Now, where were we…

Yes after a semi-enforced lay-off, BadPoo is back and what better way to celebrate than drinking beer in a massive sports hall in Wigan. There really is nothing to gladden the heart more than a real ale festival that takes place in space normally dedicated to exercise and physical fitness and this is as fine an example as you’ll find anywhere; 3 basketball courts worth of gymnasium liberated from hosting pointless pursuits like running about and instead turned over to the forces of beery libation.

Upon arrival, though, getting stuck into the ale is nigh on impossible as you’re suddenly confronted by about three-quarters-of-a-million potential beers to pick from and absolutely no idea how to make a choice. My usual technique in this situation is to simply bowl up to the first place at the bar with a gap and ask for whatever’s directly in front of me. In this case, I end up with Kirkby Lonsdale Jubilee which is a bonus as it’s from one of my favourite breweries. It’s a 5.5% stout that comes with a warning from the barman that it’s a 5.5% stout, an odd note of caution really considering I’m at a beer festival. The drink itself is a bracing introduction to the day’s festivities with a powerful, earthy quality. It’s a little like eating nuts that smoke 20-a-day.

We drink our first beers at the top of the wooden spectators benches on the side of the hall, and survey the scene as the festival unfolds and a ragtime band whose members all appear to be in their mid-80s rattle through their set in the corner to general apathy from most of those assembled. They could quite easily be playing through a version of ‘So Fucking What’ by the Anti-Nowhere League and most in the hall would still just be debating the merits of a pint of mild called ‘Fanny Batter’ or something. Such is the tragedy of the beer festival entertainer.

And so we move on to Brew Dog, the Man City of the beer world. Lots of publicity, usually quite good but still somehow vaguely fake. 4-0 at home to Rotherham in the FA Cup then an underwhelming one apiece away to Stoke. Your grandad has never heard of them doing anything because, well, they didn’t do anything when he was around. They’re a half inch from the lager world, the name over the content. Punk IPA is an example of this hype. As much as we all like a good beer, there are essentially just bad beers, okay beers and good beers. Punk is a good beer so the hype around it is like trying to come up with new superbly graphic superlatives to describe in what fashion you’d roger Kate Middleton on her wedding eve. Our tasting notes reported this sexual transgression as “Charlie Sheen’s Twitter Account seen both during a live drug and sex binge, and edited the morning after. A mixed bag.”

Next up it’s Whatever from the Prospect brewery which tastes dangerously similar to Cheerios and after the more complex and challenging earlier efforts serves as a welcome reminder of the pleasure of drinking a beer that doesn’t require a run-up. It’s quickly despatched with which leads directly to the inevitable moment when the festival drinker must confront the toilets. Beer festival toilets fall into two categories- at festivals in marquees you tend to get the portable bogs which, and this is a scientfic fact, cannot go longer than an hour at any gathering before all being subjected to some form of rectal Judgement Day and becoming as terrifying to confront as The Somme in 1916. In Wigan’s case, we have to deal with the other kind- the established toilets that are completely overwhelmed as they haven’t been designed or plumbed with the intention of servicing 2000 real ale drinkers on a festival session. Naturally, by the point I visit them, the only person who can negotiate them without getting the bottom of their jeans soaked would be a gifted stilt-walker.

We move on to a beery error now, a failure in record-taking which can only be attributed to a) going to the bar and asking for the first thing I saw and b) not actually caring what beer it was. Our scribbled notes hint at something along the lines of Black Death but the festival programme suggests this didn’t actually exist. I must, then, hold up my hand and admit to buying some random bollocks and hazarding a guess at the name later. Whatever this beer was, it had the striking characteristics of the watery remnants of a flooded kitchen floor.

Things continue to threaten to take a tailspin as one of our semi-sacred rules of beer drinking gets broken next in a spirit of hi-jinks. Normally I try to avoid any ales with names that are puns or that could be construed in any way as a bit naughty; the theory being that if you have to come up with an attention grabbing name then the ale can’t be up to much. However, Love Muscle from the North Yorkshire brewery has caught the eye of some of the group and so we end up with three half pints of a drink named after genitals. Luckily, it turns out to be rather refreshing and is now, officially, The Best Beer In The World To Share A Name With A Penis, except for Thwaites legendary Throbbing Phallus Bitter, natch. The tasting notes we made at the time for this one describe it as ‘like being kicked in the throat by a dying panther wearing wet socks’ which probably says less about the beer and more about us drinking on an empty stomach.

