I didn’t mention some elements of the beer festival at the Waterfront, but the venue has been a really handy location with the Halls out of action. Here’s the cider bar on the second of the three days at the venue.
The outside of the venue with the food stand on the left.
Some very reasonable prices for a festival.
There’s the JD Wetherspoon over the river and the Waterfront on the right hand side.
The upstairs seating area.
The Waterfront is a live music venue and they have boards of these tickets from past events on display.
Ready to go and scan tickets in the queue.
The formidable and wonderful Sue.
Ivan was on top form today, so I have no complaints about him which might come as a surprise. He was busy serving customers at the Waterfront and also went to help with the set-up at Castle Social where the festival moves tomorrow. I hope it won’t disappoint him, but I was very impressed with how agreeable he was. And he got me crisps so that boosted my opinion of him further.
Chris alerted to this new beer going on and it did indeed surprise and delight.
Team glasses of Sue, Paula and Roy. It was another lovely evening, wonderful customers and lots of positive comments about the organisation of the beer festival.
I had rather set my heart on pie, but the food kindly provided was sausage and mash, which is much appreciated. Roy and I briefly mentioned to Craig that he could perhaps acquire us some pies, but we didn’t want to cross the line into being annoying so we left the matter.
I didn’t take a photo of Craig yesterday, but I didn’t forget today. He of course is just part of the volunteering team that has put this event together, but without him and others this event wouldn’t have taken place, so many thanks to him and everyone else.
I was delighted that there were no complaints about my summary of the first part of Norwich Beer Festival, so I thought what would happen if I started writing a daily update about the second stage at the Waterfront (it’s on the Waterfront from 28 to 30 October 2025). Here’s the pre-opening set-up of Ivan, offering advice, Roy, who doesn’t need advice, and Andy, who is quite demanding.
The state of affairs before the trade session.
In terms of the amount of beer, the Waterfront is the main event for the beer festival this year. Although there will be lots at Castle Social as well.
Some of the cellar team visible, they’re part of a large volunteer effort which makes all this come together. It was at this point that Roy decided that he wanted to rearrange quite a lot of the glasses and token stand, which Craig was delighted to hear but everything was moved efficiently and effectively. Apologies I didn’t get any photos of Craig, our brilliant festival organiser, but he once again delighted me with the beers that he had purchased. He even went completely rampant at the end and had a 3.9% beer, so I hope he’s OK today.
It looks simple from the front, but there’s a lot of cooling going on here.
Ivan, ready for action but just having a little break.
Whilst I was looking for a real ale, I actually stumbled upon the curiosity bar with its exciting keg options. Chris had read the first part of this blog series about Redwell and I was surprised and delighted to find someone so competent with regards to what beers he likes. I’ve decided that Chris seems to be as talented as the glasses & token team, so anyone coming to the beer festival should perhaps head towards his section for at least one beer. And pastry sours are absolutely proper beers.
And my friend Mark, a director of CAMRA and one of the most knowledgeable people in the world of saving pubs. He’s up against a lot, but he battles on tirelessly and we need more campaigners like him in the organisation.
After letting in the customers for the main session, I went for my pie which today was chicken and mushroom. Very lovely with the chips and gravy. Thanks also to the staffing team for looking after my supply of crisps and cheese straws for the day. I’m looking forwards to the pies on days two and three, I don’t get bored of such fine cuisine.
Ivan on his break.
Behind the bars during a quieter period.
It’s like Rodin’s ‘the Thinker’.
Sue came to help at the glasses and token stand and she’s been helping at Norwich Beer Festival since around 1984 she confirmed. She’s really growing in confidence recently and has been declared by Roy and myself as a team member of great competence. We don’t do that lightly.
Ivan on a break with Oli, Ian and Mark in the background.
And that’s it for the first day. It was lovely as ever to see Oscar, the shy landlord of the White Lion, or it was until he jumped on me. Nathan has got him on a new health and fitness regime for the last few games of the bar billiards series (Oscar doesn’t know this yet) so we’ll see how that goes.
I stayed late on this one as it’s not an onerous walk home. This was a really marvellous first day, lots of happy punters and some great volunteers to work with.
I was en route to Bournemouth Airport and so I thought that I’d visit a JD Wetherspoon venue that I hadn’t been to before. This is the Parkstone and Heatherlands and I’ll use the chain’s history of the pub name:
“This building is better known to Winton’s older residents as the long-standing Co-op, the original of which (on this site) was a branch of the Parkstone and Heatherlands Society. Following a public meeting attended by 100 people, in May 1903, the society’s new store opened for business the following September. Molesworth House, as the store was then called, was replaced by a high, domed building, which became a familiar landmark. The dome was later removed and the building refaced.”
