Latest news with #HazelSmith
Telegraph
09-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Couple turn front room into one of Britain's smallest pubs
A couple have turned their front room into one of Britain's smallest pubs. Hazel and Andrew Smith spent £50,000 converting the living room of their 18th century townhouse in Upton-upon-Severn, Worcestershire, into a micropub. The four-bedroom house can now welcome up to 20 punters to drink a mix of craft ales and ciders. The pub, named J Maverick and Co, measures 11ft by 13ft and has a square footage of just 143ft. That means it is only marginally larger than Britain's smallest pub, The Nutshell in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, which has a square footage of 105ft. Mr and Mrs Smith's pub has just one table for six and a window seat and is full to capacity most nights. 'I think the charm of the place is that it is so small, it encourages conversation and is the very definition of a public house,' said Mrs Smith, 53. 'As there's only one table people talk to each other and nobody really sits on their phones. It has a capacity of about 20 people – there's only room for one table of six and a window seat.' She added: 'It is genuinely like having people into your house. We haven't got a big commute to work either.' Mrs Smith quit her job in the travel industry to run the pub full time. 'We have six taps – four kegs and two casks – as well as around 1,000 cans in the fridge, which is converted from a Victorian bookshelf,' she said. 'We mainly use local breweries in Gloucester, Bewdley, Tenbury Wells and the Wye Valley. We also have Jeremy Clarkson's cider here, Hawkstone Cider. 'It's decorated like an old Victorian pub. A lot of real-ale places are very industrial, but that wasn't befitting of such a historic house 'Our grandson's middle name is Maverick, so it is named after him. Who knows, one day he might inherit it.' Mr Smith, who runs a courier firm, said the pub was 'essentially just our front room'. 'We keep being told we're definitely the smallest in the Midlands or the smallest in Worcestershire,' he said. 'I think there may be a smaller one up north in a phone box – but we must be among the smallest in the country as it's essentially just our front room.' Michael Dalglish, a customer, said the pub was a 'bit of a squeeze' but was a welcome addition to the high street. 'The ales are great, the owners are great,' he said. 'It's a charming little place and I hope they are here for years to come. I can't imagine there's many pubs in the UK smaller than this. It's a bit of a squeeze but it adds to its appeal.'
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
North Korea (sort of) welcomes tourists again
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The "hermit kingdom" of North Korea is coming out of isolation, finally welcoming Western tourists again, after sealing its borders at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Last week, a limited number of tour operators led visitors into the special economic zone of Rason, a remote city near the Chinese and Russian borders – and the only place in the socialist nation where free-market activities are allowed. Tourists from Australia, the UK, Jamaica and Germany were able to enter in time for the celebrations of late leader Kim Jong II's birthday – and the re-establishment of tours opens the door to much-needed tourism revenue. North Korea was one of the first countries to shut its borders in reaction to the spread of Covid-19 in January 2020, and it's been the last to re-open them. In the past year, the government has only allowed "some official business delegations and Russian tourists to enter the country", said ABC News, while keeping its frontiers "sealed to the rest of the world". But North Korea is "desperate for foreign currency", said Hazel Smith, a professor at London's SOAS University, who has lived in North Korea. They need it "not just for oil, but for basic technology like irrigation or health services," she told NBC News. Before the pandemic, the country received "hundreds of thousands of Chinese tourists", said the broadcaster, who provided up to $175 million (£138 million) in extra revenue in 2019, according to the South Korea-based news outlet NK News. "The return of tourists could help reshape North Korea's reputation, shifting it from a 'dangerous country' in the eyes of the international community to a potentially 'safe' travel destination," Dr Yee Ji Sun, a researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told The Independent. The new tour itineraries include visits to a local brewery, a foreign language school and a taekwondo academy. But Pyongyang, the capital, remains closed to all but Russian tourists. Local markets are also off-limits to tourists, due to "lingering concerns over Covid", said the paper, while strict health measures, including temperature checks, are still in place at various locations. The US prohibits its citizens from visiting North Korea, after the detention and death of 22-year-old American student Otto Warmbier in 2017. But some are still managing to get inside the secretive nation. Justin Martell joined last week's small tourist delegation, becoming the first American known to step foot in North Korea since the onset of the pandemic. The Connecticut-born filmmaker was actually in North Korea when the US travel ban came into effect – and, by then, he had already visited the country 11 times. To bypass the ban, he has spent about a year obtaining expensive dual citizenship from Saint Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean nation. "I didn't want to stop coming," he told CNN. "I didn't want the conversation to end." Inside North Korea, "pandemic paranoia remains deeply entrenched", said the broadcaster. "There seems to be a rumour that Covid-19 got into the country via a balloon sent from South Korea," said Martell. But he says that, last week, he didn't encounter any of the once typical anti-US hostility. The children who approached him at a local school "didn't care about politics", he said. "They wanted to know about music, sports – what life was like in the US. They wanted connection."
