A Couple Of Tasty Blondes

On Thursday, Wolfie and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Leeds Real Ale Festival in Pudsey Town Hall.

As is often the way when there is a beer festival on, I was delayed by work and ended up arriving a little after 8pm, with proceedings in full swing. It didn't matter much though as Thursday is the less busy night - plus the night with the greatest range of beer - so it's always the night we go and we tend to get in easily. Such was the case this time.

There we met Tonks, whose first beer festival it was, his father, who was very pleasant to talk to, and one of Wolfie's work colleagues who we had met before. Having not eaten I opted for a pasty and mushy peas before drinking and this was delicious, the food at these events is often of high quality with locally sourced ingredients, this didn't disappoint.

The range of beer was superior to last year and I think the real ale scene, threatened by craft beer, has upped its game recently. Certainly the ales I had all had a much stronger flavour to those in the past while there was also a different variation in taste and bitterness. I tried eight thirds of differing blonde beers typically of 5% and a special red ale which was just awful. We also enjoyed pork scratchings and onion rings while a band filled the hall with music. The conversation was great too making it one of the best festivals we had attended there out of our five so far.

Living where we do, it was less of a walk home than before we moved, so we cut across the ASDA car park to head back. There I nearly got run over by some teenage prick who was impressing his girlfriend by deliberately driving on the pavement at speed as close to pedestrians as he possibly could. He was driving a white pimped up Escort and Wolfie was far from happy, chasing the driver and giving him a piece of his mind. Tonks and his father had left previously but they saw the whole thing as they had gone to ASDA too. All a little annoying.

The next day was surprisingly difficult - despite having nine thirds (I.e. Three pints), I still felt it, suggesting that drunkenness is partly psychological, if not dominantly. Still it was a fun day and although we couldn't get to the Friday or the Saturday, we are hoping to go again next year.