Going on a Beer Hunt

I did something I have never done before last night..

I went to the CAMRA Summer Beer Festival in Chelmsford! It’s been going for years and I have been meaning to go but just never got round to it. As Dan and Tasha were going last night and the Mother in Law is staying Loz and I decided to burst our Beer Festival cherries.

On walking to the festival it was clear we’d made a rookie error in the footwear department, the saturated ground and large numbers of people had turned the grass into a mush. My trainers were just about okay, but Loz’s pumps were ruined, note to self ‘next time, wear wellies!’

We paid £7 each to get in – a £4 entrance fee and a £3 glass deposit and then met Dan and Tash in the Cider tent. The sheer number of drinks on offer is mind blowing, there are so many to choose from! I was a little dazzled by the selection, instead of carefully picking I chose by the name, if it had a silly name I’d pick that. This system was flawed slightly by my first sip of Cider, I’ve forgotten the name, but it was a bit gross – like refluxed Strongbow *gags*. Thankfully I’d only purchased half a pint of it!

Tasha had to leave so we said goodbye to here and went to the Beer tent, Dan had recommended the honey beer ‘Barbar’ so I ordered a bottle of that whilst Loz tried a low alcohol cherry beer. The honey beer was very nice, although I wasn’t really tasting the honey and I didn’t really think it was worth £4.50 for about half a pint. I must admit I was feeling mildly giddy at this point, I needed some food. This came from the awesome ‘Pie and Cheese Man’, I had a traditional pasty and Loz had a duck and orange pie. Simon the Pie Man was lovely. He does the Chelmsford High Street Market on Fridays and Saturday – go see him!

Food consumed we tried another beer, again I went for a ‘silly name’ – mine was ‘A Beer called Brian’ and Loz had something else. Mine was okay, Loz’s was better! Feeling rather lucid at this point I took a look around the tent, I couldn’t believe the mix of people. There were a lot of ‘Beardy Weirdies’, lots of men with long hair, lots of old men too, but also students and groups of young girls, there was even a Robin Askwith looky-likey (although the beer perhaps made him look more like Askwith than he actually did!). The mood in the tents was very jovial, no one really seemed to be off their face or aggressive – just ‘nicely drunk’.

I had to venture to the toilets, a moment I’d been dreading, festival loos are usually vile, I wandered off to find them with some trepidation.

I was wrong to be concerned! They were fine, nice and bright, clean (aside from a muddy floor!), nice work CAMRA!

Time was marching on and I knew time would be called soon, we had time for one more drink. We supped up and went to the exit, there was a rather drunk trio there doing lots of screaming and shouting. There was a brief rendition of Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’ – I recorded their performance hoping it would turn into the bouncers giving them a kicking and throwing them out, but it didn’t happen 🙁

The walk home was fun, we came across literally tens of snails and a hedgehog with a death-wish..

What an eye sore! (apologies for looking rapey)