“We’re appealing to all people to bring a group of friends, family or colleagues together and try to break the record for the World’s Biggest Pub Quiz, so more disadvantaged families can enjoy a much-needed break in 2010,” says Joe Hipgrave, fundraising manger for the Family Holiday Association.

If you want to find out which of your local pubs are participating, be sure to visit the World’s Biggest Pub Quiz website to see what’s going on in your neck of the woods. What’s more, you can even get your local pub involved. Just download an organiser’s pack from the website and see how easy it is to get involved. I’m told there are currently more than 362 pubs signed up so you’re in good company!

As an additional incentive, each organiser whose quiz raises more than £100 will have the chance to enter the competition to win a seven-night Caribbean cruise on NCL’s newest Freestyle Cruising ship, Norwegian Epic, which will be launched in June 2010. How about that, then?

What made you want to get involved with this new TV series?
Community pubs have always been the backbone of life in our towns and villages, a place for neighbours to meet properly, friendships to be made and community spirit to be nurtured and grown, with the sad demise of this British institution we risk losing this cornerstone of our heritage forever, once it’s gone we will never get it back. It’s time for action and I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to make a difference.

What were your general observations regarding the landlords and landladies involved in your programme?
In many of the programmes the pubs were already closed and the landlord long gone, in the instances they were still around there almost always seemed to have been a huge breakdown in the relationship between the pub and it’s local punters, once this bond is broken in a small community closure soon follows.

To what do you personally attribute the decline of the British pub industry?
There are clearly many factors and it is all too easy to start pointing the finger at one thing or another: Competition from cheaper city centre venues, the smoking ban, supermarket deals, have all had a huge impact but it is also fair to say that many of the Pubs visited in the making of the show simply offered far too little in return for customers hard earned cash; communication was often poor, food below par, service standards behind the bar were often dated and fell a long way short of peoples expectations.

Do you think the UK pub industry will ever get back to what it was?
No. We will clearly never return to times where we had villages with multiple pubs, there simply isn’t the demand. What is absolutely vital is that we stop the trend of the last local closing, this is simply unacceptable and communities need to act. Lodging objections to planning applications has become more and more visible in these communities and hopefully after seeing Save Our Boozer the next step will be for locals to take on their pub and give it new life for the long term.

With general pub sales and lager revenues down and real ale sales increasing, what role do you see traditional British ales playing in the future of the pub industry?
Without the explosion of micro brewers and general consumer awareness of the fantastic real ales being produced around the country the Pub industry would undoubtedly be in even more trouble than it is already. Whilst it would be unwise for the industry to pin all of it’s hopes on real ale it is a very clear sign that consumers expect choice, quality and professionally cared for products when going to the pub.

Your trials and tribulations in the pub industry are fairly well documented. What aspects did you find were key to turning your career around and becoming a successful and profitable landlord?
Customer focus and cost control. If you are losing customers you are missing the point of what they want, if you carve a niche and excel at serving both regulars and new customers you will start to see the shoots of recovery. Couple this with exceptional cost control and complete dedication to making your pub or bar better than your nearest competitor and you are on the right track. In my case I had to get rid of almost all staff, change many suppliers for better deals and scrap any plans I had for time off for a few years!

After your involvement with the series and the five sets of pub landlords, what do you think is the secret to saving the great British pub?
Community. Without their support the local boozer is doomed, if they don’t have the time to help out they can do their bit by buying a pint or two instead of that six pack from the shop! The areas I visited where the pub was already shut realised this without hesitation but sadly there were areas where locals were still convinced someone would just turn up and open a great pub just for them and all would be well in the world again…

Many thanks to Jay for providing us with an extra insight into the programme. Save Our Boozer is on Blighty from Tuesday 8th December at 8pm.

We finally got round to adding Jo to my CAMRA membership (at a cost of £5 a year, saving £3 entry to each beer festival plus the various other benefits) and she was given beer vouchers to the value of £5 to be used at the foreign beer bar. Daunted and unsure what to order (and I’m not much help with Belgian beers, either) she plumped for a Brasserie Cantillon Kriek – a Lambic beer – due to my looser-than-I-thought translation of ‘kriek’ as ‘cherry’. Meanwhile, I played it safe by ordering a Aecht Schlenkerla Märzen Rauchbier – a type of German smoked beer which I tend to plump for when I’m in Germany. Wendy, who was running the bar, very kindly offered to replace it with a sweeter beer if Jo wasn’t keen on the tartness of Lambic beers. Surprisingly, she did like it, so Wendy bought her another one anyway! Many thanks to Wendy for her generosity and time in speaking with us and sharing her vast knowledge of foreign beers.

Highlights of the festival, for me, have to be the Great Oakley Wagtail – always a firm favourite of mine – and the Buntingford Polar Star – again, not a new beer on me but in fantastic condition at the festival and most refreshing in the heatwave!

On Sunday, we visited Jo’s nan and came back via The Three Hammers in Chiswell Green, which we’d had recommended for good food and beer. Unfortunately, there was an hour’s wait for food and we had to be at Ampthill before long, so we had a quick half of Golden Sheep before heading off on our way.

This week’s Thursday social for South Beds CAMRA is in Slip End. We’ll be starting at the Frog & Rhubarb at 8:30pm before heading on to the Rising Sun. Please do join us if you’re in the area.

