Fest of fun: Rail Ale, Barrow Hill

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.