It started as a chance remark in a meeting with our Hooky area manager Jo and ended up a fabulous weekend of drinking, raising money for charity and fun for all the village.

When Sharon mentioned the beer festival to Jo she suggested getting in touch with her co-ordinator Chrissie at the brewery who had all the tools to help us so a meeting was arranged. As we are a Hooky tenanted pub the brewery would supply us with the stillage to hold the beer and gave us a list of all the beers that would be available for us to order in. A date was agreed and the ball started rolling.

It became clear that the way to get the best out of any event that you hold is to advertise so Chrissie said that she could arrange for us to have beer mats printed with the date of the event which we could put on the tables. For some time we thought that we needed a logo for the pub so as Chris Bazeley was working on putting together this website we asked him to come up with something that represents the pub. The wheel was born and so this was forwarded to Chrissie, as soon as the mats arrived we were pleased to see that customers were taking them away.

As Sharon is always in the kitchen it was decided that we would not cook on the Saturday and Sunday and as we are well supported by Al & Lesley Campbell we asked them if they would like to have the BBQ on the patio for their charity giift100.org. We decided to use our butcher Clive Porter from Mickleton for the burgers, sausages and bacon, Clive has been our butcher since we arrived and we knew that people would appreciate the quality.

We also had to decide what else to put on that weekend, just a few barrels of beer would not keep the village entertained for the whole weekend. We chose to book Hypokondriaks on the Sat night, they have played at the pub twice before and always go down a storm. One of our locals,  Kerry, also suggested Indian Summer for the Sun evening, they are 2 acoustic musicians who teach at Campden School and she was confident they would provide a great end to the weekend.

For the children we also arranged for Mike from Batsford Falconry to come along and bring a bird that children and adults alike could hold. Sharon also thought that a car boot sale would be a good idea to hold in the car park on the Sat lunchtime.

We then got in touch with Will at Wreal Sports who embroiders our polo tops for the staff, we forwarded our logo to him and he produced some T-Shirts and polo shirts that we could sell in advance for those people who wanted them.

A leaflet drop for approx 1000 homes was organised, Chris put together a promotion poster that we had printed and distributed.

With only weeks to go Andy and Sharon chose the beers, it was great making the choice, many we chose depended on its name, it was no surprise that we decided to have in Village Idiot from the White Horse Brewery. As Sharon is from Much Marcle we also asked the brewery to get in some extra cider from Weston’s, we choose a still Perry, Scrumpy, 1st Quality and a bottled cider with raspberry.

During the 2 weeks before the beer festival the weather had turned for the better and we couldn’t help but hope that it would continue to be warm!

In order for the beer to settle the guys from the brewery came on the Thursday before, 2 large stillages were set up in the lounge and they used cooling jackets to ensure that the beer remained in tip top condition. On the Friday Andy and a group of volunteers helped to put up the mini marquee and gazebo on the patio.

We opened as usual on the fri night and the beer and cider sales went well, those who perhaps knew that Sat night would be busy came along and sampled the beers. Vouchers were produced by the brewery along with tasting notes that customers could use to make their comments about the beer and keep a track of what ales they had sampled.

About 4 weeks before the festival Sharon took a call from Paul, a publican in Northampton who wanted to bring a bus load of people to the beer festival before they travelled onto Kingsholm where Gloucester were playing Northampton, although we had advertised a 12pm start they asked to arrive at 10.45am and also wanted 50 bacon rolls ready for 11am, of course we saw this as a fantastic opportunity to shift some beer and it would be great start for the gift100 BBQ.

On the Sat morning the sun shone well and we were really pleased, Al and Les arrived early to set up the BBQ and our bar team turned up well in time to see to the Northampton crowd. Will Arkell from Wreal sports also came and set up shop and sold another 12 polo tops.

Cars started arriving for the car boot sale at around 11am, the bus also arrived shortly after and soon the pub and patio was busy with drinkers. The bacon rolls went within minutes and Al & Les were shortly asked for burgers, from the moment they started they were busy all day.

Although we had lots of car boot sellers unfortunately we didn’t get a lot of buyers, perhaps the glorious weather had put them off but we did manage to raise some funds for the Guide Dogs.

The pub was busy most of the afternoon with people dropping in for a burger and beer and at 3pm Mike turned up with an eagle from the falconry. A number of people took the challenge to hold the eagle and luckily although it pooped twice it didn’t catch anyone!

The band were booked to start at 9.30pm and by 8pm there was little room in the bar or lounge, as the weather was so nice the patio was also busy which kept the BBQ in business.

When the band had a break at 10.30pm we unfortunately had a power cut which took out all the sockets in the bar which included the glass washer and till! Luckily for us Matt Mitchell who used to work for us and who has recently qualified as an electrician was in the bar, we called on him to help and he sobered up in minutes! Every socket had to be checked by hand to see where the fault was, one of the last things to be checked was the beer cooler which was the last thing we needed! Once this was sorted the sockets all came back on and we could continue as normal, the bar was packed all night and all the bar team worked very hard to make sure that customers did not have to wait long for drinks.

The band were once again a massive hit and rocked the pub until they finished just after midnight, after that it was a case of collecting glasses and seeing everyone off, we managed to get finished about 1.45am! By the end of the evening we had cleared 2 out the 8 firkins of beer and all of the cider, we were really pleased with this. As the BBQ had sold out of the 150 burgers that Clive had delivered we left a message for him to supply us with more for the Sunday.

Despite not getting to bed until 2am Sharon and Andy were up at 8.15am cleaning the pub throughout, we were not opening till 12pm so it was a rare treat for Sharon not be sorting out the roast all morning.

Lunchtime and early afternoon saw a steady stream of people as the weather was once again on our side. The band Indian Summer arrived just before 8pm and we had a lovely group of people in the bar who were looking forward to some more sedate music!

The band were great and Kerry was right they were exactly what we needed and by the end of the night only 3 barrels had any beer left in them which we were so pleased with.

Al and Les managed to raise £1200 for their gift100 charity which they were really pleased with and we raised £150 for Guide Dogs for the blind.

All in all we had a great weekend, we learn’t a lot, laughed a lot and will definitely do it again next year but make it bigger and better.

Finally thanks to all the following people who helped make the weekend so special.

• Lol, Chris, Simon, Adam, Kate our fabulous bar team

• Matt Mitchell for sorting out the electrics

• Al, Les, Steph, Hayley and Kevin from gift100.org

• Clive Porter for the burgers

• Mark Penfold for his mighty truck!

• Both bands who were fab

• Will Arkell from Wreal sports for the t-shirts

• Jo Hyde, Chrissie Frencham and Elizabeth Holmes from Hook Norton Brewery

• Simon and Tristan the cellar guys from Hook Norton Brewery