Fortified by an empty stomach, I progressed into some heavy-duty quaffing with a half of Rudgate’s Jorvik Blonde. This beer was probably named by someone with no beerception, who would have realised that the kick-ass name “Jorvik” does not sit alongside a pussy word like “blonde”. Much better candidates would have been Jorvik Bastard, Jorvik Hammer Of Destruction or Jorvik Pillage And Burn. Frankly, this schoolboy nomenclature misdemeanour put me off the entire beer and I could only summarise it as being memorable in the same sense it was memorable the first time you tasted dishwater out of curiosity.

Back to the Prospect brewery now for their Nutty Slack which is award-winning apparently, though the exact nature of these awards wasn’t divulged at the time. It’s a fiesty mild this one; dark, rich, a man’s drink if every there was one. In fact, it tastes exactly like it was brewed for coal miners who like to take their work home with them. There isn’t a beer that would sum Wigan up better without being served with a pastry lid.

And so we finish with a true beer afficionado’s favourite. Hoppy, hints of ginger, chocolate and thyme with a finish that leaves your throat as raw as drinking paint stripper. Yes, who could mistake Allendale’s Beacon Fire. This beer is like asking four male strippers to dance on your face while you decide which brand of turps to drink: equally disturbing and heavy with portents of doom. If the day of reckoning came and you had to choose your final drink, you’d throw this in the bin and die sober. A week later, my abiding memory of this beer is a strange burning sensation at the back of my throat which made me feel like I’d been fellating a very homosexual stag party for at least three days.

All in all, Wigan is a good beer festival. You don’t have to stand round while the hardcore CAMRA geeks monopolise the tables for ten hours, thanks to the seats at the side. It’s free for CAMRA members and prices were good. Knock off one or two weapons-grade ales which destroyed my throat and this would have been the best beer fest for a while.

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Lytham, home of posh ladies and buildings with propellors. And a few good pubs.

I know I shouldn’t go, but I might. I know I said I’d stay in, but I won’t. I know I say every week I’ll stay off the beer, but I never do. I know when Saturday comes, I’ll wake up ready to jump on the next train to Lytham and have a look at their beer festival.

Curse you, infernal temptation. My best laid plans always crumble thanks to timing like this. It’s been too long since I’ve done a festival thanks to combination of the usual summer drought and my other holiday plans, not to mention the fact I did them nearly every weekend at the start of the year. It is such cruel timing then to throw Lytham’s beer festival right in my face on the one weekend I swore I’d stay at home and be sensible.

Enough of my cursing, anyway. From Thursday to Saturday this week, it’s the fourth Lytham beer festival. This is a wonderful little seaside town, like a Blackpool without thousands of drunk Glaswegians, chip wrappers and 2p slot machines. Myself and Matt had a day out over there earlier this year and loved the place, so the prospect of a Saturday afternoon by the sea, back at The Taps and the station bar and with a beer festival on top is very difficult to turn down.

It’s coming back into beer festival season and despite my protestations to myself that I will stay at home, I may well see you down at Lytham this Saturday.

Beer festival · Lytham · The Taps

As I’m sure you know by now, Wetherspoon’s has begun another of their real ale festivals, this year billed as “the world’s largest real ale festival featuring up to 50 ales”. Yesterday we popped along to try a few of the first ones on offer.

Good Cheer Beer and Rollercoaster - two decent, if odd, ales. GCB was the better of the two.

First up, and off to a confusing start: a pint of what we have down as Good Cheer Beer’s Pale Yorkshire Bitter, but which on reflection must actually have been a Roosters’ Good Cheer Beer. Being damn cool customers, we’re never ones to loiter at the bar and our notes are based on a quick glance at the clip as we walk past (making sure to look disinterested in all things ale in front of the barmaids). It also proved that we didn’t pay attention to the “beer festival” signs above the clip, and actually bought a beer which wasn’t part of the festival. Thus, on occasion – frequent occasion, I must admit – we end up with a sheet of notes referring to nonexistent ale which isn’t part of the festival. This would be but the first of several such foul-ups of the day.

But: on to the beer itself. Good Cheer Beer seems to be quite widely available judging by a quick search, but it’s the first time I’d tried it. It’s very light, and I thought it tasted a lot like lemonade at first until the beer flavour kicks in. It’d make a cracking pint in a beer garden after work – refreshing, easy-drinking and like drinking pop. The VK of the ale world, if you like. My drinking partner Shaky found it soft and fruity with a tang of beer to finish, a good barbecue beer and definitely 87.6% as refreshing as shandy. A thumbs-up overall, I think.

