of working together.

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NWhat other steps do you need to take before open the space up again on a more regular ba-sis?

SG: At present, the subway can be a fairly inhospitable place - it is basically a wind tunnel at the moment, so it needs some kind of protection and as part of the restructuring, there’s a plan to cover one of the open spac-es outside the subway, which originally had a ridge and fur-row glass roof. It needs some kind of weather protection. It has huge potential to be a mul-ti-use space - if you’re a crea-tive person and you go in there, you can’t help but recognise the craftsmanship.

JH: It excites engineers, archi-tects, artists, performers, mu-sicians - it’s has the power to bring a load of different peo-ple together and they’ll all be blown away and inspired by it.

It will be possible to visit the Subway during the 2015 Open House London event in Sep-tember, though due to high de-mand, places may be allocated following a ballot. Keep an eye on both the Open House and Friends of Crystal Palace Sub-way websites for further details.

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Girl on a Swing With Balloons by JPS, Park Row, Bristol

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Graffiti has evolved greatly over the past three decades, with examples be-ing transmitted ef-

fortlessly to global audiences thanks to the expansion of the world-wide-web and social media. There are still some is-sues concerning its legality, and critics maintain that it’s little more than vandalism, but one Bristol company is champion-ing street art as a direct form of freedom of expression. Where the Wall’s Coordinator, Rob Dean, gave us the lowdown.

RTA: Let’s start with a basic question - what is street art? Is it a recent phenomenon, or does it have roots that go back many years?

RD: Painting on walls, scrawling on walls, scratching on walls goes back thousands of years, cave painting and so on. And the word graffiti comes from the Latin ‘graffito’ which means scratched. So it has been around for thousands of years and at different times it has been used for different purpos-es. So as you know, in Belfast, it’s very politically charged, in Berlin it was the same. In Bris-tol, it’s more a celebration of self-expression in a public en-vironment. So it’s less political, it’s more about displaying your independence and your ability to express yourself on a large-scale to many people.

Tell us more about your organ-isation’s aims and objectives.

Where the Wall is all about the promotion of the Bristol’s cre-ative culture. We don’t just offer the street art tours, we want people to experience the culture of painting with a

spray can - so we offer a num-ber of different experiences: from spraying a stencil with some water-based paints with no noxious fumes; to actually undertaking a street art chal-lenge for groups of between 9 and 15 people; to workshops for schools; and team-build-ing events. That makes us feel complete because we’re not in the tourism business, we’re liv-ing and working artists and we want to give people the experi-ence of expressing themselves with creativity. The strongest message of street art and graf-fiti art is about individuals work-ing independently and being empowered to do that, instead of locking yourselves indoors at the end of the working day.

We started the street art tours in November 2012 and ran two free tours for anyone who showed an interest in order to promote some apps that we’d been working on. Those tours were so popular that people told us we should think about doing them more regularly. So we set up in 2013, and ran them on a weekly basis, first for only one or two people and then by the end of the year we were at-tracting around 8 or 9 people to each tour. 2014 was a bit better, and by the end of that year every tour we ran was ful-ly booked, and we realised that people were becoming more aware of our work. We run two tours per week at present, and we’re looking at running three or four per week during the summer.

We’ve now got five or six tour guides, all with creative back-grounds and so what the tours have enabled us to do is to cre-ate an independent commerce which is now being spread

between a number of peo-ple. For example, we’re us-ing some of that money to broadcast Wherethewall TV on YouTube which will high-light the best of Bristol’s cre-ative culture. You should check it out!

Are most of the people who attend your tours already fans of street art? Or are there some sceptics that you have to win over?

We haven’t had too many people who have been willing to spend their free time com-ing along to be sceptical, and it’s more pleasurable experi-ence for us to be able to host 20 people who are all excit-ed and interested to be there, quite often on holiday, look-ing for a different cultural ex-perience, and taking the op-portunity to learn more about street art. There are certainly varying degrees of expertise. Some people have travelled down from London primarily for the tour; some people are from Bristol and have thought, let’s do something different for the day; and there’s a real spread of people from 7 to 77 years old. We get many, many people from overseas - it’s tru-ly an international experience. We always speak to everyone at the start of the tour, find out where they’re from and have a chat, and keep a list of the au-dience and it really is from all corners of the globe.

What styles of street art will visitors see on your tour? And is Bristol the best place to see street art in the UK?

Bristol has a culture of graffiti art that goes back to the ear-ly 1980s. There’s an incredi-

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ble amount of that type of art, based around lettering and re-fining a set of letters that the artist has developed. Graffiti writers are obsessed with cre-ating a unique font or typog-raphy that’s totally exclusive to them and this lettering is used again and again with a slight refinement to it. That’s a mas-sive part of Bristol’s public art. There’s also Banksy’s legacy of the last 10 or 15 years - he ex-perimented with graffiti writing, but later adopted a more visual form of the art - less about let-tering and more about shapes and pictures and messages and narrative - which he found was better suited to engaging peo-ple and communicating with them. We’re very lucky in Bristol that we have so much of both types of art, and that the culture goes back so far. We’re onto our third generation of street artists here in Bristol and that’s what makes the city unique and special.

