After I got back from Edinburgh, I had a day in London to unpack and repack before heading out to Heathrow. I spent nine days in Malta, my first trip out of the UK since Seattle in February 2020. I originally booked a shorter city break to Valletta, Malta's capital, for March 2020, but for obvious reasons, that didn't happen. Luckily, I was able to reschedule my hotel booking and extend the trip to include a stay on the Maltese island of Gozo when I was eventually able to travel again.
Earlier this month, I spent four days in Edinburgh with my parents, and although we only scratched the surface, we had a grand time and packed a lot in. We even had reasonable weather in that it didn't rain much and was occasionally sunny. A return was long overdue since my last visit on a rainy family road trip through Scotland, almost three decades ago. All I remember from the trip is the Scottish National Gallery, Greyfriars Kirkyard and an overexuberant walking tour guide shouting, "Gardyloo!" I had a lot of ground to make up!
The past two years have been among the most challenging for hospitality businesses, including specialty coffee shops, in London, and around the world. Keeping a specialty coffee shop in business in London is difficult even in normal times, let alone during a global pandemic, which has felt like a game of snakes and ladders with constant changes of rules, snap lockdowns and general uncertainty. Unfortunately, some coffee shops have had to close permanently (please come back, Black Swan Yard!), but it's been encouraging to see how many new — and often exciting — cafes have opened in London in the past couple of years.
UPDATE: Sadly, as of August 2023, Quarter Horse's Bristol Street location has closed permanently. But you can still visit their espresso bar and roastery in the Jewellery Quarter.
My specialty-coffee-shop-hopping continues to turn up surprise connections and today's post is about my return visit to Quarter Horse Coffee on Bristol Street. The connection is that, as you may have seen if you follow me on Instagram, I stopped by Peloton Espresso the weekend before — which itself occupies the former site of Quarter Horse's now-defunct Oxford cafe, which I visited many times.
[Update July 2025: Sadly, Tilt has now closed permanently; a great loss to the Brum specialty coffee scene.]
En route to Molineux Stadium to watch Wolves play a friendly against Spanish team Celta de Vigo last weekend, I broke my journey in Birmingham. I had to leave home very early during a torrential downpour and was in dire need of more coffee by the time I got to Moor Street station. Luckily, I knew exactly where to go: Tilt, a speciality coffee shop, craft beer bar and pinballeria in Birmingham's historic City Arcade, which my fellow coffee blogger Brian recently wrote about again on the Coffee Spot.