Our first round also took in what we noted down as an “Oldham Ales Rollercoaster”. Again, our note-taking skills proved as piss-poor as a quadriplegic secretary and the closest I can guess at is that this was something by the Oldham Brewery, which is just a name used by Robinsons. I can’t even say that with any conviction and I’m sure by now it’ll have sold out and been replaced. Whatever the hell it was that we drank, it had a licquorice, heavy taste which was quite off-putting at first but eventually didn’t seem too bad – I gave it a 60%. Shaky meanwhile found the name apt, as you’re unsure of what you’re tasting, being sour, sweet, dry and comforting all at once – one to enjoy, but not to cherish.

Our terrible note-taking record continued as I went to the bar for round two, the first of which I decided was Three B’s Bee In The Bonnet, which after a conversation with Gordon from the brewery transpired to be Honey Bee. Again, this beer is not even a part of the festival, so we essentially may have gone to any pub in Blackburn, drank four pints and made up some names for them. But bear with me on this one: Honey Bee is our beer of 2010 so far. It’s simply tremendous, the most drinkable pint I’ve ever come across, and that includes my affairs with that seductress Harvest Pale. The very first smell of the pint got an “ooooh” from Shaky, a man whose usual reaction is one of almost invisible indifference. There’s a sweet, almost spicy smell, which I described as like wafting a piece of lightly honeyed toast under your nose, and he called a Chinese sweet and sour. And the taste? The word “quaffable” was invented for this beer. You know those massive Americans who enter contests to neck 20 pints in five minutes? The cheating bastards are on this stuff. It’s very, very nice, nothing too intense but a smooth feeling of honey in your mouth. It leaves you with a feeling of warmth and enjoyment, and is by far my favourite beer of 2010.

Honey Bee and Lush. The former is the mightiest drink since the invention of roofs.

And so, somewhat reluctantly, to our final pint of the session, Hopstar’s Lush. These are another local brewery to us, just down the road in Darwen. I’ve enjoyed their beers in the past but the smell of this one was a bit off-putting – we thought it was somewhere between a mild cheese and a pair of wet socks on a changing room floor. Somehow, the taste is totally different – there’s a definite taste of wood, which I thought was like sucking on a piece of moss-covered bark on one of those massive cool trees in a forest-based episode of the X-Files. Shaky felt it was more like chewing on a pencil and suddenly realising you’ve crushed the lead beneath your teeth. Overall, a curious beer, drinkable but leaving you with a strange sensation.

And those were the beers that were. It was an intriguing session, mostly caused by our total inability to actually write down what we were drinking. But in the space of an hour we drank a piece of wood, had a lemonade beer, were left perplexed by a literal rollercoaster of a pint and enjoyed our champion beer of 2010 so far, the tremendous Honey Bee by Three B’s Brewery.

You try topping that, Foster-boys.

Beer festival · Beers · Good Cheer Beer · Honey Bee · Hopstar · J D Wetherspoon · Lush · Oldham Brewery · Rollercoaster · Roosters · Three B's

And so to the White Swan in Stokesley this week for their annual Beer and Cheese Festival, a gathering which- in the eyes of some North East real ale drinkers- threatens to relegate the death and resurrection of Jesus to a mere support act in terms of important Easter weekend events. It’s well worth a visit and, despite this year only being my second time as an attendee, I can already offer you one vital tip if you plan to make the most of the full range of guest ales on offer and turn up on the opening day of Good Friday- the pub opens at 12pm, make sure you’re there for quarter to. Then you’ll be at least in the first 25 or so in the queue at the door. The determination to beat the coach loads of folk who turn up from nearby Camra groups is such that people are patiently waiting outside earlier and earlier with each passing year. And it’s always my would-be in-laws at the front. By next year they’ll probably be lining up outside from about mid-February.

Once you’re inside there’s a mobile bar which has 10 pumps on- most of these will be empty by the Saturday. This year, only 4 ales survived into the second day of the festival- though the guest taps on the permanent bar keep turning over new guest stuff regularly, alongside the pub’s own Captain Cook microbrewery output.

Those will have to wait though as it was time to get cracking on the festival drinks on offer. Straight off the bat we’ve got a couple of hefty offerings from the Thornbridge Brewery who’ve supplied the festival with two of the most resoundingly fruity pale ales ever attempted at a British beer festival; both of which also come with a hefty 5%+ hit which renders them as dangerous as they are refreshing. First up, there’s Jaipur which- clue in the title- is an India Pale Ale with a sharp, citrusy kick which is powerful and pleasant, though stopped precariously just short of being bitter enough to make the drinker go cross-eyed. There’s a real sense of both danger and refreshment at work here- like the feeling one may experience while goosing a lemon plantation owner’s daughter on a summer’s evening. In India, obviously.