There’s a lot of public art in London and in Gateshead, and there pockets elsewhere. Bir-mingham will be hosting a street art festival, the City of Colours, in September. That will only be the second time that event has been held in Bir-mingham. So what makes Bris-tol unique is its history of street art, and that has led to the cul-ture being more readily accept-ed and people love it. I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the UK quite like Bristol in that respect. I’d like other cities to become more like Bristol, but they’ve got a lot of catching up to do! In terms of the streets being shared space for people to express themselves in, and not being the exclusive domain of architects and advertisers, I’d be all for other cities trying to replicate what Bristol has achieved, so long as it’s done in a way in which everyone can participate or contribute to it.

Clear this up for us - is street art legal in the UK?

In parts of Bristol, it’s decrimi-nalised. You’ll see on the tour that the city council actually or-ganised a street art festival and allowed international artists to paint on numerous buildings for that event. There’s a new law coming into effect in Bris-tol which will result in street artists only being prosecuted if the owner of the building that has been painted on makes an official complaint. So you won’t see the police chasing so many people for inflicting criminal damage as they might have done in the past. In Stokes Croft, which you’ll visit on the tour, there are many decrimi-nalised zones, and numerous practice zones where artists are painting almost every sin-gle day. It’s not a total free-for-all, for example there would probably be consequences for someone painting on the side of one of the bigger hotels, but there are places in which it is

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Eactively encouraged.

The artists know where they can paint and there are regular Saturday paints going on, there isn’t a constant illegal painting scene going on. There is a tagging scene, but the taggers will often target work by the street artists be-cause they are following the traditions of tag-ging which is about putting your tag in a place where you know it will be seen. So because the street art and the graffiti is seen by so many people, the taggers know that they’ll be seen by putting their name on those artworks. But put-ting tags on buses and advertising hoardings, for example, is still highly illegal and recently in Bristol a tagger received a two-year custodial sentence for putting his tag in places where he shouldn’t have.

I did notice when I was in Berlin that everything that was below a height of about two metres was covered in tags, but taggers in Bristol actu-ally seem to avoid tagging period architecture which I thought was quite nice, though that ap-pears to have slipped a little recently. I thought it was a general unwritten rule, but certainly that’s not the case in other European cities.

How do street artists respond to having their worked tagged? Do they just accept it as an occupational hazard?

If someone, within 24 hours, tags a pairing that has taken a day or two to produce then that’s considered fairly unacceptable - but it happens. In general, when a piece of work is tagged after it has had a fair run, and more tags appear - be-cause one leads to another, then another and another - the result is that the painting location will be repainted by another artist. So the ef-fect of the tagging is that it keeps the paintings evolving and changing which means that they actually create a quite balanced eco-system whereby the culture is always being updated and rejuvenated. So it means that the land-scape is always changing.

Banksy is one of the most famous Bristolians, although he likes to keep himself to himself. Can you tell us a little more about him and his rise to prominence?

He is one of the people - he isn’t seen as being above and beyond anyone else in Bristol, but what he has managed to do is find a way of Well Hung Lover by Banksy, Frogmore Street, Bristol

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communicating his art work to millions of people around the world, and that’s why he’s Bris-tol’s best known artist. What’s inspiring about Banksy is that he has achieved that all him-self, he doesn’t have a major multi-national company to promote him, he doesn’t have adverts on the TV or get mu-sicians to promote him on the radio, he does all his commu-nicating independently through his clever engagement with the public and so he deserves the recognition that comes his way, because he has worked hard for that.

Banksy chooses very significant locations in which to leave his art. He’ll choose a location and a subject and those combine to create a narrative, a very pow-erful piece of art which people will photograph. So even if the art work is removed, the photo-graph captures the artwork for-ever in that location, and that’s very important for him because it provides him with a way of highlighting issues to a large number of people. He found a way of fusing a message with the form of street art that he uses which is stencil-cutting. And while others were using this technique before him, it’s his ability to communicate to people through his art that sets him apart. A number of factors combined to help him in that respect - the internet was be-coming more widely available, CCTV wasn’t as prevalent as it is now, so he was able to leave his art in some very prominent locations that he wouldn’t be able to do now - but his abili-ty to get people thinking about some serious issues that he wants to raise through humour and colour and wit makes him special.