Castleton scenery

We opted to stay in Castleton, in the Hope Valley. The area is beautiful and the scenery is absolutely stunning. We arrived on Thursday afternoon and explored the village before heading off for a meal and a few drinks. On Friday morning, we decided to climb Mam Tor, the mountain overlooking Castleton and the Hope Valley. It was never going to be easy work considering the fact that I’ve only ever been at the summit of one mountain and I got to the top of that in a lift. This, coupled with the fact that we somehow managed to completely lose the intended tourist trail and end up scaling the bloody thing on our own, meant that this was going to be quite some walk. I had my very own Bear Grylls moment when I tried to cross a peat bog and got my leg sucked in whilst my girlfriend frantically yanked me back out.

Once we’d reached the top of Mam Tor, we came back down the other side into the village of Edale (after taking the wrong path back down the mountain and ending up about a mile and a half outside Edale when we reached the road again).  Having already walked approximately eight miles by now, we stopped at The Rambler Inn for a bite to eat and some liquid refreshment. Having already visited each of the pubs in Castleton the previous day, I was overjoyed to reach The Rambler Inn and find that the beers were served without sparklers! Get in! Two pints later, we hopped on the train one stop further east to Hope. Here, we visited the Old Hall Inn. The only thing they served which even resembled beer was Wadworth 6X. Even this was in extremely poor condition and tasted like the lines hadn’t been cleaned for days. With their only other customer propping up the bar with empty Foster’s glasses, we assumed real ale was not exactly their forté. Our new lager-swilling friend told us in no uncertain terms that the Old Hall Inn was the best pub in the village and that the Cheshire Cheese Inn (not to be confused with the one in Castleton) was ‘not a proper pub’ and ‘not what it used to be’. Assuming that this meant it had real ales, friendly customers and bar staff who smiled, we made the (relatively!) short walk up Edale Road and found the Cheshire Cheese to be a delightful traditional pub serving good beer and offering a friendly service. The pub was also populated, which was in stark contrast to the Old Hall Inn. Perhaps the landlord of the Old Hall Inn should take note — there’s a recipe for success in every other pub in the Hope Valley and you’re wonderin’ why yours ain’t workin’.

The Rambler Inn in Edale - Fantastic pub

The pubs in Castleton itself were all of a high standard. Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Inn (again, not to be confused with the one in Hope!) is a delightful period building with oak beams and a very traditional outfit. The beers are all superb and the bar staff are very friendly. On reaching the pub on Saturday night to discover Kelham Island Pale Rider on tap, I let out an involuntary ‘YES!’ complete with full-on air-punching. The barman, without skipping a beat, delighted in telling me it had just run out. Fortunately, he was joking.

On walking up Castle Street, I stopped dead in my tracks. We’d come all this way from south Bedfordshire to north Derbyshire and what had we found? A bloody Charlie Wells pub!! The George, nestled beautifully opposite the church, is apparently Charles Wells’ most northerly situated pub — by quite some way. The barman, Chris, who looks fantastically like Russell Brand (but thankfully is a nice bloke and nowhere near as irritating) told us that the landlord, Richard, had had to plea quite heavily with Charles Wells to sell a guest ale. Charles Wells, realising what a gem they had in The George, thankfully agreed. The guest beer that night was Sharp’s Honey Spice–a wheat bear infused with honey. It was certainly very interesting, and surprisingly nice. It was, however, served through a sparkler. Chris, the barman, told us that the landlord won’t actually allow the beer to be served without sparklers as the bar staff had attended training courses on how to serve beer with sparklers and he didn’t want the quality to be compromised. Fair enough, but the beauty of serving beer without a sparkler is that you really can’t go wrong! It’s pure, unadulterated liquid in a glass. No milky appearance, no froth, and with full flavour retention.

A few doors down from The George is The Castle. This is often busy as it’s right opposite the main car park in the village, so gets a lot of tourists stopping off for their first drink. The beer was serviceable (on the one day that they had a decent guest from a micro and not just the usual selection of Timmy Taylor Landlord, Wadworth 6X, Mansfield Original, Bass and Pedigree. The food, however, was abysmal. This is probably the weakest pub in Castleton by some way.

More scenery around Castleton

Opposite The Castle is The Bull’s Head. Although the beer range was limited to two regular premium ales by Robinsons (Double Hop and Unicorn Bitter), the condition was fine. The real gem, however, was the food. This was probably the best pub meal I’ve had in a long, long time. If you’re looking for a fantastic meal and don’t mind drinking Robinsons, head for The Bull’s Head. The best pint of the holiday was enjoyed at Ye Olde Nags Head, just across the road from The Bull’s Head — a superb pint of Saltaire Blonde. I say ‘pint’, but I did have more than one! The pub was undergoing a refit whilst we were there, but there was no interruption to service at all. The barmaid, although confused, did agree to remove the sparkler for my second pint so I could compare the two side by side. Having done so, I can categorically state that sparklers do greatly affect the state of real ale – for the worse. Many thanks to the staff at the Nags Head for letting me test this and for serving some fantastic beer.

Last  but not quite least (although it’s a close one) is The Peaks Inn, a couple of doors up from the Cheshire Cheese. They claim to have ‘lavished’ £360,000 on the pub recently, but it’s hard to see how. The interior feels cold and unfriendly, the beer was relatively poor, and the food was pretty dire. My girlfriend ordered a medium steak, only to be greeted by two extremely thin steak slices, stuck together, and cooked to within an inch of their lives.

One thing that surprised me in the Peak District was the sheer number of people opting to drink real ale over lager. Purely through observation, I’d say it was probably 70-75%. It’s not just a local thing, either — the numbers didn’t seem to dwindle when singling out tourists. Most pubs do, unfortunately, use tight sparklers and swan neck pumps. The resulting beer is so frothy that the pints had to be pulled very slowly and were left to stand for a Guinness-style length of time to settle before they could be topped up.

All in all, it was a fantastic holiday and we’ll certainly be back in the area before long to do it all over again.