Next up from Thronbridge is Kipling which is a South Pacific Pale Ale that, and we’re warming to something of a theme from these boys here, is similarly redolent of both pleasant fruity flavours and the dizzying threat of encroaching menace. It’s got gooseberry and melon in the mix somewhere but also weighs in at 5.2%, it’s like being mugged by a can of Lilt with a flick knife. The overall impression I’m left with of the Thornbridge Brewery is that of the Man from Del Monte not so much saying “Yes” as demanding  ”everything from the till and no sudden movements”. You are commanded to drink their beers immediately- I wouldn’t upset them.

There now follows a couple of drinks to have picked up some regional awards down South before venturing up the A19 to Stokesley.   B.G. Sips first from the Blue Monkey Brewery which claimed a Gold at Camra’s Peterborough Beer Festival in 2008. Rest assured people of Peterborough and surrounding districts that this ale carries your reputation as fine judges forward to other parts of the nation with aplomb. It’s biscuity- but not so much that it feels like drinking stale Hob-Nobs (Brewhouse Brown Ale- I’m looking at you) and there’s even a hint of malt and maybe a touch of quenching sweetness. It feels like floating on cheesecake on a flapjack lilo- especially if you’re mind’s been opened up by 4 pints of Jaipur before you got stuck into it.

It’s the Champion Beer of Gloucestershire for 2009 next- Old Rocky from Nailsworth. If this is anything to go by, the ale denizens of this particular county like their stuff refreshing, fruity and to be- intriguingly, according to the tasting notes- “the perfect beer to accompany breakfast”. Mind you, if your county capital had only really been in the news in recent years due to a flesh eating virus and Fred West, you’d probably be getting sloshed over your cornflakes too. The beer itself, continuing the theme of being in tune with the newly-awake, turns out to be as refreshing as a dewey spring morning and heartily recommended to all, not just unfortunate people from disaster-ridden counties like Gloucestershire.

Finally, the Shardlow Brewing Co. offer up Narrow Boat about which I have very little to say. This may be the ultimate session ale, the most cooking of cooking beers. It’s taste is so light and etherial it’s comprised mostly of ideas and notions rather than anything tangible and real. Here we might actually have the first ever conceptual real ale and it the perfect drink to offer anyone who gets dragged along to a beer festival but doesn’t like the taste of beer. Or anything, come to think of it.

The White Swan Beer and Cheese Festival runs over the Easter weekend every year- which means it’s practically 13 long months rather than just a year till the next one.  Or 9 months till my girlfriend’s parents are queuing at the door.  See you there.

b.g. sips · blue monkey brewery · captain cook brewery · jaipur · kipling · nailsworth brewery · narrow boat · old rocky · sharrow brewing co. · stokesley · thornbridge brewery · white swan

Drinking beer in the name of Jesus H. Amen.

Tonight is the first session of this year’s Preston Beer Festival, held at St Walburge’s church. It is not a CAMRA festival, instead being in aid of the restoration of the building which the website describes as “Preston’s architectural gem”. I envisage a dilapidated old ruin of a church, left to succumb to the elements while the Church of England sits merrily on its amassed fortunes.

I’m going over tomorrow night with my fair lady and must admit this will be my first time at this festival, which is a poor record considering it’s in its 17th year and I lived in Preston for two of them. So far this year I’ve been to fairly big festivals – the Winter fest in Manchester, Fleetwood and so on – so this should be a nice change of pace. There is something pleasant about being able to drink good beer in a quiet, yet not solitary environment; I think it’s a happy middle ground between sitting at home drinking bottles on your own and cramming yourself into a Wetherspoons on a Friday night. Clitheroe’s festival in May should be very much the same if last year is anything to go by.

I can never decide if I prefer the small or large festivals, but tomorrow evening should help me decide.

Beer festival · Beers · Clitheroe · Preston · St Walburge's Church

Here’s a weekend to keep free: East Lancs CAMRA will again be holding a beer festival at the St Mary’s Centre in Clitheroe on May 14th and 15th 2010.

Men undertaking the noble pursuit of standing around getting pissed on a Saturday afternoon.