If it wasn’t for one of our tour guides - a guy called John Na-tion - Banksy wouldn’t have picked up a spray can. Indeed, Banksy refers to John, in a book about the history of Bristol street art - Children of the Can - as, “the most important person for youth culture in this country in the last 25 years.” That’s fair praise and shows how high-ly-regarded John is. In 1986, he set up the first legal spray painting environment at Barton Hill Youth Centre which gave people who were fascinated with graffiti culture a place to paint that was legal and off the streets, and that was really the beginning of Bristol’s culture of graffiti and street art. So John is referred to as the Godfather of Bristol street art, although he wouldn’t call himself that as he’s a very modest man!

But while Banksy has become one of the most famous street artists of his generation, there are others who have been op-erating in Bristol during the past 30 years who don’t want the recognition - they’re just happy to do something they love, and that’s painting on a large scale on the streets and they’re just happy to continue doing that until they can’t life a spray can any longer.

What motivates a street artist? They are basically displaying their work for free, so how are they able to make a living out of it or continue to fund their activity?

I think, in Bristol in particular, you don’t get people going into it to make a living. First and foremost it’s about the art and it’s about the lifestyle. And if a commercial opportunity opens

Montpelier Station, Bristol

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up that would be very much secondary to the process of learning to become a skilled artist which takes five or ten or fifteen years. Because the learning process takes so long, it takes dedication, and that dedi-cation has to be based on more than just earning some money at some point. So most artists will find another way to support their activities and that’s anoth-er thing that makes the culture in Bristol so strong, the fact that these artists will work in rain or shine, they are determined and dedicated to their art. Most of them are semi-profession-al or don’t make any money from their art at all, but it’s their biggest passions and there-fore everything that they work for goes towards funding their painting. And that’s why we’re very privileged to be in a po-sition with our street art tours and other activities to give them the recognition they de-serve for the amount of hard

work they’ve put into develop-ing their amazing set of skills which might go unnoticed by the public at large. It has to be said that some artists aren’t even interested in us talking about them - they have a life-style that they enjoy, they have a passion and they don’t really need anyone to tell them that they’re good or that their skills are appreciated.

By the looks of things, local businesses don’t seem to have a problem with the artists us-ing their buildings as canvass-es.

If you’re a business in Bristol, shunning the creative culture, and shunning the graffiti art and street art, would be bad for your business and your reputation, whether you’re an independ-ent business or a multi-nation-al. I feel that, through some open-minded management thinking, businesses are em-

bracing the culture of the area in which they operating and encouraging it in some form or other. For example, we’re quite privileged to be working with the Radisson Blu Hotel at the moment, to run some exhi-bitions in their foyer, reception and bar area for different artists, starting with a street photogra-phy exhibition in a few weeks time. That’s a location that has around three- to four-hun-dred people, at least, circulat-ing every single day. And we see that as the Hotel reach-ing out to Bristol’s culture, we don’t see it as them jumping on some bandwagon or looking for a commercial opportuni-ty, at least not in the way that it’s been put to us. So instead of displaying the usual photos of Bristol buildings which hav-en’t changed in 200 years, they want to make their guests feel excited about the vibrancy of another aspect of Bristol cul-ture.

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ART & ARCHITECTURE

Examples of street art in Bristol by (clockwise, from top left): Phlegm, JPS, Banksy, Roo(?), Cheo and SPZero76

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Bristol may be the number one city for street art in the UK, but there’s a thriv-ing urban arts com-

munity in London as well. While the landscape, invaria-bly, is ever-changing, a walk through Hoxton, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, or even leafy East Dulwich, should provide the opportunity to view some im-pressive paintings and murals by the likes of Phlegm, ROA, Stik, Conor Harrington and, of course, Banksy.

It’s (also) a London thing

Clockwise from top left: ROA, Shoreditch; Conor Harrington, East Dulwich; Banksy,

Bermondsey; and Stik, East Dulwich

ADDITIONAL RESOURCESEXHIBITIONS &

FESTIVALSTabs, Butts and Dog Ends - Mr. Penfold - The Graffiti Life Gallery, London - Until 3 May, 2015

Power to the Sheeple - Mau Mau - Westbank Gallery, Lon-don - 7 to 11 May, 2015

Upfest: The Urban Paint Fes-tival - Bristol - 25 & 26 July

City of Colours Street Art Festival - Birmingham - 12 & 13 September 2015

JPS

Phlegm

Silent Hobo

SPZero76

Stik

Andy Council

Banksy

Cheo

Conor Harrington

Inkie

UK-BASEDARTISTS

BOOKS, FILMS & ONLINE

Street Art, by Johannes Stahl

Children of the Can - Bris-tol Graffiti and Street Art, by Felix Braun

Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents, by Nicholas Ganz and Tristan Manco

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010, Dir: Banksy)

wehangfire.com

LDNGraffiti.co.uk

GlobalStreetArt.com

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20 Fenchurch Street, LondonArchitect: Rafael Viñoly Architects

Client: Land Securities plc and Canary Wharf Group plcHeight: 160.1m/525ft

Floors above ground: 3613th tallest building in the UK

Nicknames: The Walkie Talkie, The Fryscraper, The Walkie ScorchieFurther details available at The Skyscraper Center

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ART & ARCHITECTURE

By the time Rafael Viñoly’s contribution to the London skyline was completed in late 2014, and opened to

the public earlier this year, it had already been subjected to a great deal of derision. Sure, it had replaced a 1960s high-rise office block that had little going for it save a slightly in-teresting roof, but the Walkie Talkie’s looks, its alleged inabili-ty to blend in with its surround-ings, and the failure to follow through on the promise of a genuine public garden (if such a thing were ever possible) on the top floors, concerned crit-ics and heritage defenders alike.

