St. Robert's Beer Festival 2012, Pannal

We recently attended yet another beer festival, this time in the town of Pannal. This festival was different because it was held at a church! The website's description of the church:

St Robert’s is a Church of England parish church serving the community of Pannal and Burn Bridge on the southern edge of Harrogate. It has a lively worshiping community with a strong Junior Church (usually over 70 children from 0-16), a good choir and a wide range of groups and activities.

St. Robert's Church, Pannal

They do indeed have a wide range of activities since this is the third annual St. Robert's Beer Festival. The church is not very large so a lot of the celebration was set up in the surrounding yard. Graveyard, that is!

When we arrived, people were wandering around the graves and open spaces (there's plenty of room for others to be buried) surrounding the church. Maybe their eyes were a little glassy and maybe their steps were a little unsure and maybe they could have been mistaken for zombies freshly risen from the graves. But they were simply revelers in the midst of their revelry. One of the activities during the festival was racing. Ferret racing, that is!

Church, graveyard, and ferret racetrack

The Rockcliffe Ferret Rescue was raising money for their work. In addition to walking ferrets or petting them, they were racing them down these long tubes. The first time I watched, I was amazed. Once they came out the far end, the ferret handler (another job for which parents could donate money so their children could do it) had to turn them around and have them race back to the start. In the second race, Jacob and his friend Zara were handlers.

Lining up

Handing out the ferrets

Turning the first ferret around

As you may guess from the picture above, neither Jacob's nor Zara's ferrets were particularly quick to make it through the tube. Many of the other ferrets had trouble too. Often the critters would turn mid-tube and go back to the start. The kids were given little pads to cover the end of the tube so the ferrets would go the right way. Eventually, Jacob's came in second, though there is no prize for second place at the ferret races.

After the race, the children got to feed the furry fellows.

Jacob is a little nervous about feeding them

Lucy has him eating out of her hand!

Another activity was a tombola, which is a sort of raffle where one draws tickets that are matched to prizes. If the ticket ends in a zero or a five, it's a winner. This tombola was not especially fancy, as many prizes consisted in bottles of soft drinks or squash (juice in American). A very good looking bottle of wine had ticket number 100 (big round numbers are usually bigger prizes). We did not win any prizes.

Lucy at the tombola

At this point, readers may be wondering, "But wasn't there any beer at this beer festival?" Yes, quite a number of local breweries provided the dozen and a half possible choices of beers to drink. Festival admission included a commemorative glass and six tickets for half pints. Here's what I tried in no particular order:

• Alnwick Brewing Co Amber Ale, 3.8% alcohol content--"Classis [sic] amber ale with strong infusion of fuggles and styrian goldings hops specifically for the North Eastern palate. Good hoppy nose and biscuity body." To me, this was a smooth and coppery ale with nice flavor. It was very drinkable.
• Mithril Ales 100 Beers on a Dead Man's Chest, 3.8%--"Brewed to celebrate their 100th brew and last Wednesday, 'International Talk Like A Pirate Day.'" This ale was okay but not as special as its thematic name and description would lead one to believe.
• Rudgate Brewery Ruby Mild, 4.4%--"Recently awarded the gold medal in the mild category at Britain's most prestigious beer festival, CAMRA's 'Great British Beer Festival.'" I liked this a lot, with its rich flavor and little bitterness.
• Roosters Cogburn, 4.3%--"This beer is a homage to the lead character in True Grit. It's a robust pale ale, with a great length of flavour, loaded with juicy fruit aromas from its combination of American hops." This golden ale might have been a little too fruity for my taste. I'm discovering that I'm not a big citrus fan when it comes to beer. If a strong taste of lemon/tangerine/grapefruit comes through, I don't like it. Oh well.
• Collingham Ales Journeyman, 3.9%--"Best Bitter brewed with Maris Otter and Munich Malted barley together with Summit and Styrian Golding hops to give a full measure of maltiness and superb hoppy flavour." This bitter was okay but it had more hop than malt (I think) which kept it from being the best it could be.

We had a nice dinner afterward at a local pub, The Harwood. The pub is right over the local rail line. The children loved seeing the occasional train go by. Realizing how late it was, we rushed home for the children's bed time, having enjoyed a fine afternoon out at church drinking beer.

Ferry from Zeebrugge

We had an easy time getting on the ferry from Zeebrugge to Hull. We already had our ticket and just walked on the boat. We had the same boat, Pride of York, but a different cabin on a different deck.

The Red Deck was our new home, but only temporarily. In the cabin we noticed it was quite hot. So we adjusted the ceiling vent, dropped our stuff, and went to wander around for a bit. Coming back after half an hour, it was no cooler, so we decided to see if another cabin was available.

The boat was quite full and the only option was two separate rooms on the Green Deck. Rather than deal with beastly heat, we switched to the more comfortable rooms. They sent someone to check the new rooms and they were unoccupied. Sometimes people make swaps and the system doesn't have a record of it. They wanted to be double sure before changing us. We moved our stuff.

The seas were very bad. We had some comical walking around, swaying back and forth between the hallway walls. We were concerned the children wouldn't sleep well. We asked if extra bed railings were available. The crew provided some. Everyone, parents and children, had rails put on their bunks.

Dinner was nice, the same buffet we had coming over to Zeebrugge. The rough seas made it tricky walking back from the buffet to the table with food. It was more tricky with drinks. With dinner, I had a Bulmers Cider, which is a whopping 568 ml! It took quite a while to drink. It lasted well into dessert.

Bed time was still a little ways off. Jacob and I wandered the decks. Jacob showed me some videos on the casino slot machines that were on board. Luckily no one was around to see me expose my son to gambling. Of course, he knew about it from the previous trip, and I didn't show it to him then, so who could it have been that let him first see?

Jacob enjoyed the fun pyramid treasure hunt video.

Um, so why the fun cartoon on display if you don't want under 18's?

Jacob had no interest in the buttons and I don't think he knew that we could put money in the machine. It was just some entertainment, like the arcade games.

We finally wandered back to the cabins for bed time. With two separate cabins, one parent stayed with one child. I did not get to stay up and hang out at one of the bars like last time. Instead, I lay on the top bunk over Lucy. The sea was still pretty turbulent. That didn't bother Lucy. It seemed to keep me up which meant I listened to a lot of podcasts. In the morning my iPod's battery symbol was in the red. It was a long night. The morning was much better for everyone. But that's a story for the next post.

p.s. My apologies to the three of you who managed to see the Grassington Dickensian Christmas Festival post that was only a hyperlink to the Festival's web page. I am saving up our Christmas activities to have a "Twelve Days of (UK) Christmas" marathon and that was the start of work on one post. I clicked "publish" instead of "close" and didn't realize it till later. You'll have to wait for Christmas to see the full post!