Well, 10am Sunday morning sees a dozen hardy souls standing around outside the (locked again) Bonded Warehouse in Sunderland. The Sunderland & South Tyneside CAMRA Beer Festival finished last night. If you wish to recap on previous days, follow these links :
Now perhaps you have been wondering about this place , so here are a couple of photographs. The building has some historical significance and warrants a blue plaque. Note the past connection to beer.
After about 15 minutes standing around outside , I spotted a lone figure running from the direction of the Wearmouth Bridge. It was the guy with the keys !
Soon we were inside raring to go. Last night after closing time the team had take down the racking and removed the chillers, casks and handpulls. All that remained was to strip down the bar and carry everything downstairs and out to the by now, three waiting vans. The pictures show getting from this ( left) down to this (right)
Maxim had arrived for the mostly empty casks. It was so much easier loading these than unloading earlier in the week, although I still struggled with the wooden ones. Thanks to Mark for turning up , presumably on his day off, and helping us out this way.
The rest of the stuff was loaded into the other two vans, and exactly 60 minutes after we started , we all set off back to the lock up garage to unload everything for storage till the next time.
Despite a fraught start , I really have had a great week. Met some characters and some old friends, experienced a unique feature with the floor surfing ( see previous post ), had 12 of the 30 beers ( halves !), and , unheard of for me, 2 perries and a cider.
Well I hope these 4 posts have given you an insight into what goes on behind the scenes at a beer festival, run entirely by volunteers.
So here's to next year
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