It wasn’t long after the publish-ing of the plans that objections had been raised regarding its incongruous scale. Not only was the building originally de-signed to be twice the size of the one it replaced, but it would be top heavy to enable the floor space on the upper floors (i.e. the more expensive ones) to be approximately twice the area of those at the bottom. This necessitated a concave design which brought about further negative, or at least comical, publicity. Not long after the building had been glazed in 2013, it began reflecting sun-light down into the streets be-low at a very high temperature, melting a poor chap’s car and damaging nearby premises. It was so hot that someone was even able to harness this en-hanced solar power to fry an egg in the street (as you do). Viñoly might have been forgiv-en this oversight, but sympathy wanes somewhat when you learn that another of his build-ings, albeit one in a desert, had experienced almost identical

problems.

The Guardian’s architecture critic, Rowan Moore, has called the building, “bloated, not ele-gant,” and argues that the way the building, “crashes,” into the view of Tower Bridge from downstream, “is plain thug-gish.” I agree on his first point. The building is interesting, but not, in my opinion, beautiful. But one’s view of the more aes-thetically-pleasing architecture around the area can be blight-ed depending on where you’re standing - Tower Bridge doesn’t look at its best when you cap-ture it from an angle that in-cludes the Guoman Hotel, for example. And one could make the argument that the juxtapo-sition of the Walkie Talkie and the Bridge shows off London in its entirety - a city proud of its past, but determined to take risks, innovate and move with the times.

It’s much more difficult to argue against criticism of the Sky Gar-den. The concept video made it look like there was going to be a forest in the sky, but the reality is much starker - “a dis-tinctly meagre pair of rockeries, trapped beneath a hefty cage of steelwork, wrought with all the finesse of an airport terminal,” according to the Architectur-al Review’s Oliver Wainwright. And, of course, as The Angry Architect pointed out, there’s absolutely no way that it should have been branded as a ‘public’ park - visitors were never go-ing to be able just to pitch up at their leisure. People don’t like to be taken for fools, and per-haps if expectations could have been managed better in this re-spect, some of this flack could have been avoided.

For all the criticism, I would still recommend the Sky Garden as a great place from which to view our capital city. For start-ers, you don’t have to pay for the pleasure, or feel obliged to buy a drink at the bar, as you would at the Shard or Altitude 360, for example. OK, you have to book in advance, but that’s not exactly a hardship, and you have to go through airport style security before getting in the lift. Again, that’s not an horrific ex-perience, and the security staff go about their job in a profes-sional but friendly manner. On a bright day, the views are great and you’ll be able to spend an hour or so trying to pick out the various attractions across all corners of London. And, if you are really offended by the building itself, bear in mind that it’s the one that you won’t have to look at during your visit.

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FOOD & DRINK

Learn more

THE BEER ESSENTIALS

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Different countries are associated with particular types of alcoholic bever-age – Russian vod-

ka, Korean soju, French wine, to name but a few. Scotland and Ireland are famous for their whiskies, but real ale has been produced and consumed throughout the British Isles for hundreds of years and is an in-tegral part of life here. We sat down for a pint with Neil Pet-tigrew, a volunteer with the South-East London branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), to learn more.

Neil Pettigrew, SE London CAMRA Pub Protection Officer, at The Dolphin, Sydenham

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RTA: What sets the UK apart as the home of proper beer?

NP: Well, let me put it this way - I’ve just come back from a week’s holiday in France, where the choice I was offered was Heineken, Amstel or Peroni la-gers. I’m sure they’re all fine, but they’re fairly indistinguisha-ble, they don’t have much taste. The French obviously do some very fine wines, but they don’t seem to consider beer to be worthy of much care or atten-tion. But in the UK, you’ll find an enormous variety - I think there are now 1,000 breweries in Britain, and they’re all produc-ing unique beers. You would struggle to find two beers that tasted exactly the same. Two breweries, by some fluke, might brew something very similar, but I doubt it because there are so many ingredients - so many different types of malt and hops, and different strains of yeast - that go into the beers. So there are literally hundreds of differ-ent types of beer, and they taste so good, compared to lagers, in my opinion, and that’s some-thing we should value.

