My First Beer & Cider Festival

On Saturday, July 6th I went to my first ever beer and cider festival. It took place in Ealing, in West London and it's an event that Matt & Kelly have been telling me about pretty much ever since I tried my first cider and loved it!

Basically, how it works is you pay for admission (although it was free for us...I think because it was the last day of the festival) and you pay for a glass (that you can choose to return at the end if you like) and then you pay for either a 1/3 pint, 1/2 pint, or full pint of each beer or cider you choose to try.

Since we went on the last day of the festival, there wasn't a lot of selection left but there were still some good ciders to try. As well, they had some good food to eat!

Matt & Dayna ended up joining us, as well as Matt Porter's friends John and Angelica. Since we got there shortly after the festival opened at 12 pm, we were able to snag a table and some chairs for our party. We later ended up moving the table in to the shade because we couldn't stay sitting in direct sunlight. The weather was beautiful, but very hot!

Kelly & I

All of us, after we moved our table into the shade! (From left to right: Dayna, John, Matt L, Me, Kelly, Matt P, and Angelica)

I tried a Scotch Egg, which is a soft boiled egg covered in herbs and tossed in a breadcrumb batter. It was delicious! And I had pork scratchings as well, which are so bad for you that I don't even want to share what they are made of.

After a few hours at the festival, we decided to head to a pub in the area called The Drayton with a really nice beer garden to enjoy the rest of the sunlight. It was so nice to just relax and have some more drinks and enjoy one of our last nights in London all together.

Matt & I at the Drayton

At the Drayton, enjoying my Guinness & Black

It was a few hours before we started to all get really hungry, so after John and Angelica said their farewells because they had other evening plans, our group of five headed in search of some dinner which we found at a nearby Asian noodle bar. I ate my beef chow mein and spring rolls like it was my last meal!

Then the plan was to head back to Shepherd's Bush area where Matt & Dayna live for another drink and to hang out. But, while walking through a park our evening took an unexpected turn thanks to a spinning hollow cube that the Matts' decided to play on. Matt Lynch took a terrible fall and after a night of icing his leg, and a trip to the hospital the next morning, this was the result...

Ouch! Ligament damage is serious business.

This was the devil that did him in...

Matt Porter also suffered an injury to his knee in his attempt to climb the rock climbing wall in the park. He didn't make it to the wall before stumbling over the uneven ground in the playground and falling down hard. He's still icing his injury today.

However, even the day ended on a not so good note, it was still a great day that we got to spend together. As a result, I don't think Mat Lynch will ever forget his first beer and cider festival, and I will never think about Pochahontas the same way.