"Evening, Boris!"

It had been a long, long afternoon. Taking a hangover to the cricket seemed the decent thing to do. Derbyshire v Notts developed slower than a Pinter play. I slept the sleep that only county cricket fans know;  inevitable yet dangerous, as a thud through point peppered the seats nearby.

But I'd promised to go to Burton that evening. To be fair, Beer Town has very few reasons to make even the most beeriest of beer fans go there. But the Coopers Tavern is one of them. And the Honourable Order of Bass Drinkers is another.

Formed in 1967 by sports writers on the Manchester Evening News, the HOBD still gather and revel in their love of draught Bass. Every year they journey to Burton to tour the brewery (now at Marston's) and drink at the Coopers Tavern. And I took up their invitation to join them.

For those readers unfortunate enough to have never met me in person, I am blessed with a corpulent mien and a hairdo that resembles an exploding hay bale. Not dissimilar to a certain journalist-cum-politician with whom I share a surname. And a love of bangers and mash.

Hence the bellowed welcome.

After that? Well, what happens at the Coopers stays at the Coopers. Suffice to say that the chairman ensures that glasses never remain empty, a swift nod to the treasurer leads to more and evermore Bass arriving at table. Banter is redefined by a bunch of blokes who have been taking the piss out of each other for a long time. Grown men cry with laughter.

And all because there's a beer called Bass, one that some drinkers felt was worth fighting to find, one that they pride themselves on draining nowadays wherever available. From before CAMRA was founded, a mission undiluted, a motto pure and simple - "Never do things by halves".

The next time I meet up with them, I promise I'll actually ask them some questions. Like, was Bass really better back in the day - whenever that day was. Like, what draws you towards drinking Bass to the practical exclusion of other beers?

Like, what do I need to do to be voted in as a full member and be awarded one of those ties?

>

You travel on the kind of train where stitching recalcitrant children into their seats ought to be mandatory.

You drink in a studenty bar, Font. You're twenty years older and five stone fatter than anyone else but nobody's bothered. You down Brodie's Citra at a rate that suggests imminent Armageddon can only be avoided by your capacity and voracity for drinking. You pair a salt beef bagel with a bottle of Brooklyn East India Pale Ale and find the combination of gherkins and Centennial to be mildy erotic.

You sit in the Marble Arch with a pint of, um, Pint. You take your glasses off, ignore your phone and spend several hours blundering through a crossword with occasional interruptions for Dark Star Saison and Marble Ginger. You are surprised to see Dave Bailey from Hardknott. You check Twitter and find that he messaged you three hours ago. Asking you to look out for an American brewer he was meeting. Said brewer has been sat opposite you for several hours. You buy a bottle of Old Manchester, the Fuller's / Marble collaboration beer. You promise to yourself not to drink it on the train.

You walk into the Unicorn Hotel and meet the Honourable Order of Bass Drinkers. What happens upstairs in the Unicorn stays upstairs in the Unicorn. Suffice to say you laugh hard, eat excellent pork pie and drink far too much delectable, nutty, spritzy-bitterish Bass.

You forget to check the time. You break your cardinal rule about not catching a train later than the 2020 off Picadilly. You try not to fall asleep on the train. You're glad that the Derby-bound train terminates at Derby so you don't miss your stop. You feel like an arse for making your wife come pick you up from the station at gone midnight.


You wake up the next day and think: Manchester. Bloody hell! >

Stepping off the train at Burton, there's a whiff of the subcontinent about the town. Sadly, it's not the sweet hoppy aroma of IPA-in-the-making but of curry. Which is a bugger for two reasons; it makes me hungry for lamb bhuna at eleven o'clock in the morning and it makes me thirsty for Jaipur. Fortunately, that latter is a commodity that Beer Town can offer up within minutes of arriving there - if you know where to look.

A day of not-Christmas-shopping with another thirsty toper, Chris McBride, showed that Burton may be a pencil-thin shadow of the brewing colossus it once was but good beer is where you find it. Starting at the Cooper's Tavern; it's been a brewer's house, brewery tap and bottle store in its time. It serves Bass straight from the cask. It often sells Jaipur and it did today. And as Alex Ferguson has never said; "Jaipur! Bloody hell!". And for some inexplicable reason, Chris and I were drawn to rocking the treadle of a Singer sewing machine now converted into a bar table...

Over at the Burton Bridge Inn there was a beer and food pairing that ought to make Mark Dredge weep; Damson Porter, bacon & black pudding sandwich. I'd say more about the place, but that pairing says it all.