There is no other country that

has pubs like we have here in Britain and Ireland. There are other countries that have tried to copy our pubs, and they normally make a terrible hash of it and they end up with a well-meaning clone of a Brit-ish pub that doesn’t quite work somehow. And another amaz-ing thing about pubs - and I don’t know how many I’ve been in in my lifetime, but it’s a lot! - is that no two are exactly the same, which is remarkable. You’d think they’d all be built to similar plans, but there are no two pubs the same and that in itself can make a trip to a pub an absolutely fascinating expe-rience.

Tell us more about the Cam-paign for Real Ale (CAMRA).

CAMRA was formed back in 1971, which was a dire time for beer. All the big breweries were trying to get everyone to drink keg beer. If people aren’t famil-iar with that term, keg beer is beer that has been pasteurised, filtered and chilled. It’s a dead product and you have to pump it full of carbon dioxide in or-der to get some bubbles into it and make it appear more lively. Real ale, on the other hand, is a living product, it’s got yeast in it, it’s still fermenting and this fer-mentation causes a natural car-

bonisation, so you get natural bubbles in the beer, and real ale, to me, is a much more satisfying product. So when the breweries, for purely eco-nomical reasons, were trying to force pubs to sell this mass produced keg beer, to the ex-clusion of real ale, there was a reaction against this, a re-alisation that we were losing something quite important, something that had a lot of heritage value. We’d been brewing interesting beer in this country for centuries and it was being wiped out. So from just a few people gath-ering together to campaign against this, we’re now up to about 170,000 members - the biggest consumer organ-isation in the whole of Europe. That shows that people obvi-ously do care about beer.

Some people say that the CAM-RA battle to save real ale has been won. There was a time when you would struggle to find a pub that served real ale, and now you’d probably strug-gle to find one that doesn’t. People see CAMRA as now moving away from saving real ale towards saving the pubs. There’s a lot more empha-sis now on what we can do to change planning laws in order to save pubs, and what we can

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do to encourage more people to use pubs rather than drink at home. Times have changed - 50 years ago, people in the UK lived in cold flats or hous-es with few leisure options, so they looked forward to getting down to the local pub for a bit of warmth, some beer and a chat with their mates. Now, supermarkets are selling a wide selection of beer at low prices, so you can enjoy them in your nice warm home while watch-ing Sky TV. If the local pub is to survive, we need to find a way to persuade people to get back through their doors.

And how might you do that?

In my opinion, one of the things we’ve lost through the years is the friendly pub atmosphere. Something that makes a real difference is a friendly landlord and staff - people will want to go back to a pub where they get a warm welcome from the landlord, where you’ll be rec-ognised, and valued, as a reg-ular customer. In too many places, the staff look like they can’t wait to get home, they don’t want to get to know the customers, when they come round to collect the glasses there’s no eye contact, no con-versation - it becomes more like a straightforward business transaction and lots of people don’t like that.

I try to give constructive feed-back when I see that type of poor customer service - after all, I want pubs flourish and to be great places to go to. But I’ve found that some landlords are not very good at taking crit-icism. The classic case being when you’ve got a bad pint - if you take it back and say that

there’s something not quite right, a lot of the time you’ll be told, “no-one else has com-plained - if you don’t like it go somewhere else.” So while I’d just be trying to be helpful and pointing out that, on this occa-sion, there’s something wrong with the beer, the criticism is of-ten taken personally, as if you’re criticising their business which they’ve invested a lot of time and money in. Unfortunately, the British way of responding to poor customer service is not to complain, we just vote with our feet and go somewhere else, so some establishments may not even realise where they’re go-ing wrong and what they could do to improve.

You mentioned a “bad pint” - how can you end up with one of those and and how might a novice spot one?

When the beer is being pro-duced, an original fermenta-tion process takes place at the brewery. After the casks are sent out to the pubs, there’s a secondary fermentation period and it’s only after that that the beer is ready to be tapped and served. But because all that fer-mentation has been going on, it does mean that the yeast can cloud up the beer, and if the yeast hasn’t settled, you may get a cloudy pint. Alternative-ly, if there are only a few pints left in the barrel, you could end up with a cloudy pint, be-cause you’ve got all the dreck at the bottom of the barrel. So by the time you take your pint from the bar to your table, you might find yourself in that awk-ward position where you have to take it back and question the quality. My advice is just to do it, in a polite way, and I find, in-

creasingly, that staff are better trained to tell if indeed there is something wrong with it and to respond in a customer-friendly manner. Indeed, let me put in a few good words about Weth-erspoons, who have done a lot to support microbreweries in the UK, and a lot to increase interest in real ales. Their staff are really well trained - if you take a pint back in one of their pubs, you won’t get into an ar-gument, they’ll apologise and offer you something else - per-fect customer service, the one thing above all that will make people go back into a pub.

