THIS is a fond farewell to the greatest local I have ever had; a goodbye to my favourite neighbour.

We'll remain on good terms and our paths will cross again but by the time you read this - if all goes to plan - our cosiest of cosy relationships will have changed forever. We'll have gone our separate ways. Or rather, I will have left.

I am not sure there can be anyone in all of York who has lived closer to a pub for the past five years than me, live-in landlords aside. From my front door to the door of The Ackhorne is not even ten feet; four steps as a rule. Once, during the big freeze of 2010, which rendered St Martin's Lane even more treacherous than most streets, I made it in two long, wary, ice-assisted strides.

 

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The Ackhorne, in the narrow, cobbled, St Martin's Lane off Micklegate

For a beer writer, it has been the perfect place to be. I had lived in five houses in York before this one but had never had a true local until The Ackhorne, tucked away between Micklegate and Bishophill, a pub I already knew well but would come to cherish.

Sure, there are pubs with larger and more spectacular beer selections, or better food, but having a local isn't about putting other pubs to shame. It's about having a pub where you feel at home, where memories accrue naturally and where familiarity breeds contentment not contempt. The Ackhorne has been a pub for 228 years, and for the past five of those it's been a true local for me.

I was in The Ackhorne the night York City FC won promotion back to the Football League, 24 hours after Heart of Midlothian had won the 2012 Scottish Cup - celebrating the greatest footballing weekend of my life with friends and beer aplenty.

I was here the night before my wedding for a final nerve-settling pint. I've celebrated New Year and birthdays here and my own favourite, Burns Night, and afternoons and evenings galore in between. I've been here for camaraderie and conversation after occasional grim days at work and for a while was the berated scapegoat for any and every mistake The Press had ever made. Nothing, it seems, could rile the old Saturday lunchtime crowd more than a questionable clue in the crossword.

I've propped up the bar, soaked up the sun in the small garden, and ensconced myself in the bristling bar-room badinage of a Sunday afternoon.

I've enjoyed laughter and lock-ins and pints and pontification, won and lost at poker, lost and lost again in the quiz, discovered new beers, pulled the odd pint, and chanced my arm at 10.59pm more often than I can count. One now-departed barmaid even let me take home a pint once, when I fancied a beer while writing one of these epistles. But don't tell anyone that.

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The beer is consistently excellent, highlights this week alone including Saltaire Blonde, Batemans XB and Little Valley's Moor Ale, a rusty-coloured, full-bodied, rich, peaty beauty. A pint of that, a pork and apple pie and the weekend papers - What more could you want when you pop to the neighbours'?

Eee, but it's not the pub it was many years ago, some old hands will say, and maybe they're right. By many accounts, the early-90s redevelopment eroded some of the intricate charm. But even if that's true, it remains a tremendous place.

For five years I've been wary of writing too much about this place, alert to possible accusations of bias - punctilious perhaps even to the point of neglect. I have held off from waxing lyrical about the moodiness when the pub-light bounces off the rain-soaked cobbles; from enthusing about the stained glass windows for the smoke room, tap room and bar; from recalling the hearty welcome that never grows tiresome; pondering the eclectic book selection on the windowsill; harking for the roaring warmth from the magnificent fireplace; and musing on the stern-faced portraits of civil war protagonists that have stared down countless drinkers and darts players in the back room that is, more accurately, the side room.

Not any more. I am moving house, someone else will gain this tremendous local and I will look back in years to come and remember fondly the days when I had a splendid pub for a neighbour, and splendid neighbours therein.

Thanks for the memories. Next stop: Holgate.

 

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