And then there was The Brewery Tap. We came here to try one beer in particular - Carling Extra Cold. It's always special to drink a beer at the place where it's brewed and... er, let's try that one again. We went there to try one beer in particular - cask White Shield. It's always special to drink a beer at the place where it's brewed and White Shield was dazzlingly fruity-fresh.

Today's bottle: whilst we were there, we surreptitiously opened up a Bass 200. Brewed for their bicentenary celebrations in 1977, this was my early Christmas present from Chris. And for a capped beer over thirty years old, it was still chock full of condition. I even wrenched a tendon or two trying to get the bottle open. The taste? Just like sherried cola. C-o-l-a cola.

Today's gift: Michael Jackson on White Shield.

Today's picture: Spot the Bass bottle


Cheers to Stoph for a cracking day out and letting me share in that bottle of 200. >

Wake up. Catch train. Go to beer festival. Drink beer. Drink cider. Eat pork pie. Catch train. Drink beer in Brunswick. Go to bed. To be honest, I'm getting bored of writing up fest trips. Would a visit to Tamworth be any different? Would there be something more imbibable than average British bitters? Would these gentlemen make it back to the rest home before curfew? Read on, dear toper.

To be honest, the day didn't get off to a great start. The new rail fares are anything but fair; the 20-minute Derby-Tamworth trip cost me more than the peak time fare to Brum used to only a few weeks ago. But this wasn't for any old festival; this was a Tamworth festival. New breweries. Church End specials. And the finest trio of food shops that I know of; Truckles for cheese, Claridge and Son for pork pies, Wood and Son for fish. Cycling John, Comrade Brian and I stocked up on cheese and porkies - we thought we'd not bother with DIY sushi - and set off in the rain for the Assembly Rooms.

Steady rain resulted in a wobbly line of wet tickers queuing for fest entry, which didn't bode well for the aroma later on. The eau de odour of certain tickers reaching reheat often puts me in mind of an incontinent Labrador. With Tamworth having a somewhat compact layout, as the rest of the line spawned left into the main room I bolted right to secure one of the few tables in the small but perfectly formed bar/dining area.


Pretty soon, we had a table full of pork pies (from Morris), cheeses (including the sublime Black Bomber from the Snowdonia Cheese Company) and Comrade Brian's home grown toms. The food was so enjoyable, it slowed down the purchase of beer. Amends were made with two rapid halves; Church End's Mocca Chocca Focca (fairly underwheling, some itchy chocolate faded into a thinning malt by the finish) and Beowulf Coffee Hazelnut Porter (needed a few minutes to warm when it revealed a superb creamy nuttiness).


I'm still experimenting with pork pie production and am having jelly problems. The stuff in the first pie was good - you could put a thumbprint into it and watch it spring back. My jelly is not so much runny as theoretical. Gives me the opportunity to stuff my face full of other people's pies; er, I mean conduct in-depth market research. All this pie malarkey was distracting me from the beer. The other chaps had sampled some damn fine looking light beers like Brown Cow IPA, but I decided to stay with the dark side. A Reluctant Scoop for me; though you can't come to this fest and not scoop a new brewery. Outstanding have been up and running for about six months and I'd yet to try anything from these Bury-based brewers.

I gave their stout a crack and, by gum, it was good. Fairly hoppy, deep malts balancing the flavour out, enough body to carry bold flavours into a satisfying mouthfeel. So good, in fact, that I decided to try their other beers on offer. Their Ginger beer had a fantastically agressive aroma, thinning a little on first taste but developing a slow spice burn as the beer warmed. There was an efficient cask cooling system here, perhaps a little too efficient as some flavours were chilled out on the pour and needed time to come up to temp and fully develop.

As we tucked into a majestic hand-raised pork pie, I went to complete the set of Outstanding beers with their Standing Out. Hazy gold with a thick citric lick, there was plenty of smacking hop oil squeezing out through the keen malts to deliver a real lipsmaker. Clearly the best trio of beers from a brewer new to me since those I had from Hopshackle. With the cheese demolished, pork pies reduced to crumbs and the toms all gone, it was time to shift through the gears and stretch those drinking trousers.

That last Outstanding beer had given me an IPA lust; Comrade Brian had been struggling to find light beers that were to his liking but he was able to point me towards the Woodlands Super IPA which certainly upped the bar with its punchy hop nose and fat wet fruity flavour. I sampled a couple of the chaps' beers as well; Great Heck Golden Fleece had a rather gluey feel with dusty hops and Brampton Aspire had an odd fruit flavour that no-one could put a name to. Back to the dark beers, then, with some heavyweights to round out the day.

