Co Durham Real Ale Crawl. 17.6.07 and Kelham Island beer festival
Co Durham Real Ale Crawl – 17.6.07 plus Kelham Island Beer Festival
We took our caravan up to Barnard Castle to stay on the Camping and Caravanning Club site there. We went up on the Saturday, and found ourselves on a lovely pitch. We got set up and put the bird feeders out at the back of the caravan. It didn’t take them long to find it. We had some beers that I had bottled at the Harlequin beer festival in Sheffield, and enjoyed drinking them sitting out in the sun watching the black clouds all around us. Weird weather.
On the Sunday, we went to watch the vintage cars driving through the checkpoint in Woodside where my son lives, then had an excellent carvery lunch at the village pub. It is brilliant for food but has no real ale on, so I had to drink wine. We went on to the Moorcock at Eggleston, and had Theakston Lightfoot and Wells Summer Solstice.
On the Monday, we met my son in Barnard Castle, and had a walk by the river during his lunch hour, then did our shopping for the week. We went up to see High Force on the Tuesday, and it was really raging because of the amount of rain there had been lately. We called into the High Force Hotel at Forest in Teesdale where there were 2 Darwin beers, Cauldron Snout and Forest XB. We went on to the nearby Langden Beck Hotel for lunch, and had excellent food along with Jarrow Rivet Catcher and Black Sheep Ale. We had time to go to a lovely Wild Life area called Low Barnes before picking up my son and his wife to go out for a meal with her parents who have recently moved to the area. Again it was a lovely meal, but another pub with no real ale on. We did go on to Frosterley afterwards to visit a good real ale pub there, the Black Bull, and I had Consett Consett Stout, and Fenland St Audreys Ale before we had a drive back in aweful foggy conditions.
On Wednesday we went on the bus into Darlington, as there are some good real ale pubs there we wanted to revisit. Top of the list were 2 favourites, the Quakerhouse where we had B & T Born Free and Wear Valley Hamsterley Dark, then on to Twenty 2 where we had Leyden Forever Bury and Brewsters Messalina. We tried one from the Tapas Bar and were able to sit outside to drink Caledonian Top Banana. The Britannia gave us one from a brewery close to home, Highgate Scarecrow. We were pleasantly surprised by our visit to the Snooker Club as we had not been there before and found it excellent. It was very friendly and we enjoyed a chat while drinking High House Sundancer, York Peaches and Cream, and Yorkshire Dales Buckden Pike. On our way back for the bus, we popped into the Hole in the Wall where we found John Smiths Magnet.
Thursday we wanted to go to Sheffield for a beer festival at the Kelham Island Tavern, so my son picked us up and dropped us in Barnard Castle for the bus to Darlington so we could catch the train. We called into the Bankers Draught for a quick one and had Saltaire Yorkshire P ale Bitter, then on to Kelham. We were early and watched them setting up the stillage in the garden. Once the pub opened, we joined friends in the conservatory area, and enjoyed the following beers: Abbeydale White Lady, Acorn 4play, Acorn Challenger IPA, Acorn Premium, Bradfield Longest Day, Fox Fox’s Willie, Durham White Whopper, Grafton Lady Mary, Grafton Packet Punch, Red Squirrel Weissbier, Rudgate Your tipple, Salamander May Fair, Rebellion Interrogator, Bartrams Cancer, Yorkshire Dales Bainbridge Blonde. It had been great, and we had our dinner there too. The weather was a bit wet, but we decided to move on to the Gardners Rest nearby to see what was on there.
At the Gardners, we found plenty of good beers on, and settled in their conservatory area and had Sheffield (2) Golden Frame and Top Forge, Cumbrian Dickie Doodle, Wentworth Small Copper. We bottled 3 beers to take away with us – Foxfield Flower Power, Naylors Crystal Wheat, and Bottlebrook Floodtide. We headed back to the station to catch the train back to Darlington, but it was too late into Darlington for us to get a connection, and my son came to pick us up. We went to Bishop Auckland for a drink with him till his wife finished work and called at the Stanley Jefferson, a new Wetherspoons. We ordered a meal, and had Shepherd Neame Spitfire and Marstons Pedigree, but cancelled the meal after waiting an hour, as we had to get back to Barnard Castle.
Despite the week having a lot of rain, we had a brilliant week and packed up on Friday morning to move on to Chatsworth. We were very upset the following week to find out that both the Kelham Island Tavern and the Gardners Rest in Sheffield had suffered in the floods, the Gardners being very badly hit. Both have breweries, and were popular from all over the country as part of the real ale trail in Sheffield. I hope they, and everyone who suffered the floods, a speedy solution and recovery from the devastation we saw on our television screens last week.
