Sorry that I’ve been away from the blog for a while, Brit Stops work has kept me fairly busy so it’s been hard to keep up with writing! To get you all up to speed, here’s what’s been going on at at Brit Stops HQ.

We visited our friends in Berlin

In September, Steve Brit Stops and I visited Berlin to see our good friends from Landvergnügen. We did discuss things such as mutual promotion and best practice, but we also went to some amazing bars and restaurants! Berlin is a beautiful city, and our hosts were very accommodating in showing us all there was to see. It’s a shame we only had a few days there and I’d definitely like to go back sometime to explore it myself.

I spent an eternity on Paypal

Paypal has been really useful for us from the very beginning. However that doesn’t mean there haven’t been issues, particularly one that meant I was painstakingly editing things one-by-one in the least efficient way possible! It’s tasks like these that, while aren’t as glamorous or interesting as writing the blog, are really crucial to keeping the Brit Stops machine moving. Unfortunately we aren’t just cruising around checking out new pubs and farm shops for the book all year round, a lot of what we do is just plain old hard work!

We changed the book (which you’ve probably noticed)

My main job last year was editing the book down to 4 entries a page. This was a pretty mammoth task and actually took me most of the year. The hardest part was figuring out which parts to cut down, as so many hosts had really great stuff to say about their stopover! I was often genuinely torn between what I was trimming since I wanted to keep it concise but also wanted to squeeze as much information in as I could. It was also actually a great opportunity to properly read through the entire book, which I honestly had never done (it’s pretty long), and I really enjoyed seeing the pride that hosts had taken in the descriptions of their stopovers.

I missed out on the NEC

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it to the NEC in Feb 2019, which is usually my time to see all of our dedicated Britstoppers and meet lots of new ones too. I was actually jet-setting off to The States for a week to compete in a professional esports event for the first time in my life! It was great fun, and I’m finally over the jet lag, but hopefully I can get out to the next big show and see everyone again soon.

I didn’t update the blog enough!

In the midst of all this hard work and chaos, I was trying to find time to update the blog but I was finding it taking more and more of a back-seat due to how busy we were. So from here on out, I’m going to be more consistent with updates and try to keep everyone in the loop on how we’re doing back at Brit Stops HQ. I’m definitely not done writing about Brit Stops, and I hope you’re not done reading about it either!

See you all soon,

Tom