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Oddly, the first time I ever entered a brewery was to work, not to have a look around. Ever since, it’s been as a visitor. Not usually on a tour, but still a visitor. Though the particular smell of a brewery - that mixture of fermentation and disinfectant - always takes me right back to my time at Holes.

The CAMRA brewery trips I went on were pretty boozy affairs.

At Bateman they put on a lovely cold spread, along with as much Bitter and Mild as you wanted. We got to chat with the brewer and everyone was dead friendly. Then back to the brewery-owned hotel for some more pints.

As we were guests at the hotel, the pints didn’t need to stop at closing time. When I was young, opportunities for pints after 11 PM were as rare as flamingos in Leeds. I never passed them up. Which is a problem when you’ve paced yourself to end at “normal” closing time.

I wasn’t feeling great when I rose after far too few hours’ sleep. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me eating the full English that I’d paid for.

On the way back to Newark, we stopped at a Kimberley pub for a few pints. I was a bit overenthusiastic, as I rarely got to drink their beer. I was already feeling a bit unwell when we picked up the hitchhiker. About 10 minutes later I really needed to spew. Being considerate, I pushed past the hitcher, opened the rear door and puked on the road. What a hero I was.

For some reason, the hitcher decided to get off at the next roundabout. Anyone else have memories of boozy brewery trips in the 1970s? Let me know.





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