With all the news channels advising of heavy bank holiday
traffic the PRATS set off at 8:00am. We are once again Pharpless, so today we
are joined by Bogsnorkle.
We were expecting to join the first traffic jam at
Silverstone where the MotoGP was taking place, not a thing. In fact we never
encountered any traffic at all and arrived in Devizes considerably early at
10:15am. We parked outside the Crown and snaffled the first sarnie of the day.
Then we spotted about 200 yards away the Wadworth’s Brewery visitor centre, so,
purely in the interests of research we thought we’d take a look around. To our
surprise the bar was open serving sample glasses 1/3pints. It was 10:25am when
we sampled our first ale of the day, the delightful Horizon a lovely fresh
light ale 4% and as you would imagine, it was in pristine condition. We then
had a sample of a Rugby World Cup special Dirty Rucker, nice dark ale with a
noticeable peppery finish, very tasty at 3.9%. I suspect we’ll see a plethora
of rugby themed ales over the coming months.
It was time to continue our journey as we wanted to be in
The Griffin, Milk St’s brewery tap by 12:30pm. They had kindly opened up early
for us. Using satnav we got reasonably close to the pub, just the wrong side of
a closed off road, but only a short walk. Clearly a pub for beer drinkers, the
only lager pump tucked almost out of site in the corner of the bar. 6 hand
pumps, 5 from Milk St and one from Wold Top. The house ales were Funky Monkey,
Amarillo, Usual, Beer and Zigzag their stout. Citra, Bogsnorkle and I went for Funky Monkey
4%, whilst Parker sampled the Usual 4.4%, a slight haze on both ales but they
both tasted fine with a loose head precariously clinging to the glass. By now
Marshall, Petit Chemise and Wort had joined us. They went for Usual and
Amarillo 4.6%; the latter looked lovely and pale and was just up our street so
we moved onto that next. Once again the slightest of haze on the beer, good
tasty ale. This is one of their seasonal ales from March and April; it must be
popular if they’re still knocking it out in August. I finished with a move to
Wold Top’s Wold Gold 4.8%, whilst the others stayed with the local ales. A
lovely prize winning ale, yet once again a slight haze, tasted fine. There were
a few craft ales on tap, Brewdog‘s Punk IPA, Meantime’s London Pale ale, Milk
Street’s Elderfizz, http://www.milkstreetbrewery.co.uk/2012/06/elder-fizz-5/ ,plus
a cider or two. At the back of the pub
we could hear some activity in the brew house, the usual clanging of barrels, I
don’t think they were brewing, none of the normal aromas you’d expect on brew
day. All in all a nice experience, it was approaching 2:00pm we needed to be
heading our way to the Frome Town ground, the Blindmans Brewery Stadium.
We meandered our way through Frome and eventually arrived. The
name of the stadium had raised some optimism and we weren’t disappointed, in
the bar they had Blindmans 1904. A chestnut ale at 3.9%, sort of ok. Looking on
the Blindmans website for a bit more info and nothing there, as Frome Town were
formed in 1904. It doesn’t take too much imagination to establish this is a
special or regular ale re-badged, although no ales appear on the brewery
website that fits this ale.
This is our third away trip so far this season and all three
have had a club special ale. Non-league footy is a good place to be for ale
drinkers, marvellous. The game, well the Poppies won their first away game of
this season. Not our best performance, probably our worst. When we lost at
Leamington, the general opinion was that we’ll play worse and win, today we
did. Poor old Frome, when you’re down the bottom nothing goes your way.
However, as we approached the outskirts of Towcester we all
became consciously aware of the ‘Borg Hive Collective’ “resistance is futile,
prepare to be inebriated” so we went to the Towcester Mill brewery tap. Always
a good place to sample some very decent ale, we only had the one. Citra and
Bogsnorkle went for Mill Race, Parker the Bell Ringer and I went for a Castle
Brewery’s White Knight, a new one for me so had to have it. The Mill Race and
Bell Ringer ales were consumed during our 'Poole day out' blog so tasting notes
can be found there. The White Knight at 4.1% was a nice golden ale, typical
American pale ale. As expected all the ales in tip top condition. I believe one or two other Poppies supporters frequented
the Mill on their way home, perhaps we should ask for commission.
Marshall, Petit Chemise and Wort, frequented a few different
pubs on their day out, their blog will be posted in due course.
Today we went to 4 brewery taps, not a bad day out
.
No PRATS blog would be complete without a bit of news about
Pharp…
Update from the Pharp chronicles.
Tops marks must go to Reckitt Benckiser for seizing upon a
marvellous marketing opportunity. They have managed to persuade the islanders
to change the name of their main town to Airwick for the duration of Pharp’s
holiday.
On the second day Pharp went deep sea diving wearing a skin
hugging wet suit. Unfortunately, after an hour, Pharp floated back to the
surface. No amount of lead weights was going to keep him underwater. Nobody
volunteered to help Pharp remove his now enormously inflated wet suit. Fortunately
the local javelin champion could throw at least 100 metres, which was just
outside the safety perimeter cordon. As the javelin pierced the wetsuit Pharp
took off, before you could say Scarlett O’Hara, whoosh! Pharp had gone with the
wind. After several loop the loops, double back-flips and crashing through a
flock of startled guillemots, Pharp splashed into the sea and shot across the
surface, torpedo-like, at a considerable rate of knots. Pharp was later seen on
a beach in Norway, where Greenpeace were trying to drag him back into the sea.
News courtesy of the Bugle.