Unfortunately, there are still some places where you’ll get a filthy look because they’ve got to throw 3.50 down the drain, and they’ll give you a load of excuses before telling you to drink elsewhere!

Wetherspoons are one of the largest pub chains in the UK, but some people display a rather snobbish attitude to-wards them.

Yeah, when Wetherspoons an-nounce plans to open in an area, you’ll usually see a few let-ters in local newspapers voicing opposition and saying that it will lower the tone of the area. But when they eventually open, people are surprised, because they are well-run pubs, they’re safe environments, you don’t get a lot of fights or trouble like some people fear they are go-ing to. So you’ll find that they are well-frequented by people who weren’t sure about them in the first place.

Another great thing about Wetherspoons - and I should point out that I’m not trying to promote them, but I do think

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they’re a wonderful company! - is quite often they’ll find histor-ic or listed buildings - old banks or cinemas, for example - that have been boarded up for years, and they’ll buy them up, spend a lot of money on restoring them to how they should look, in a very sympathetic way, and give them a whole new lease of life, which I think is terrific.

That brings us on neatly to your role as SE London CAMRA Pub Protection Officer. How did you take on that mantle and what are your responsibil-ities?

The whole reason I join CAMRA in the first place was that I was travelling around south east London by bus or car, and I’d look out the window and think, “that pub’s just been board-ed up. I wanted to go in there some time, but now it’s too late.” And then I would see an-other one that’s been boarded up, and another one and an-other one. I wondered what I

could do to prevent more pubs going the same way, and joined CAMRA, not primarily because of my love for real ale, but be-cause I wanted to make a dif-ference and stop so many great pubs going out of business.

So I got heavily involved, and became the South East London Pub Protection Officer. I need to be aware of what’s going on in pubs across that region. Un-fortunately, it’s too big an area, and I can’t always know exactly what’s going on, so I feel pow-erless to prevent pub closures in the area. But I do look out for planning applications that have been submitted to councils by property developers and help file well-reasoned, logical ob-jections to those applications. You can’t just say, it’s a nice old pub, you can’t turn it into flats. You have to have solid, legal ar-guments for why it should be retained.

The role also involves contact-ing local newspapers to make

people aware of what’s going on. Quite often, the first time a local resident knows that a pub is going to be turned into a Tes-co or Sainsbury’s is when the signs go up on the premises to say the pub has been sold and there’s no way back. If people knew about it a few months earlier, they might be able to campaign and do something about it.

I sometimes have to attend court hearings - just a couple of months ago there was a tribu-nal about a pub which CAMRA had applied to make an asset of community value, which the Council adopted. The owner had contested this, probably because it meant they couldn’t sell it on at enormous profit to a property developer., so we had to go before the judge to sort that one out.

It’s a voluntary role, and I’m just trying to do what I can to save some of these wonderful pubs. I just think it would be a crime if

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The New Moon, Leadenhall Market, London

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21st Century British beer - Cwtch red ale (Tiny Rebel Brewery, Newport); Dissident porter (Gipsy Hill Brewing Company, London); and Ginger (Williams Bros Brewing Company, Alloa)

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in a generation’s time, all we’ve got is a few chain pubs on the high street and all the charac-terful, back street pubs have all disappeared? Whenever tour-ists come to Britain, they’ve got a list of 15 things they must do, and up there somewhere is: “must drink in a traditional British pub.” Wouldn’t it be a shame if in 20 years time, the best examples have all disap-peared?

Do the pubs you try to save need to be important from an architectural standpoint, or is that immaterial? Or are you just trying to save any pub that serves the community from going under?

It’s a bit of both, to be honest. I’ve been involved in a few cas-es where a purpose built Victo-rian pub has been turned into a block of flats, and the Council have turned round and asked what are you bothered about? They’ve kept the building in-tact, and maintained all the ex-ternal features, so why are you so upset? But of course, that pub has been around for 150 years, countless local people have had wonderful evenings in there, got great memories, maybe some bloke met his wife there, and to see those mem-ories disappear can be quite upsetting. But I am also a big fan of architecture, so I would say that I am passionate about saving the building as well as maintaining the interiors and the sense of community the space provides.

If you don’t mind me saying, there’s a perception of CAMRA as being full of old men with too much time on their hands. Is that an unfair stereotype?