It’s a relatively small venue from JD Wetherspoon opened a large number of venues like this around twenty years ago.
This is from the other end of the pub, with the bar being located on the right hand side. I ordered at the bar and was served in turn by a friendly team member, so positive first impressions.
I only went for a coffee here, although they had around six real ales available at the chain’s usual low prices. The new signage telling people not to have multiple hot chocolates was in place, although not enforced.
As I like to have a little look for JD Wetherspoon venues, the online reviews for the pub are towards the lower end of the scale for the chain.
“Bad food cooked by unqualified people. Scruffy staff that need tidying up. Seems that certain staff dictate to the manager who they like & don’t like. Ban men for looking at the opposite sex, but when I’m not there men chat my girlfriend up & she doesn’t complain”
Hmmmm.
“Called in for a couple of pints on the Saturday evening. Bell rang for last orders, didn’t even make it to the bar within 60seconds to get my last drink of the night before being told no more serving. Was told within two minutes of that to drink up. Other obvious regulars given plenty more time to savour their last drinks of the evening. Will choose a better establishment to drink in with more patient staff from now on. Would rather pay more for my pint and enjoy it than pay cheaper and be rushed to empty my glass”
Julian the elder is the expert on this, it’s a shame he wasn’t there, but he seems to know exactly what to get and when to avoid annoying bar staff. Well, generally.
“Customers generally not adhering to social distancing with lots of handshakes.”
The venue gets a 1 out of 5 review for this. May these days never be repeated….
“The food and service was great. However within half an hour or so I thought I was in a kindergarten. There were no less than half a dozen women and screaming children who took the place over. Not somewhere I would go for a coffee and a chat, couldn’t hear myself think!!”
I’m very tolerant of course, but I can feel this person’s pain….
“Have just come in to the Parkstone and Heather lands with my 13 year old son one of the members of staff have told me my son can sit how he was. Which was lent over basically with his head in his phone like most teenagers. im absolutely fueming. Disgusting behaviour. Usually this pub if fine I’m literally shocked”
I’m not sure that I even understand what’s happened here.
“Terrible, table next to us ordered food and they gave it to us instead, we ate it as anyone would do and then said you either have to pay or leave! Your fault you ordered it to the wrong table.”
No, nearly nobody would eat the food that was put on the wrong table.
“It’s cheap and not chearful, only place I know where they make you pay up front.”
I feel that someone might be new here.
“Worst wheaterspoons pub ever”
Interesting spelling. But, I digress and in terms of the cost, the price point here was the same as their two more centrally located pubs in Bournemouth.
There are also about twenty reviews complaining that the chips are being microwaved and numerous photos of soggy chips. Seems a bit odd. Anyway, I rather liked the pub although it feels more old-school Wetherspoons in the way their smaller pubs outside central London used to feel. They were a bit more focused on serving regulars and more wet-led, but this pub seems to be an important part of the community.
And I got several coffees (and obviously no hot chocolates as I don’t want to break the law) for £1.81 so that was rather lovely.
I was quite intrigued by this shop as they had decided the things they wanted to promote were snacks, cat/dog food and tobacco. I’m not suggesting that there’s anything wrong with selling any of those three, but I’m not sure that it’s a combination that I’ve seen before in terms of a shop’s focus. The 248 relates to the street number, they must have been slightly disappointed that they weren’t at 247 though.
As the Halls are out of action for renovation and repair, Norwich Beer Festival is split into three separate events this year, at Redwell Brewery, the Waterfront and Castle Social. It might not be the same, but it’s great to still do something and there are lots of fringe events also taking place.
There’s Craig at the bar before we opened, he’s in charge of organising everything. He’s good at that and he’s agreeable (unless commenting on pastry sours) so people like helping.
There was ten minutes to opening by this point.
Assistant to the regional manager 🙂
The keg selection.
Soon after opening.
Here’s Ivan (photographed in between his many breaks, but I didn’t comment) adding black pepper and Tabasco to my Bloody Mary beer. Ivan revealed that he turned up at 09:00 to drink the beer, but I didn’t like to say anything. Ivan, who is the resident cellar manager expert, also did a breakfast time interview with BBC Radio Norfolk which I think went well.
Thanks Jen! Chicken bakes are good for the soul. Jen was top notch at providing lifts and snacks, so Roy and I have decided she will be allowed back.
Having a drink to celebrate ITV featuring us live on their news programme.
Ian doing the interview in his role as chair of Norwich CAMRA.
Thanks to CAMRA for supplying us pizza. Well, and beer.
Some Morris dancers performing outside.
Ah, crisps and beer. A healthy and well balanced diet such as this is why I’m able to walk such long distances.
