Fest of fun: Victoria, Beeston

You can't beat a short train trip out to a renowned real ale pub for a festival. The Victoria at Beeston is only twenty minutes or so from Derby, so that leaves plenty of time beforehand for essential shopping. A Walter Smith pork pie, cut four ways; a newspaper to write beer notes on. And beer, of course.

A lovely morning, so I took a short walk from Derby marketplace to the station via the soon to be sandblasted Royal Standard (due to reopen as Derby Brewing Co's first pub).
A nip into the Smithfield for some sublime Thornbridge Kipling (yes, with warm weather, the Smith's HUGE chip butties and beer this good I could easily stay all day). Then meeting up with regular festival reprobates John and Brian, ably assisted this Friday by Sleepy Bernie (who we know to have had too much of The Usual in the Brunswick when he nods off unannounced). Halves of Father Mike's and Railway Porter were polished off before the short waltz to the station.

Where the travel time to Beeston is just long enough to enjoy that pork pie. Proper course meat, firm pastry, just enough jelly. Superb pie!
The Victoria faces Platform One of Beeston station, but the gate from the platform to the beer garden has long since been locked off. So it's a hike up and over the flyover and footbridge to cross the line twice and get inside.

I won't say too much about the pub itself - it will certainly feature as one of my Pubs to Love later in the year - but suffice to say it has a decent sized bar, a lounge unhindered by tables, a couple of rooms laid out for dining and a large beer garden. No smoking throughout and no mobiles either, a blessed relief.

With the weather blustering on the typhoon side of inclement, we bunkered up in the bar - where they don't serve hot food, so no braying tables of foccacia chomping lecturers from the nearby university. cluttering up the space needed by proper ale drinkers. Magic! A festival here is like a normal beer day doubled; the bar has its usual selection of local beers (including regular Castle Rock stuff), guest casks and a dedicated dark beer section. Outside there's a small hatch to an outhouse with a dozen beers or so on gravity.
Unsurprisingly, those beers outside were a tad on the cool side - even cooler than Spoons would serve them. The Itchen Valley Godfathers eventually warmed to some fat, juicy fruitiness. At one point, the outside bar was closed as the rain came down in sheets. But the weather tidied up, as did the beers - after some hit-and-miss Allgates I ticked into some superb stuff; Funfair Ghost Train and Showmans IPA were both superb, the Crouch Vale Snowdrop from outside managed to hold its own through the hail and the rain to be a beautiful drop as the sun suddenly blazed and cast rainbows over the beer garden.

We ended up with Brian buying a round of Bathams bitter, he was in full-on reminiscence mode over how the beer used to be. I found it quite buttery compared to my previous glass of Showmans, but I could imagine his hazy days of lazing in fields having your face licked by a cow....

Beer of the fest for me was Full Mash Fisherman, a stunning gold concoction full of sustained citric fruit and biting hops.

A fest of fun? Absolutely: an excellent pub that only differed by having a few more people around and twice as much beer as usual. A comfy place to while away a few hours, excellent cold cobs, ideal for the trains and superlative beer quality when the outside beers stopped freezing.

More to follow on the Vic later in the year.