Adam Croft

Bugger me, it’s Tony Hadley. Was browsing through YouTube earlier watching a few beer reviews and clips from CAMRA festivals and came across a clip of Tony Hadley talking about his love for real ale.

Behold:

South Beds CAMRA have organised a social trip to Tring and Aylesbury on Saturday 11th July. Non-branch members and, of course, non-CAMRA members are invited to attend. As such, here’s the itinerary for the day. Explorer day passes cost £10 between four people, so that’s just £2.50 for a day’s travel.

Bus details are in italics and pub stops are in bold.

11:02 – 61 – Departs Dunstable (West Street)
11:42 – 61 – Arrives Tring (High Street)
11:45 – Tring Brewery (81 Akeman Street, HP23 6AF, 01442 890721)
13:10 – Kings Arms (King Street, HP23 6BE, 0871 917 0007) - LUNCH
14:42 – 61 – Departs Tring (High Street) [or 14:22 - 500]
15:02 – 61 – Arrives Aylesbury Bus Station (Kingsbury Square) [or 14:42 - 500]

1. Hop Pole (83 Bicester Road, HP19 9AZ, 01296 482129)
2. Harrow (4 Cambridge Street, HP20 1RS, 01296 336243)
3. Rockwoods (32 Kingsbury Square, HP20 2JE, 0871 917 0007)
4. Hobgoblin (14 Kingsbury Square, HP20 2HT, 0871 917 0007)
5. Queens Head (1-5 Temple Square, HP20 2QA, 01296 415484)
6. Kings Head (King’s Head Passage, Market Square, HP20 2RW, 01296 381501) – Arrive 16:45

17:15 – 61 – Departs Aylesbury Bus Station
17:47 – 61 – Arrives Marsworth

1. Red Lion (Vicarage Road, Marsworth, HP23 4LU, 0871 917 0007)
2. Anglers Retreat (Startops End, Marsworth, HP23 4LJ. 01442 822 250)

20:04 – Bus departs Marsworth (Vicarage Road)
20:31 – Bus arrives Dunstable (West Street) [or 21:43]

Another excellent beer-filled weekend. On Saturday, Jo and I visited the inaugural Harpenden Beer Festival. The festival proved to be extremely popular throughout the weekend with a fantastic array of beers kept in fine condition. Jo, who has recently started drinking bitter shandies after years of protesting a dislike of beer, did me proud and ordered a couple of halves of ale entirely off her own back. Between you and me, internetters, I think she’s starting to like it…

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.

Just a quick update (before I pop down the pub!). I received an email from Andrea Briers, the CAMRA Regional Director for East Anglia, confirming my position as the new Regional Young Members’ Coordinator. Very excited — going to have to do a lot of research over the weekend which is already filled with family visits and beer festivals!

As my girlfriend has just completed her university degree, we decided to take a few days away in order to relax and unwind. We decided to visit the Peak District — a part of the country we’ve always wanted to see. Of course, it would give me the chance to sample some more beers, too!

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.

The biggest beer-related news stories over the past few days focus on the current downward trend in lager sales and the surge in popularity for real ale.

On Sunday, The Mirror ran a story about Castlemaine XXX being withdrawn from sale in the UK. This followed an article from The Publican on Friday which told of Bedford-based brewery Wells & Young’s deciding to pull the plug on the production of Cobra. This is in stark contrast to the news we’ve been seeing since last year of the boom in real ale sales.

It’s never good to see any business collapse or downsize, but in terms of diverting attention away from mass-produced lager and towards good quality real ale, I can’t help but be somewhat pleased at this news. Am I wrong to be slightly happy?

After taking down the previous (unused) blog a little while ago, I’ve since decided to relaunch the blog complete with a new look and focus. I’m going to be focusing on beer-related topics. As you may or may not be aware, I’m quite heavily involved with my local branch of CAMRA. I’ve been toying with the idea of a beer blog for a while now, and this is where it starts.