Had a nice day yesterday at the Charlbury Beer Festival. Its not one I’ve been to before and I was surprised by its scale and slickness of the operation in such a quiet little Oxfordshire village. Its an open air affair at the local cricket club and the weather was fantastic (too hot if anything). Its ideally located opposite the train station and its just 18 minutes on the train from Oxford. Unfortunately, at the weekends its seems there are only about three trains a day so I managed to wangle a lift instead. In the car, it was not so easy to find. Luckily, my three year old son spotted “a witch” walking down the street:
Where else could she be going? So we followed her at an appropriate distance and soon arrived at the beer festival.
When I got out of the car my heart sank as, from the main stage, we heard a dreadful cover of “I Want to Ride my Bicycle” and I recognised it as the same awful guitar duo which had been inflicted on us at Wobfest the weekend before. Thankfully, after a few arrow prayers, their set ended just as we got to the gate.
Apart from the music stage, there was Morris Dancing (utterly pointless but an English Summer event wouldn’t be the same without them), several food tents/outlets, the world Aunt Sally Championships (supposedly), a kids tent and various other stuff. Oh, and the beer tent containing over 80 types of beer plus some ciders and wines.
The beer is never in the best condition at these things but it was a good chance to try a few new things and it was nice to just sit in the sun drinking with friends. The only problem was having to balance our beer glasses on the grass. Luckily we were able to improve using Fendog’s trainer. Shame they stunk so badly.