Beer on the Wye

 I went into Hereford yesterday afternoon with a friend and her two adult children for the nineteenth Beer on the Wye.  It's also running today and tomorrow, at the Rowing Club in Hereford.

 

Because of works that the Rowing Club were doing on the field, the beer festival wasn't held last year.  This year, because of the improvements to the site, the marquee has been erected at 90 degrees to it's position in all the previous festivals - which was a bit disorienting.  Inside, it looks exactly the same, but when you look outside, suddenly you have no idea where the river is!

We got used to it over the afternoon, and even sat at a table by the river (under an umbrella) with a lovely couple from Cardiff who were doing a crossword puzzle.  My friend is a crossword fanatic - she'd even brought some crosswords to do at the festival herself - so we had a lot of fun helping them to solve it and chatting.

Usually at a beer festival I like to try as many different beer styles as possible (subject to my cut off point of a maximum of three pints - any more than that and I feel awful the next day).  So this means six halves, or nine thirds.  However, this time there were two breweries there with beers I wanted to taste, and they were both Gold beers (somewhere around the bitter/IPA area, but now a distinct style of its own).  Uley's Hog's Wallop and Woodfordes Bure Gold were both delicious, but the Uley packed a slightly harder punch at 5.2%.  Then my friend wanted to try the Solstice from Three Tuns brewery at Bishops Castle - we'd both visited the pub at different times some years ago, so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane.  Solstice is a bitter, and very pleasant on a hot day.

I wanted to try a mild, so I went for Old Magic from Magic Dragon in Wrexham - again for nostalgic reasons, because I used to live near Wrexham.  I hadn't come across the brewery before, but it was a very good mild.

I finished off with the Jaipur Union IPA from Thornbridge.  I first tasted Jaipur at a Beer on the Wye (I think it might have won supreme champion of the festival that year) and since then they have installed a traditional Burton Union fermentation system in the brewery (which is something that beer nerds get quite excited about).  It was delicious, and a good beer to round off the session before we went for the last bus home. 

The champion beers of the festival (and also ciders and perries) were announced while we were there, but I didn't write them down.  I think Makerfield from Weird Dad brewery in Newport was the supreme champion this year - it's a pale ale, and Jarl, a blond ale from Fyne Ales in Argyll, all the way from Scotland, was also mentioned, as well as Titan from Left Handed Giant brewery in Bristol, a pale ale. 

And there was a treat when we got back to Hay - a traction engine came down the road just as we got off the bus!

 

Lily Forwood Exhibition

 A friend said I should go to see the exhibition at The Table by Lily Forwood.

She makes big pictures in mixed media, many of them of railway stations, and my friend pointed out that the orange lines on some of them are made from old train tickets.  

She also does local landscapes like the Cat's Back and the Twmpa, and there was one small and very pretty one of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris.

Two of the pictures have already sold. 

Fir Restaurant

 

The new restaurant has opened at St John's, and a friend stopped me in Spar to rave about how good it was!  As it's a tasting menu, the portions are small - but the flavour, he assured me, is intense and amazing.

I hope the chef does well. 

Beer on the Wye

 This weekend, in Hereford at the Rowing Club, is the nineteenth Beer on the Wye.

They had a year off last year, while the Rowing Club did work on the festival field, which will mean that the marquee is at 90 degrees to the previous position parallel to the river.

Inside the marquee there will be over 300 beers, ciders and perries, food trucks, and nine different live bands in the evenings.  I've already had a look at the beer list, and they've got a couple of my favourites on it - two from Uley brewery in Gloucestershire, and one from Woodeforde's in Norfolk - so I'm looking forward to it.

Book Fair and Sundial

 The PBFA Book Fair was in the Castle yesterday - a lovely collection of old and rare books from dealers who had come from all over the country to take part.  

I was almost afraid to touch one exhibit - I have no idea what the dealer was asking for it, but it was a handwritten notebook with a map, and I think it was notes for one of Wainwright's walking books (the word Troutbeck was there on the page).

Meanwhile on the Castle lawn, there was a giant sundial!  

This is the Golden Valley Sundial, and it's just visiting Hay Castle for a few days.

It's also a ball game, and several children (and adults) were going round the circle throwing balls through the holes in the sculptures. 

 

Megalith Hunting and the New Strand, Eardisley

 A friend told me about some huge stones he had seen while he was out walking, and he thought they might be prehistoric standing stones.  He sent me some photos he'd taken.  It sounded interesting, so yesterday I went out with another friend who has a car, and we went to investigate.

The stones were supposed to be close to a farm, which is close to Hay, but so remote that it doesn't even have a road passing the farmhouse - you have to go up a narrow farm track.  We parked at the edge of the farmyard, and knocked at the house.  The lady there was friendly, but at first she couldn't think of any old stones on the property.  Then she had a bright idea, and led us across the garden, through a gate - and there they were.  

Except they weren't old stones at all.  There's a fairly modern barn at the top of the farmyard, and she told us that they needed to level the ground to get it in, so they also cut into the side of the hill - and that's where they dug out the big stones.  They just put them by the side of the track, where they'd be out of the way.  So sadly, there's nothing to report to the Megalithic Portal website after all.

All that hadn't taken long at all, so we went on to the New Strand at Eardisley for coffee and cake - and very nice cake it was, too.  I had the jam sponge, and my friend had carrot cake, and we spread our maps out over the table to compare notes on our local history research.

While we were there a group of older ladies came in, who were obviously regulars, to have lunch - the chips smelled delicious! 

Post Box Topper

 

This time the post box topper is celebrating Hay Market and the traders.

And when I was walking through town, I found a young man busking at the top of the Pavement, who was playing a hurdy-gurdy!  I don't think I've ever seen anyone  busking with a hurdy-gurdy before!