Hello everyone,

My wife (Sue) and I (Chris) have recently taken over the management of The Black Bull in Front Street East. We were previously in Morecambe at another pub, The Smugglers Den.

We are hoping to make the Black Bull into a friendly and welcoming community public house, where everyone will feel welcome and appreciated. We have no catering facilities, but are hoping to sell really good cask ales, along with various other alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. We have a largish back room which is much under utilised. If there are any local groups looking for a meeting place, why not come along and use the room during the day. We are hoping to promote live folk music and also morris dancing along with other musical events on some evenings.

We have two dogs and a cat (who is in charge) but we are dog friendly(well behaved). Again a warm welcome is extended to local dog walkers.

Do feel free to pop in and chat as we are both in Northumberland for the first time in our lives and are both looking to make friends and settle into the community over the next few months and years.

Chris and Sue

Welcome and good luck!

Just as well that your dog friendly as that is where our two ended up last time they escaped.

Really glad to hear about the promotion of folk music too, there aren't enough places doing that sort of stuff. Will definitely be popping down for events if that's the case.

Keep us posted on here and I am sure three and four gee will let you use the sites facilities for promoting whatever events are on.

Welcome to the area too

I hope you make a success of this venture. I don't live in GB but I'm maybe coming sometime this year and will be visiting Bedders ... I might well pop-in. What sort of ales? Are you a free-house?

Welcome Sue & Chris.

We are neighbours, Synergy studios, just over the road & up a bit. 90a Front Street East.

We`ll make sure your live music dates get highlighted when we are on air for 28 days, coming soon.

We have an open evening on Mon. Feb. 6th. 6:30-8:30pm. If you get a chance pop over.

Welcome Sue & Chris. The black Bull is a great pub i have fond memories of the place because my Uncle Fred Gibbon was the Licensee in the mid 70's, good luck with all your plans i will drop in next time i am back in the U.K

Welcome to Bedlington, I hope all works out well for you.

Welcome to Bedlington, Hope you stay here for many years to come and also hope you enjoy it.

Best of luck with your new venture..........

To endorse other readers views - the best of luck to you in your new venture. Hope the pub turns out to be a bit better than the other one. I remember taking visitors there once when they didn't have any non or low alchol beer and no lemon for G & Ts.

To endorse other readers views - the best of luck to you in your new venture. Hope the pub turns out to be a bit better than the other one. I remember taking visitors there once when they didn't have any non or low alchol beer and no lemon for G & Ts.

Do non or low alcohol beers still exist? I seem to recall them being a massive commercial failure. It's a bit like something that was requested at the Lion the other day; a lady was heard to say 'are you doing a vegetarian haggis?'

Yes they still exist but apparently they still give you a bad head so you may as well just drink some

Some people like them but they are definitely not as popular as they were claiming to be.

I know of someone who drank 5 bottles of Kaliber (years ago) and he blew a positive breath test.

Many thanks for the warm welcome everyone. We look forward to seeing many of you. I can confirm I have fresh lemon and limes available and I sell just 1 non alchoholic lager. Here is probably not the right place to discuss this though, perhaps the forum leaders would suggest the best part of the forum. We want to be an active member of the community here in Bedlington, but we need your support to enable that, so some postings will be commercials for what is happening and others will be answers to questions.

You should be able to post in the announcements section at the top of the forum but all of the new topics have to be approved by a moderator before being visible for everyone to see.

As for questions and answers i would recommend starting a Black Bull discussion thread in Talk of the Town much like the synergy one.

Hi Chris,

Paul Mann here. I have a book about growing up in Bedlington during the 1950's titled 'The Leek Club' that should be popping up on Kindle and Amazon any moment now and wondered if it would be worth doing a reading or some such thing at The Black Bull. I live in the States now but I'll be in the northeast for a couple of weeks from April 22nd doing publicity and promo and I thought I should do something in Bedlington if you're interested.

Of course Paul. We look forward to meeting you and including your reading as part of our CAMRA community pubs events.