State of the Nation(s) 2014

An espresso, in a classic white cup on a white saucer on a tableThis is my second State of the Nation(s) post, coinciding with my annual trip to North America. Readers with long memories may recall that I made a similar trip this time last year, taking in Boston, New York City and Montréal. This year’s itinerary is slightly different, starting in Boston and ending in New York, with a stop in Philadelphia to catch up with Greg Cohen of Coffee Guru App fame (still no Android version, Greg?). And, of course, I’ll be visiting lots of coffee shops along the way.

The purpose of this post is to let you know what will be happening to the Coffee Spot while I’m gone. In an ideal world, I’d be posting regularly about all the fantastic coffee spots I’ll be visiting, but the reality is that I won’t have time. This is, after all, supposed to be a holiday and while I do dearly love the Coffee Spot, I can’t spend all my time blogging or I won’t actually see anything!

However, last year I hardly posted anything while I was gone and I think that the Coffee Spot suffered for it. So, this year I do intend on posting on a regular basis…

You can read all about my plans after the gallery (a brief round-up of the highlights of last year’s trip).

Given the issues I had last year, the plan this year is to keep publishing on a regular basis. The problem is, I won’t have time to do my normal write-ups as I go and, since I was really busy in the run up to the trip, I haven’t had a chance to write up any places ahead of time. So, this is what I’m going to do instead…

I’m aiming to publish a normal Coffee Spot on Mondays, but on Thursday I’m going to cheat and publish a Saturday Supplement, even though it’s not a Saturday! Radical, I know… Then, on Saturday, just to confuse you, I’ll also publish a Saturday Supplement. Sneaky, eh?

This means that over the two weeks that I’m away there will be four new Saturday Supplements (five, if you count this one, but let’s not complicate things).

So, I hear you ask… What’s in these four Saturday Supplements? Well, towards the end of last year, I wrote an article for Caffeine Magazine on the Newcastle Coffee Scene. The problem was, I wrote far too much and I had to discard a lot of the material for the actual article. So, with the kind permission of Caffeine Magazine, the four Saturday Supplements will be based on this additional material, one for each of the four places I featured in the article.

I’ll start with Pumphrey’s and continue through to the Ouseburn Coffee Co. and Pink Lane Coffee, before finishing off with Flat Caps Coffee. Each Saturday Supplement will be capable of being read as a standalone article, while the four together will also form a coherent whole.

As I post this, I’m currently in Chelmsford, Massachusetts (and have already bagged my first Coffee Spot of the trip). Confusingly for British readers, this Chelmsford is in Middlesex county, not Essex (Middlesex, I ask you! What were they thinking of?). However, Monday will see me arrive in Boston proper when I’ll have a special Boston-related treat for you on the Coffee Spot…

So, don’t forget to come back on Monday for that and then check in again on Thursday for the first of the Newcastle articles.


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3 thoughts on “State of the Nation(s) 2014

  1. Pingback: Caffeine Magazine Newcastle: Pumphrey’s Coffee | Brian's Coffee Spot

  2. Pingback: Caffeine Magazine Newcastle: Ouseburn Coffee Co. | Brian's Coffee Spot

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