Having loved their porter earlier on, I had high hopes for Beowulf's Strong Mild. At 7.4% I didn't expect it to be exactly mild. And so it goes. The faintest petrol spiral on the witch-tit flat, black to brown body. Christmas cake forced through an oil sump for an aroma. Fruits in the flavour not so much developing as rupturing under the concentration of alcohol steeped within. As it warms, a higher register aroma kicks in that Cycling John noted as that of cycle puncture fix solution. This was a massive, MASSIVE mild, it would take Sarah Hughes' Dark Ruby down the alley and paste it senseless.

As the picture above shows, Dave Unpronounceable had braved the nose-bleedingly giddy trek from Sheffield to serve beer darn sarf and gave his punters a warm Yorkshire welcome. My next beer had to be Bass. I mean Museum Brewery. Sorry, White Shield. Sod it, let's call it what it is - proper Bass beers, brewed by a proper brewer, albeit not for much longer, it seems. But what a choice to make; Bass Number 1 or P2 Imperial Stout? The complex barley wine or the intensely layered darker beer. Only one thing to do - buy both and mix them. Texting Mes to get his patented formula, perfected at Rail Ale earlier this year, a few reverential sips were taken from each glass before creating some kind of monster. I could play a round of beer bullshit bingo and take you through an un-necessarily overlong description of the effect, but John said it all after one long slurp; "My goodness!!". I then inflicted Brewdog Tokyo onto my rapidly-fading tastebuds. I'm convinced I was drinking alcoholic soy sauce. A Japanese chain smoker had expectorated into my glass. Did I love the sticky tar-laden smoke-fest? Do bears practice Catholicism?

With no way of improving on these last beers, it was time to Reluctantly leave the fest. And, er, go to the pub. The Globe was an impressive looking building with lots of 1980s brasswork and crass carpets. And Worthington cask. And something that must have been palatable, as I definitely had half a something from a handpump. But, in my post-Tokyo state, anonymous brown bittery stuff was literally pale by comparison.

So why did we stop in the Albert for a drink as well? I've always had nothing but below-average beer in here, it's never going to have a beer the equal of anything at the festival. But, every year, like a dog returning to vomit, we stop for a drink here. At least it allowed me to a) go for a huge crap, b) eat the chicken sarnie I bought earlier and c) water the plastic hedge with whatever fudge-like bland crap it was that Comrade Brian bought me.

And what's with plastic hedges? Are they wash wipe? I ruddy well hope so, the amount of crap beer that must get poured on them. Is it modular? Do you slot in seasonal varieties - holly for winter, hawthorn to prevent gatecrashers? Or is it part of a gigantic oversized Playmobil set? Is there some eight foot tall freak queuing for the BBQ in the rear beer garden with a crash helmet hairdo, poor fashion sense and no genitals?

Off to the train, then, and some light relief. The upside of the pricey 'peaktime' tickets was that the Cross Country service wasn't stuffed to the gunnels with shrieking PAs and unemployable students. Comrade Brian treated us to a grand precis of left wing political theory (I think) and Cycling John nodded in all the right places. Though I preferred Brian's excellent Tommy Cooper impersonation. At least, I think it was the Coopermeister - I had nodded off five minutes before.

Back into Derby in good time, then, for our Survivors Club pint in the Brunswick. A White Feather is always welcome, even at the end of the beeriest day. Mind you, I was so tired by this point that my photos turned black and white. But it had been a cracking day - top nosh, great range of beer, high quality, excellent Reluctant Scoops and some enjoyable old faves. A couple of dire pubs, mind you, but overall it was a day that reminded me that some CAMRA fests are worth drinking at and are fun to write about after all. >

This was a poignant ramble - a trip to Burton to include a visit to the Bass Museum before it was closed down at the end of June 2008.

The history of Burton-upon-Trent is the history of English brewing. Sine the late 1800's, when brewers cottoned onto the fact that the local water was particularly condusive to brewing, Burton has been riven with the industry. The canals and railways provided the arterial supply routes needed to move Burton beers out across the world. Although the town is no longer crammed with thirty-plus brewers as in its heyday, the behemoth brick warehouses of old still vie with steel clad silos full of largering torpor across the Burton skyline.



And it's the recent actions of the Charybdis-like MolsonCoors that brought me to Burton on a wet Saturday in June. They decided to close the Bass Museum - let's call it what it is, it's never really been a 'Coors Visitor Centre' - and I'm not going to pop another ulcer by banging on about that here.