We do have more younger members than we used to, but the reality, for whatever reason, is your average CAMRA mem-ber is older. Is that because your taste buds change as you get older and older people are more appreciative of real ale? Personally, I don’t think so, be-cause as soon as I discovered real ale in my early twenties, I never wanted to drink anything else. But it’s true that there is this perception that the organisa-tion is for a bunch of out-dated old men who are nostalgic for something which is no longer financially viable, and who should just move on and allow all the old pubs to disappear to be replaced by gastropubs and European-style cafe bars. But I think that people still do love the old pubs, and people will still go to them and enjoy them, and we need to hang on to the good ones that we’ve got. Encouragingly a lot of young people are getting more inter-ested in real ale, and a lot of that is down to the emergence of all these microbreweries that are springing up. The chance to visit a microbrewery and sit there on a Saturday sampling a whole range of new and unique ales seems to appeal to younger people, and it’s terrif-ic that it’s leading to them tak-ing an interest in, and learning more about, different styles of beer. There’s potentially a lot of CAMRA members there, and hopefully some of them will become interested in protect-ing this country’s pub heritage.

What London pubs would you recommend to an overseas visitor who wants to sample a good pint in traditional sur-roundings?

If I was coming to London, and I’d never been in a Brit-ish pub before, the first place I’d go to would be The Black Friar, near Blackfriars train station. It was built in 1875, but in 1906 had an art nou-veau refurbishment which is totally intact and absolutely astonishing. It’s only a tiny little pub, but it is wonderful.

I would also insist that visitors go to the Argyle Arms which is right beside Oxford Circus station. It was a pub that I’d walked by a thousand times and written it off because I thought it would be a tourist trap. But when I eventually ventured in a few years back, I was hugely impressed. It has a very well-preserved Vic-torian interior, with wonderful features - woodwork, etched glass, ornate ceilings, two or three little snug bars with ma-hogany screens separating them.

I would also say that you have to go to the Princess Louise in Holborn, another Victorian pub and very well preserved inside with wonderful tiling. The own-ers, who are a brewery called Sam Smith’s, found the original Victorian floor plans and reno-vated the pub to how it would have been back in the day, as a result of which it’s made up of seven little snug bars. The atmosphere in there is superb and it really gives you an idea of how our forefathers would have drunk in Victorian times. The gents’ toilets are also amazing!

If you head down to south-east London, and want a tradition-al pub with a friendly landlord, a good crowd of people and some good ales, I’d recom-mend the Blythe Hill Tavern,

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The Beer Academy - ’An ed-ucational body dedicated to helping people understand, ap-preciate and enjoy beer sensi-bly’

Beer and pub guides

CAMRA - What pub? - Online pub guide

Perfect Pint - “The UK’s big-gest and best real time beer database”

Free app also available via Google Play or App Store

Pub Heritage - Historic Pub Interiors

Featured breweries

Gipsy Hill Brewing Company

Tiny Rebel Brewing Co.

Williams Bros Brewing Co.

Featured pubs

The Argyle Arms

The Black Friar

The Blythe Hill Tavern

The Dolphin

The New Moon

The Princess Louise

The Two Brewers

Festivals

The Great British Beer Festival

FOOD & DRINK

which is on the Forest Hill/Catford borders in SE23. One of the great things about that pub is that it’s still made up of three small rooms, whereas what’s happened over the past 25 years is that a lot of pubs - and it’s worth remembering that nearly all pubs in the UK were made up of two, three, four, five or more rooms - have removed the partition walls and been knocked through into one huge room. That makes eco-nomic sense for the pub owner, they can get more customers in there. Unfortunately it also robs the pub of a lot of char-acter. But the Blythe Hill has managed to hold on to a lot of that, and it’s well worth a visit.

I imagine that beer festivals offer the best opportunity for visitors to sample a number of real ales under one roof.

Absolutely correct. Almost every CAMRA branch will or-ganise an annual beer festival. When CAMRA was first estab-lished, beer festivals were vital because you would struggle to find good beer in the pubs, but if you went to a CAMRA festi-val, you knew you’d be get-ting good beer that was well looked after by people who cared about it. The organis-ers would have ordered the beer from brewers around the country, so you’d get a much wider selection than you could find in your local pubs. These days, the festivals will have 30, 40, 50 or more beers available, all served direct from the cask, so the beer doesn’t have to travel through any lines to get to the hand pump, which can sometimes impair the flavour in pubs if the staff aren’t rigorous enough in their cleaning pro-

cedures.

CAMRA beer festivals are won-derful things to go to, there’s al-ways a great atmosphere there, everyone’s very friendly, you can go to the bar and sample the beer before deciding which one to order, and the bar staff will recommend a beer based on your tastes or preferences.

And then there’s the annual Great British Beer Festival, held for many years either at Earl’s Court or Olimpia. It’s absolute-ly vast - even if you went every day, you couldn’t get close to trying every beer that they have on offer there. If you’re com-ing to the UK as a tourist, try to come in August and get your-self along - it’s a beer lover’s paradise!

Additional Resources

Beer history

Beer Genie - Beer Through the Ages

Historic UK - Pub signs in Brit-ain

Pub History Society - ‘Promot-ing the heritage of British pubs and the people connected with them’

Beer education

Campaign for Real Ale (CAM-RA) - Campaigning for real ale, pubs & drinkers rights since 1971

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하나, 둘, 셋 - 김치!ONE, TWO, THREE - KIMCHI!