Last year it coincided with a 1940s theme weekend but I haven’t seen any mention of that yet so perhaps that was a one-off. Either way it’s still a decent festival for the weekend as Clitheroe’s a nice town and it’s easy to reach from anywhere on the Manchester line – you could even change at Blackburn and reach it from Preston, Burnley and beyond.

The St Mary’s Centre is quite small but sometimes that adds to a festival. The dull roar of 300 drunk men in an old building with terrible acoustics is second only to standing in a busy Wetherspoons at 9pm on a Saturday night and feeling drowned out by mindless noise. You can rest assured though that the Clitheroe festival is on a much more intimate scale.

While in the town I would also recommend a visit to the New Inn, which normally has around six beers on and is a fantastic old pub. In summer, wind through the low-beamed rooms out into the beer garden with a great view over the town – one of my all time top five beer gardens without a doubt. The Grand is also worth a look if open – the bar had a good choice of bottled beers on last time I went.

I’ll update here if I hear any more news but I do recommend this as one for a good Saturday out, especially if the weather is pleasant.

Beer festival · Beers · CAMRA · Clitheroe · New Inn · St Mary's Centre · The Grand

This year’s Boot beer festival in and around Eskdale and Boot in the Lakes has been announced for Thursday 10th June through to Sunday 13th June this year. It was a week earlier last year and I recall reading this post by Woolpack Dave last year about how he hoped for a greater gap between the end of half term and the festival, so I initially thought his prayers had been answered. However, it seems that thanks to a shift in dates it’s still just a week after the end of half term in Cumbria which according to this is June 4th.

I guess it’ll be another tough week for Dave, then, but I’m glad he’s still taking part because I can understand some of the problems he’s had in the past. Last year was my third or fourth weekend at the festival but it was the first time I and my group actually made it down to the Woolpack. I don’t wish this whole post to be just about this pub, as there are three taking part, but through reading Dave’s blog I have developed a closer tie to it than any of the others along that long, winding (and incredibly dark) road. In the past it’s seemed to be way too far down the road to be worth a visit in the evening, especially as we were camping at Fisherground. However, last year a shuttle bus ran from there down to the Woolpack which made it a hell of a lot easier and we made it on two of the three nights we were there – top marks for that idea.

I hope the bus is in action again this year as it made a massive difference for everyone staying at Fisherground, not to mention jumping on at the Boot Inn – without it I think we’d manage the walk down once at most.

Watching the band inside the marquee at the Woolpack Inn at the 2009 festival.

Dave also mentioned the cost of providing the marquee and the band. This is a tricky one as obviously he can’t expect a free lunch from the festival, but at the same time I can see why the costs are prohibitive. I personally enjoyed moving around from the pub to the marquee, and Dave’s cooking show was great to watch, but if the numbers don’t add up perhaps it may be one to sacrifice.

I do recommend this festival to anyone unfamiliar with the area, as the Eskdale valley is stunning and most drivers get a thrill from going over Hardknott Pass for the first time. If you keep up with Dave’s blog and fancy a weekend away supporting someone who cares about beer and good times, why not consider a trip over to one of the best festival weekends in Cumbria.

Beer festival · Beers · Boot · Boot Inn · Brook House Inn · Eskdale · Lake District · Woolpack Dave · Woolpack Inn

Fleetwood: home of pissed-up sailors.

And to the four corners of the land we go in the search for a pint of golden ale. This week: Fleetwood, home of fish, ferries and abandoned gloom. This is a brand of despair unique to forgotten Northern coastal towns, where regular gloom passed through twenty years ago and left behind streets of flat buildings stripped of life.

I went on a recce of Fleetwood at the weekend since I was in the area, and left wondering whether I’d have been better off leaving it to the weekend. I’ve rarely seen any town centre so deserted on a Sunday afternoon. The whole of the main road through town is dug up and fenced off as what looks like tramlines are laid down, the result of which is that you pick your side of the road and then you’re stuck with it for the next 500 metres. When you reach the end, you realise there’s nothing much there and come back down on the other side, a livelier mix of pound shops and two or three pubs.

The number of “TO LET” signs up is an immediate impression when you walk around Fleetwood. One, with a giant mural drawn by kids on the side, advertises food and good beers from a distance, but as you draw close you see the doors are firmly closed. There’s nothing else for a good ten minutes. Coming back down the other side of the road, I passed an interesting place which I’ll try on Saturday; black padded seats wrapped around the walls of a large bar as old men stood outside smoking. My kind of place. Further down the road, and two chain pubs sit on side roads heading into the sea. They’ll be worth a look and at least they’re open. On the way out, “the oldest pub in town” went past view and must be given a tour.