I popped down to Burton early; it's only a thirty minute bus trip straight down the A38 from Derby. A wander around the town led inevitably to a quick half in the nearest 'Spoons, the Lord Burton. It felt dirty to be drinking a Burton Bridge beer in here (Festival Special) but it was well served, well tasty and well cheap.

With the skies turning the wrong shade of grey, I decided to head off to the museum for another beer and wait for Steve and his wife Chrissie who were driving up from Kent.

My first impressions of 'The Brewery Tap' were - who the fuck built a hotel bar on the side of a museum!? The last time I was here, on a cold winter afternoon cradling a nip of Bass Number One, it was a bar crammed full of Bass nick-nacks and a homely feel. Now, it's all clinical chrome and white walls. And the Brewery Tap logo everywhere, even etched into the windows.

It's a bar designed to pander to the corporate hospitality and wedding crowd, those who will neither look nor seek no further than the Coors Light spout. Mind you, the White Shield I tried was still good, the taste holding its own even from within an overly showy chalice glass.























My second impression? What's to stop me waltzing into the museum, unpaid? Well, nothing... has that been the case for some time or just since closure was on the cards? If the former, is there any wonder they were losing revenue? If the latter, then how else is that lack of care going to manifest itself today?

Steve and Chrissie were still en route so I braved the rain for the short dash down the road to the Burton Bridge tap, the Burton Bridge Inn (henceforth the BBI).

This is an intriguing pub; no front door, it's down the alley at the right hand side, and once it you're treated to split level rooms served by a central bar. Narrow pews and loose cushions define the decor in the front bar, with solid tables and chairs to be found in a stouter dining area to the rear. I enjoyed a pint of Burton Porter (and an even more enjoyable corned beef and beetroot sarnie).























Having received a call to say my friends had arrived at museum, I sauntered down there and suggested that we head straight back to the pub - many still close at 2.30pm on a Saturday and the BBI is no exception. They were more than happy at the suggestion and were soon tucking into a range of BB beers - and egg butties, which Chrissie ordered in her most sumptuous accent and made it sound like the sexiest lunch in the world ever.

With lunchtime imbibation complete, it was back off to the musuem. Steve and Chrissie had money-off vouchers; I got in free as a card-carrying CAMRA member... thinks to self: why let in for free those customers who (one assumes) would glady pay to see a brewery museum?

The first section does a passable job at explaining the brewing process in general. Some rather faded figures were propped up over hops or shovelling in the tun. A couple of the exhibits had an audio commentary but I didn't see any of the portable audio guides that used to be on offer (though, truth be told, only about half of the commentary ever seemed to work on them anyway). Various machines could be cranked up (for a few seconds). The mash tun in which the fabled Kings Ale began its life was here as well - albeit only about half of it.

Lots of information boards abound, most of which were genuinely interesting, but it all looked rather outdated. Towards the end of this section, it started to feel less like a coherent exhibition telling a story and more like a random selection of artefacts.

I mooched off to see the shire horses. Here was this museum's nugget of pride; polished brasses and competition rosettes displayed proudly. They horses were still hard at work - one had just returned to the stables to be readied for a wedding party - so hopefully they'll be resettled and continue to work for a living. And, with any luck, that resettlement will allow for re-naming them - I know they're brewery horses but how the hell you could seriously call them Reef, Carling and White Shield is beyond me...

Also outside were a motley collection of buses and delivery vans; let's not ponder too long on the merits of overpainting Bass trucks with the Coors logo. Again, it all felt a little random, no great effort made to explain what the vehicles were or to place them in context. I was getting to the stage, quite frankly, where I found every exhibit a little depressing. All that wasted opportunity - how about the heritage buses being used to take visitors on tours of the town, pointing out notable sites, giving the visitor a feel for what was the grand scale of brewing in Burton?

The next building was a bit of a hotch-potch, too. Remnants of Burton's other lost museum were crammed in for no apparent reason. Again, there were a few working machines (I'm a sucker for firing up well-lubricated pistons). Amongst the random Bass breweriana and rather pallid dioramas, there were a couple of interesting exhibits. The 'pubs through the ages' was good, giving the visitor a feel for how they have always functioned as a social hub as well as being drinking dens. Liked the idea of different pub games in each one. And Steve seemed to be right at home...

Again, though, exhibits such as this made me think how the concept had never really been exploited fully. Why have stuffed dummies behind the bar when you could have had an actor to - er- interact with the visitors? I know it all costs - but what if they'd had guided tours, part of which involved interaction with character actors, charged at a slight premium over the normal entry fee?