Kimchi - fermented and seasoned veg-etable - isn’t simply a popular dish in Korea - it’s a daily necessity. Indeed, most Korean homes will have a second (large!) refrigerator crammed full of

the stuff! Kimchi is touted as a super food - it’s good for your immune system (some say it will even fend off avian influenza), aids digestion, and lowers cholesterol and the risk of some cancers.

Walk into any restaurant in Seoul and you’ll re-ceive a free side dish of kimchi to accompany your meal. Walk into any Korean restaurant in London and you’ll probably have to pay for it. And although it’s available in many oriental su-permarkets in the UK, it can be quite expensive.

So why not reap the benefits, and save your-self a bit of cash, by making it at home? It’s really not that difficult, and when the winter comes around again you can indulge in the Ko-rean tradition of kimjang (김장), joining family and friends to make vast quantities to get you through the colder months.

There are scores of different types, but the most common is baechu kimchi (배추김치), for which the main ingredient is the vegetable we know as Chinese cabbage. The following is a three-step guide to yielding a 2.5kg batch of kimchi that can be used in, or alongside, a variety of au-thentic, healthy, tasty Korean dishes. You may need to source some of the ingredients from your local Asian supermarket.

INGREDIENTS

2 Chinese cabbages2.5L water

250g coarse sea salt

For seasoningHalf a tablespoon of glutinous

rice flour (or plain flour) 100ml of water

50g red chilli pepper flakes (gochugaru)

8 garlic cloves, mincedHalf a tablespoon of minced

ginger1 white onion, minced2 teaspoons of sugar30g anchovy sauce

1 tablespoon of shrimpHalf a daicon (white) radish,

cut to matchsticks5 spring onions, cut to 2-3

inch length

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STEP ONE - SOAK THE CABBAGECut the cabbage in half and make a 3-inch incision at the

end

In a large bowl, add two-thirds of the salt to the water

Place the cabbage in the bowl and rub the remaining salt between the leaves

Leave to rest in the water for 4hrs (summer)/5-6hrs (winter)

Turn the cabbage and let it sit another 4-6hrs

Remove cabbage from bowl and wash thoroughly under cold running water

STEP TWO - PREPARE THE SEASONING

Mix the flour and 100ml of water in a small pan

Heat the water until the mixture reaches a creamy consistency

Remove from the heat and leave for 10 minutes

Transfer to a large bowl and stir the red chilli pepper flakes into the mixture

Add minced garlic, minced ginger, minced onion, sugar, an-chovy sauce and shrimp (blend these together in advance if

you like) to the bowl and mix thoroughly

Add radish and spring onions and incorporate fully

STEP THREE - APPLY THE SEASONINGDon a pair of gloves and rub the seasoning mix all over the cabbage and between the

leaves. Start with the outer leaves and work your way in

Once done, use the outer leaf to wrap the cabbage

Place the cabbage in an air-tight container

Leave the container at room temperature for 1-2 days to allow fermentation to take place, then move the container to the refrigerator. The kimchi will last for up to six months in

the fridge.

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Now that you’ve got about 2.5 kilos of kimchi, what on earth are you go-ing to do with it?

The good news is that it’s in-credibly versatile. It’s best to eat it as a side dish when it’s relatively fresh. Conversely, the longer it has been in the fridge, the better suited it is to be used as a component in another dish, such as in a stew or mixed with rice. Over the next few months, we’ll show you how to make such meals, but one of the simplest things you can do with your kimchi is to incorporate it into a bat-ter, stick it in a pan and make some kimchi pancake. This is a delicious and easy-to-pre-pare snack, that goes really well with any type of alcoholic beverage!

김치전(Kimchi Pancakes)

INGREDIENTS(Makes 2 pancakes)

500g kimchi

Half an onion, diced

100g buchimgaru (Korean pan-cake powder)*

100g tuigimgaru (Korean fried powder)*

2 eggs

200ml cold water

1 tbs vegetable oil (or olive oil)

* If you can’t find buchimgaru or tuigimgaru, don’t worry - just use

plain flour (the tuigimgaru just adds a little more crunch)

DIRECTIONS

Step 1 - Making batter

Cut the kimchi into 1 inch pieces

Mix the buchimgaru, tuigimgaru, eggs and water in a large bowl

Add kimchi and onion, and mix well

Step2 - Cooking

Coat a pan with oil and preheat at a high temperature

Reduce to a medium heat, pour mixture and spread evenly

Leave for around 3-4 mins., until bottom is golden and brown

Flip the pancake and cook for another 3-4 mins.

Flip a final time, increasing the heat to add some crispiness to the pancake

Remove from the pan and cut into squares (using a pizza cutter will be easiest)

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Issue 2 ready in early June

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