All washed up

On Tuesday evening I went along to the Royal Oak in Tunbridge Wells for a joint meeting between representatives of West Kent CAMRA, and officials from the Spa Valley Railway. The meeting was a “follow-up” to October’s hugely successful Spa Valley Railway Beer Festival; a joint venture between the Campaign and the Heritage Railway group.

The occasion was billed as the “wash-up” meeting; a phrase originally put forward by our late, and sorely missed former chairman, Iain, but basically it gives both parties a chance to get together, reflect on how the event went, and to examine which areas could be improved on for future festivals.

October’s festival was the 8^th such event, and each year our two organisations learn a little more, and can see which areas still need working on. In total there were 18 members present from West Kent CAMRA, one of whom was Royal Oak licensee and festival organiser Craig, plus two representatives from SVR. One of the latter individuals is not only the SVR’s General Manager, but someone who is not averse to jumping up on the footplate and taking one of the locos out along the tracks. "Boys and their toys", as they say!

For me, the “wash-up” meeting was a welcome end to a rather hellish ten days at work, having to deal with some unpleasant personnel issues which basically involved a falling out between a member of staff from my department and a person from another section of the company.  I obviously won’t go into details, but it did necessitate a lot of work, and a lot of smoothing over by one of my fellow managers and myself. In short, it was something we could both have done without, but on occasion that's part and parcel of being a manager in industry today.

Enough said. I left work slightly earlier than normal, which allowed sufficient time for me to drive home, drop the car off, have a quick change of clothes before walking down to the station for the train to Tunbridge Wells. I arrived with time to spare, so I nipped into an independent off-licence to order a special present for son Matthew, whose birthday is this weekend.

I then crossed the road, before deciding to walk up through Calverly Gardens, where preparations for the ice-rink, which is an annual feature in the run up to Christmas, were well under way. It’s a shame that they hadn’t sorted out the lighting along the paths though, because at times I was walking in complete darkness, as one alarmed dog walker, heading in the opposite direction, found out.

I arrived at the Royal Oak shortly before 6.30pm.  Landlord Craig was standing next to the bar chatting to a group of regulars. Much to my joy I noticed one of the pumps was for Harvey’s Bonfire Boy. This strong, dark seasonal beer was voted “beer of the festival”, and proved so popular there was none left by the time I arrived for my stint behind the bar, on the Saturday evening.

I was therefore keen not to lose the chance of a glass or two, but with an ABV of 5.8%, it didn’t seem a good beer to start on. Craig informed me that it had only just come on, and we would be "sampling" it later, along with the food which he’d laid on for us. Instead, I opted for another, but his time slightly weaker dark beer, in the form of Tonbridge Brewery Ebony Moon. At 4.2% ABV, this “quaffable porter”, as the brewery describe it, was just right, so much so that before making my way along to the meeting, at the far end of the pub, I ordered myself a half, by way of a “top up”.

Craig and his team had laid out the tables in a square arrangement, with sufficient space to accommodate us all.  Just before the meeting got underway, various items of “hot food” were brought out, in the form of chips, chicken nuggets and cheese & onion rolls (pastry variety). Several large platters of sandwiches also appeared, placed at strategic intervals around the tables.

The meeting then commenced, although both Craig and the SVR representatives made it clear that final figures relating to beer sales and monies taken were still not available, due to a number of issues, which I won’t go into here. The good news was that most of the beer was sold, sales of glasses were up and, from SVR’s point of view, a record number of train tickets had been purchased.

The enhanced layout of the bar, coupled with the purchase of more durable and certainly more professional-looking stillaging, was a great success; as was shifting the glasses and tokens stand along to the other end of the train shed. This prevented the “log-jam” close to the entrance, which had been such a headache at previous festivals.

The food offerings had also been improved, with a stall selling Thai food, alongside the traditional burger and hot-dog stand. The live music had also gone down well, although some of us serving behind the bar would have preferred the volume turned down a little, just so we could hear exactly what customers were ordering.

With the general consensus that the festival had been a success, Craig then went around the table, asking each of us in turn to present three points, good, bad or a mixture of both, that we thought worthy of further discussion. This part didn’t take as long as it might, as we’d already reached agreement on most of the major issues.

Before this “round-robin” took place, a number of jugs of beer were delivered to a table the rear and, as Craig explained, these represented the two main winning beers from the festival. So, representing the overall “Beer of the Festival”, we had the aforementioned Bonfire Boy from Harvey’s, and for the “Green Hop Beer of the Festival”, we had Green Hop Bullion hops- 4.3% Black Session IPA from Old Dairy Brewery. Both were extremely good, but I stuck with the Bonfire Boy as, in my view, it’s one of the best seasonal beers which Harvey’s brew.

The meeting broke up around 9.30pm and people started to slowly drift away. I left shortly before 10pm and walked down the hill to the station, after first thanking Craig and his team for arranging such a good and uplifting meeting.

As I said earlier, the get together was just what I needed after a pretty fraught period at work and, more to the point, it afforded the opportunity of catching up with friends and CAMRA colleagues over several excellent pints of beer.

Footnote: The Spa Valley Railway Festival is NOT an official CAMRA Beer Festival; although it should be, especially as we comply with most, if not all, of CAMRA’s requirements for such events.

By this I mean we offer over-size, lined glasses, in three sizes (pints, halves and thirds), our  pricing structure takes into account the strength of the various beers, and this is reflected in the price.

We produce an informative and well-laid out programme, which gives information not only about the beers and the trains, but also about CAMRA itself. We also offer a wide range of traditional ciders and perries.

Most importantly, because SVR bank-roll the festival and, as all the invoices are paid through them, there is no financial risk to CAMRA. Ironically, this might be the reason why the Campaign do not recognise our event as an official CAMRA festival, as with backing from an external source, there is no requirement for us to submit a budget for head office scrutiny and approval.

This doesn't detract from the fact that with all this in place, you’d have thought the Campaign would have been more than pleased to list the event in “What’s Brewing” and give us some welcome publicity, but hey-ho!