A new location has just been announced for the Great British Beer Festival for 2025 which takes it away from London for the first time for many year, and whilst we are now in the midst of the festival season here's a look back at the history of large scale beer events.... So the Great British Beer Festival is to leave its longstanding home at Olympia in London, and is moving to the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, making it the first change in its location since 2012, when it moved back after a five year period when it was based at the older and more characterful Earl's Court, having first taken place there in 1992. The planned 2024 festival was advertised to take place in August at Olympia once again, but was cancelled a few months earlier as due to the venue being refurbished they couldn't accommodate CAMRA on the requested dates. Whether this was what prompted the organisation to seek pastures new, I don't know, but it marks a welcome return to the regions f
The 2025 CAMRA Good Beer Guide was published a few days ago, bringing with it joy to those had been included, particularly for the first time. The day after publication I visited one such place and then called in a former Guide regular only a couple of miles away that had failed to make the cut once again this time.... Pecket Well is a small village situated on the edge of the Pennine moors a couple of miles out of Hebden Bridge. To get there I turned off the main A646 Calder Valley road as I arrived in the town and then took the A6033 up the hill towards Oxenhope. Houses, some of them over-and-under-dwellings, a feature of this part of the world where flat land is at a premium, were perched on corners at crazy angles and clung to the side of the road for dear life as I began to leave the town behind. Following a twisty and vertiginous climb through dense woodland the road eventually emerged into the open at the fringes of the tree line as the slope began to lessen. Here I came to a we