The other exhibit which had always attracted me was the model of Burton in 1921 with an N-gauge railway. This gave a real feel for that industrial scale of brewing that I mentioned earlier - to see the town riven with railways, the brewhouses and warehouses crammed together. Again, it's another squandered opportinity as not all the locos seemed to be working (as was ever the case from my previuous trips here). I'd have loved to see the 1921 map projected onto a wall; in fact I would have liked to have seen maps from throughout the town's history projected and overlaid to give visitors an idea of how the brewing industry affected the geography of the town through the ages. But that's the old cartography student in me...

Don't get me wrong. There were still some good exhibits here and a 'beer novice' could visit and at least learn about the rudiments of brewing, the story of beer in Burton and the impact of Bass upon the brewing world. But in many ways it's a museum that's been past its best for some time. It's a curate's egg of a place (pun fully intended); not really a brewing museum, instead a museum to celebrate (commemorate?) a once-proud brewing brand that Coors don't own and don't brew. With the owners several steps removed from true pride and association with Bass, was it any wonder that the museum floundered?

After all that, we needed a beer. It was only a few minutes down the road to the Coopers Tavern - perhaps one of the most interesting pubs I know. No bar, no pumps, beer is served straight from the barrels on a stillage in the corner of the back room. We enjoyed a few good beers here, it's a place where I could happliy spend an afternoon with half-a-dozen ales and a decent crossword. And a carry-out for when I enjoy a curry a few doors down at Balti Towers. We enjoyed some superb beers in a pub where the atmosphere wasn't painted on the walls...

It was my idea to visit the Old Cottage next - after all, they brew their own beer and have been know to serve interesting guest ales. Sadly, I'd left my navigational skills in the pocket of my other coat, and so we circled the Town Hall several times before I found the right road. I wished we'd stayed at the Coopers, though - the whole pub smelt vaguely of loo cleaner and the Old Cottage beers were a tad on the bland side.

There can be no doubt that this country deserves a National Museum of Brewing and it ought to be in Burton - it has the history and it has good transport links to the rest of the country. Incorporation of the Bass collection into a new museum is paramount, but to survive it would need a wider remit. It shouldn't be a repository of redundant brewery ephemera, it needs to tell the story of brewing and tell it well. An on-site brewer with brewery tours is a must - there's surely no better way to appreciate the process than to see it, smell it, feel it, hear it in action.























Living up the road in Derby, I'm all too aware of the Bass legacy. Michael Thomas Bass, grandson of the brewery's founder, was a generous benefactor to our city, including the provision of the 'Free Library'in the Wardwick (still used as a library today) and a recreation ground (one of the rare patches of green left in the city centre). It's about time we honoured that legacy and campaigned for the Bass collection to be a significant contributor to a national museum - one that doesn't just look back into gilded mirrors and reflect on the industry's history but actively involve us all in the joys of brewing. >

I've been on the lookout this year for fests I've not frequented before and this one looked interesting - a beer festival inside a working engine shed. The Barrow Hill roundhouse is home to a collection of restored steam and diesel locos and runs an annual beer festival with train trips included. Sounded like a fest of fun indeed!



First stop, The Babington Arms in Derby. Yes, I know I was about to spend the thicker edge of the day drinking high gravity beers but.... I can never resist a swift half or three in the Babby if I'm passing. And glad I did pop in too - the Great Newsome Holderness Mild and Great Oakley Welland Valley Mild were superb.

Catching an earlier train up to Chesterfield than I planned, I was able to take in the sights. Firstly, there's the famed 'crooked spire' of St Marys church:























Secondly, there's.. er... the Portland Hotel:
Well, all that sightseeing made me thirsty. Odd for a Spoons, perhaps, in that
1) it was an interesting building
2) the tables seemed to be clear of dirty pots
3) there was an separate 'unofficial' coffee and tea queue so beer drinkers didn't have to wait half an hour behind the blue-rinse-and-cappuchino crowd
4) it served dream beer. I really fancied a pint of Jaipur - and that's what they had on.

Eventually dragging myself back down to the railway station, I caught the heritage bus up to Barrow Hill. As I somehow got onto the staff bus, I ended up with a half-hour wait outside and opening time couldn't come soon enough.