It was not the best time to go, I know – a Sunday afternoon in a forgotten coastal town in winter. Morrissey probably spent half of his teens writing his next twenty years of music round here. It leaves me then wondering what this weekend’s beer festival will be like. I like to have a wander around new towns and check out the pubs, but I’ve built a vague sense of foreboding into myself already. It’s like going on a holiday with people who’ve already been there – you feel drained of choice and free will and the days have an air of finality before they’ve even begun.

Nonetheless, the festival itself will hopefully be a good one and I’ll report back once we’re back.

Beer festival · Beers · Blackpool · CAMRA · Fleetwood · Fylde · wyre

A frankly terrifying photo from the Lancashire Telegraph.

The demise of Blackburn and Accrington’s annual beer festivals means that at the moment, the nearest to home for me is the Pendle festival in Colne. This sounds close but it’s still about 40 minutes on the train so I could pretty much be in Manchester in the same time. Still, Colne muni is a decent venue and at least it’s one I can get to without having to leave early to get back, or end up staying over in a grotty B&B, staying out ’til 4am and coming home £130 poorer.

It’s interesting to wonder what happened to the other festivals in the area. My last memory of a Blackburn festival must be from around 2001, at a guess. I remember it was before Barbara Castle Way was extended through to connect with Montague Street, as after the festival I ended up wrestling with my mates on the field which used to be there and my neighbour nearly called the police because he thought we were in a fight. Suffice to say, ample amounts of 8% scrumpy were involved in that particular night. There was going to be a festival in 2009 at King Georges Hall but it was cancelled due to lack of sponsorship.

Somewhere at home I have a t-shirt from the last Accrington festival which judging by this report was in 2004. My memories of that one are good – it was upstairs in the town hall, quite a big room and with a balcony overlooking the main road into the town. I’m not sure why that one ended but there’s been no word of another since, to the best of my knowledge.

In this part of the world we seem to have lost the bigger festivals in favour of smaller, more local ones. Take for example Clitheroe, which has had one for the last few years at the tiny St Mary’s Centre in May. There doesn’t seem to be any word yet whether they’ll be doing one this year, but I’m hopeful as last year’s was a good day out. The Aspinall Arms also hosts the Middle Earth beer festival, which I fully intend to get to this year; it’s quite a remote location but easily done if I can get a few people together.

It would be easy to worry about why the bigger festivals have died off around here, but I think there are particular circumstances in each case and they’re not part of a larger trend. The fact that smaller ones have thrived in their absence should, I think, just be appreciated.

Accrington · Aspinall Arms · Beer festival · Beers · Blackburn · Clitheroe · Colne · Middle Earth · Pendle · St Mary's Centre

I was contemplating taking a look at the “Bent ‘n Bongs” festival in Atherton this Saturday afternoon, as it’s only about an hour on the train from scummy old Blackburn and it’d be about the same distance up for a mate coming from Warrington. A few things have put me off though and instead I’ll be spending the afternoon watching a play in Preston and then hitting a few of the excellent ale pubs down Friargate. The Old Black Bull, the Dog & Partridge and the Brittania all spring to mind for the excellent choice of beers they always have on, and all within 30 seconds of each other. Happy days.

Anyway, what’s stopped me going to this one?

• £5 entry to a four hour session? That’s at the upper end of the scale this year and I don’t like how they force you to take a glass and programme. I’ve got so many festival glasses already that if I die young and they go to empty my house they’ll think I had the early stages of senile hoarding disease. I don’t bloody want any more and would happily have my £2 deposit back. The same goes for the programme… who apart from tickers needs more than one per group? Are they forcing it on you so they can sell it to advertisers better – “we will definitely reach x number of eyes”?
• What’s going on with a three hour break between afternoon and evening sessions? What do they do, grab something to eat and spend the next two hours forming a loosely-knit jazz collective? This put me off because as someone who’d have travelled down for the afternoon session, I’d be forced to leave at 4pm and I’m not going to hang around for three hours just so I can pay another fiver to go back for an hour before my train home.
• Their website has no evidence of glorious MILFs of previous years.

It’s a shame as it looked alright judging by the photo below, but this is really indicative of the way some festivals are going now. They know who they’re appealing to and know they can get away with little tricks to boost the income, but they’ll never know how many people there are out there just like me who looked at the website and just thought “maybe not”.

It's all gone Pete Bong.

Atherton · Beer festival · Beers · Bent and Bongs