Stonch : Where it all began

For those of you who follow the very popular beer blog of my son "Stonch", I thought you might like to see and hear about the pub in which he first worked and learned about the bar trade.

The pub in question is The Steamboat in South Shields (see pic) and it is located in the ancient former seafaring quarter of the town called Mill Dam. Here, in days gone by, sailors would revel just yards from the gangways of their ships and the old cobbles of the street outside the pub have witnessed much riotous behaviour and skullduggelry.

Even in my young seafaring days in the 1960s, the pub was still a sailor's bar and my brother and I (who was also at sea in those days) had many a disreputably good time there. Enough said on that topic.

Nowadays, though disappointingly respectable, the pub still retains something of the atmosphere of those more interesting times. Tomorrow I'll take you there.