The Thatcher’s Arms at Mount Bures ran a beer festival over the weekend, and we found the time to pop in to sample a couple of pints. There was a good range of beers for a pub beer festival, a couple of dozen or so, and I was trying to work out if it could [...]
Colne Engaine is a small village tucked away just off the road between Colchester and Halstead, just north of Earls Colne, and not somewhere you’re likely to find yourself at without it actually being your destination. One good reason for finding it is The Five Bells pub. It’s listed in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide, [...]
We’ve put up a calendar of the major beer festivals in Essex – partly to make sure we don’t forget any! You’ll find the page from the menu at the top of the site. If you know of any we’ve missed do let us know. And if you’re a pub running a beer festival, get [...]
The 24th Chappel Beer Festival has been running all week at the East Anglian Railway Museum, and we popped in this afternoon – pondering how the year since the last one had flown by. The festival is continuing to grow, and this year featured a larger food area – sadly taking the place of the old fruit [...]
Just a short word of appreciation for my favourite pub in Colchester – The Bricklayers, at the bottom of Bergholt Road, 5 minutes walk (if that) from Colchester North railway station. It’s an Adnams pub, and has a wide variety of their beers as they come in and out of season, and also an excellent [...]
After a morning cycle rain around Tiptree in the dry (dry being a rare event in the August of 2010 in Essex), late afternoon suddenly brightened up, and offered blue skies, fluffy white clouds and a bit of sun. On the spur of the moment I swiftly put into operation a Cunning Plan that I [...]
It was the 25th Colchester Real Ale and Cider Festival last week, and we’ve been to the majority of them. The first one or two were held at the Colchester Institute, but since then they have been mostly held, very successfully, at the Colchester Arts Centre. (It could actually have been the 26th festival, but one [...]
The CAMRA Good Beer Guide iPhone ‘app’ led me to the Dove Street Inn in Ipswich yesterday. I’d downloaded it a couple of days previously, and used it to identify somewhere in central Ipswich to drink, knowing that I would be in need of a drink at the end of a day that saw me [...]
It wasn’t the greatest Easter weekend, weather-wise, and we spent a lot of it on the allotment, getting it ready for the year. We’ve now got some strawberry plants in, some sprout seedlings, sown some carrots and parsnips, and have the beds ready for a lot of stuff currently in the greenhouse. We did brave [...]
We did a quick tour by car of the Essex/Suffolk borders, to do some initial planning for a guided tour for a coach tour of visitors from Yorkshire for later in the year. Having had an absolutely horrible January and February, the 1st March 2010 was a gloriously sunny day – although still quite chilly. [...]