As the gates creaked open, I stamped my circulation backinto action and hotfooted it into the shed. I had my eye on a special Thornbridge beer, a mix of Jaipur and St Petersburg Imperial Stout. Ignoring the steaming wonders around me, I sidled down the alphabetical stillage to 'T'... and what a disaster! All the Thornbridge beers had gone! Always willing to chance my arm, I asked if there was anything left at all and was rewarded with a mere mouthful of the mix, not really enough to gauge the measure of the beer. Ho hum. So, I sought solace in Destitution, a typical hoppy Leadmill beer, and went for a look around.

Standing back and looking at the stillage, there was the stunning looking LNER A2 Class 60532 Blue Peter. And steaming away on the turntable was the Great Central Railway 'Butler Henderson'.
This was great; steam and oil, diesel fumes, hissing pistons and quality beers.

I soon met up with some fellow Ratebeer members, Mes and Ang, who seemed impressed that the idea of a festival in a loco shed worked so well in practice.

Whilst they stocked up on chips (the breakfast of champions) I cashed in my CAMRA members voucher for a free half pint. And what better way to use that voucher than on a half of Bass No 1.

The stuff that legends are made of, Number One is such a sublime brew that it'll be sad if Steve Wellington at the 'White Shield' brewery doesn't get to brew it so often, what with all the changes going on at Coors.

We pitched up in a marquee tacked onto the side of the main shed and worked our way through a number of decent - and high strength - beers. I enjoyed a few that I've tried before (hey, that's why I'm a Reluctant Scooper) of which Bottle Brook Imperial Russian Stout and Kelham Island Brooklyn Smoked Porter were both as stunning as I remembered them to be.

























Mes and Ang were availing themselves of some quality Midlands beers (as all of you who live south of Watford ought to do more often). And then, What Mes Did Next was either inspired, sacriligious or the product of a genius mind addled by strong drink: The Bass No1 - P2 Stout mix.

Either way, he'd get flayed and covered in salt if he tried it in Burton and probably won't make it onto brewer Steve Wellington's Christmas Card list. Or would he? Because this actually works - the smoothness of the P2 carries the heat and alcohol of the Number 1. It's a fiery hand in a velvet glove, designed to reach down your throat and not stop til it hits your cockles. In fact, it ought to be a regular brew, Bass Gestalt: flavours emerging as a whole, reification kicking in to bestow nuances that were never intended but seem all too real, the multistability of a palate rocking unstably between P2 and No 1 before the invariance as the genius of the drink becomes recognisable even as perspective deforms and your brains leak over your shoes.

(note to self: you should have drunk less before your psychology lectures all those years ago; that last paragraph reads like the impaired ramblings of an undergrad ripped to the nips on snakebite)

I needed more pure Bass Number 1 to recover. And indeedy I did.

By this time, or possibly earlier, or possibly later as my temporal perception was waning rapidly, we had a table full of merry sorts - Sim had exhausted the shops of Chesterfield (which probably left several hours to go for a coffee) and turned up with her Mum, Sue, soon followed by Mes's brother Nick and his soon to be wife Kylie.

Beers were imbibed, ciders enjoyed (I'm sure someone had the Olivers Pyder which has to be the strangest thing I've ever tried from that renowned producer) and foreign bottles secured for the journey home. To be honest, a day of drinking beers at ever increasing strengths had left me feeling delicate around the edges so I did what I had to do - had a pi55 that seemed to take ten minutes, got some chips down my neck, bought the strongest beer I could find and went for a train ride.

Up and down the Springwell branch isn't exactly the greatest rail journey in the world, but you can't beat sitting back in a well-sprung seat in a compartment of a proper coach, decent beer in hand as steam wafts through the window. And that beer was The Doctor, the pinnacle of Falstaff's Dr Who series of bevvies that I've seen sloshing around Derby and local beer fests for the last few months.

Following on from this, I know that the following things happened:
1) I took photos of random strangers and, for reasons unknown, pictures of my feet.
2) Mes and Sim et al beat the retreat to all points north and south. I wasn't sick on any of them and I didn't molest the womenfolk. And I didn't give Mes a shoulder massage this time.
3) I drank even more Bass Number 1.
4) I caught the bus back to the railway station and caught a train. Miraculously, I got off at Derby. I have no recollection of either the bus or the train journey.
5) My ever-loving and patient wife let me gabble incessently at her for several hours that night about beer and trains.
6) I didn't feel hung over the next day. Which could be testament to the quality of the ale, or the fact that I just didn't get out of bed.

A fest of fun? Damn right! Top beers, decent grub and an atmosphere that wasn't painted on the walls...

If you get the chance to go to this, do so - there's no beer fest quite like it that I know of. >