Saturday 23^rd January 2010 saw 43 of us, plus trusty driver Dennis, head out to Manchester for the National Winter Ales Festival, and of course, the many wonderful city centre pubs.

After a bright and sunny start from Leicester it did cloud over as we headed north, and as we entered Manchester much of the city centre skyline became eerily shrouded in mist. The first drop off point was in Salford, where quite a few disembarked from the coach heading for The Crescent and The New Oxford, both of which were holding their own beer festivals. These did sound very appealing, however, the National Winter Ales Festival beckoned and after dropping off more pub goers near to Victoria Station, Dennis took the coach up to the venue.

It was a new location this year, The Sheridan Suite, which is a conference centre just a mile or so along the Oldham Road. The festival had opened on the Wednesday with over 200 beers, and although this was the last day I was impressed by the choice still to be had. I started with half of Tryst Brockville Dark from Falkirk, which at 3.8% had a good liquorish taste. I then went for something lighter, Three B’s Doff Cocker from Blackburn, a straw 4.5% coloured beer, which went down very nicely. My tastes then went back north of the border with Inveralmond Brewery’s Thrappledouser from Perth. “Thrapple” is apparently the Scots word for throat. After trying the wonderful curries available from the buffet counter my thrapple certainly did need dousing, and I continued with Bank Top Brewery Sweeny from Bolton and finishing with a good Organic Stout from Hawkshead.

After having several hours at the festival we decided we ought to return to the city centre to visit some of the pubs and Dennis kindly took the coach down to the Castlefields area, just behind the Granada TV studios. From there it was a short walk up to the Britons Protection on Great Bridgewater Street. This is a fine old building on CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors. Dating from 1811, the pub was used as a recruiting station for the Battle of Waterloo. There were a number of ales on offer here and I tried Coach House St Georges Heritage.

From there we took a walk past the Peveril of the Peak, another National Inventory pub, although sadly it wasn’t open until 5pm. It did look strange dwarfed by the surrounding buildings. Our walk then took us to another small pub, the Circus Tavern, which is in fact the smallest bar in Manchester. With about 20 people inside it was already pretty full. Tetley Cask Bitter was available which was on good form. We spent quite a while studying the hundreds of photo’s the wall showing many celebrities who have visited, plus of course the many locals.

We then walked across the busy Piccadilly Gardens tram and bus interchange up to the Hare & Hounds. This is a friendly pub with entertainment on Saturday afternoon and a good pint of Hydes Bitter. It was then just a short walk to the Smithfield, another pub holding a festival at this time. We finally caught up with some of the others from the coach here and I tried the Flintshire 7^th Heaven, which definitely did taste all of its 7%.

There was just time to nip across the road to Bar Fringe where I tried halves of Boggart Rum Porter and Williams Bros Ginger Beer, which made an unusual but quite nice combination. After telling everyone (far too many times I think !) not to be late, it was good that I managed to get back to the coach with a minute or so to spare.

The traffic was slow on the way out of Manchester which did slightly delay our arrival at our stop-off, the village of Bignall End which is a few miles north of Stoke-on-Trent. With two Good Beer Guide listed pubs, the Swan and the Plough, there was plenty to keep everyone happy here, and the chip shop also did quite well !

My next trip will be on Sunday 28^th March to villages in the Stamford and Market Deeping areas. We will be using a vintage bus so this should make a lovely springtime Sunday day out. Hope to see you there - my contact details for bookings are shown on the diary page of the Leicester Drinker.