Lucy making Roy appear in one of her training videos. You can see how surprised and delighted he was. Roy is the very competent, and hugely laid back, manager of glasses and tokens. I could genuinely accidentally destroy every glass and he’d calmly find a solution. I hope that I keep up with his beer deliveries during the three days.
Oli dancing to the band on Sunday afternoon. There’s a video of this appearing in the next post.
And my favourite beer of the first part of the festival, the Corporate Conference from Left Handed Giant. A delicious and decadent pastry sour, 6.5% of mango fruitiness, this was thick and tasty. Craig had purchased a lot of beer and he wanted me to taste all of them (twice on some occasions), so I’ll let people look through my Untappd account if they want more details about the beers.
And the lovely Oli after her dancing. It was all a bit raucous for me, I had a pizza and beer instead.
Huge thanks to everyone at CAMRA who has organised this, I thought it went really well and every customer I spoke to enjoyed it. There are a lot of planning meetings and huge amounts of work behind the scenes, the organising committee deserves a lot of praise in my humble view. I ignored the comments from Craig and Ian about my beer choices (such as the “Julian seems to like all beers that don’t taste of beer”), I can’t be limited to just twiggy stuff, my life needs pastry sours, rich porters (preferably with fruit) and beers with ginger and cinnamon in. A great success I think and I’m looking forwards to the next part of the festival which is as the Waterfront from Monday 27 October.
I’ve already written about the excitement of Bournemouth Airport, but it was clean and organised so that was all to the good. It’s rare that I get to fly with Ryanair now given my new loyalty to Wizz Air, but this was a convenient departure location. The boarding process was efficiency, clear and the staff members were friendly.
Boarding on time. The aircraft was SP-RSU, a Boeing 737 which has been in use since 2017. It’s technically operated by Buzz, a fully owned subsidiary of Ryanair.
It’s not a very clear photo, but I liked this boarding arrangement which makes it easier for those with accessibility needs.
This Ryanair flight boarded immediately before our flight and was also off to Poland, to the rather lovely city of Krakow.
I hadn’t paid for seat selection and the seating Gods gave me a middle seat, which didn’t feel entirely optimal. However, fortunately, the person in the aisle seat of what was a fairly full flight, didn’t turn up and so I got the aisle seat.
The flight was uneventful and Ryanair didn’t appear on this occasion to try and annoy passengers as much as they used to by selling them all manner of things. It was a comfortable flight and I was rather impressed.
The only area where Ryanair couldn’t match Wizz Air was the cleanliness of their aircraft. The seat trays on the aircraft were sticky (well, mine wasn’t, but I could see three others were), there was litter on the floor and it was evident the crew just hadn’t had time to do what was needed.
Safely in Wrocław.
They put us in a bus to go all of 100 metres to the airport terminal. They’ve had us walk further distances before at this airport and it probably took longer to get there by the bus.
I have a shiny new passport now and didn’t experience the delays that I’ve had before whilst the border control staff have to sit and count the stamps. The airport hasn’t yet introduced the full new EES system for arriving passengers, but I doubt it’s far away.
I nearly never get taxis as they’re too decadent, but on this occasion I decided to get a cheaper Accor hotel (one of my favourite Ibis Budgets) and rather than take two hours to get there by public transport, I was there within thirty minutes. And, fortunately, taxis in Poland are very cheap, although I don’t really like using them as I like the excitement of public transport.
The flight was £15 and I was surprised and delighted by Ryanair, although they perhaps need to clean their aircraft a little more…
This was a cheap hotel to stay at on a Sunday night but was convenient for my planned flight from Bournemouth Airport. I genuinely have no idea why they’re trying to be part of Accor though, they need to leave or they’re perhaps likely to be thrown out soon enough.
There was a lot of noise from neighbouring rooms even at check-in, which reception could hear. I should have really upgraded as Platinum Accor and I say that not out of privilege, but because they didn’t really seem to care about anything. I’m also not sure why they’re trying to be part of Ibis Styles, there’s not really much here that fits into that brand.
There was a welcome drink which they didn’t pro-actively mention but I claimed anyway. There was no welcome gift, but I could be asked about does it matter? Well, it sort of does, because most hotels in the Accor chain are complying with the standards they request and the Polish hotels operated by Orbis are offering ridiculously high standards. They’re upgrading, giving welcome gifts and almost going too far in meeting their obligations. It must be galling to the decent hotels to know that some other locations are not interested in committing in the way that they should.
There was no-one else in the bar area, which is actually reasonably pleasant. They don’t offer food, but the bar is open throughout the evening. This feels sub-optimal really, some considerable money has evidently been spent here in providing a decent and nice environment, although the marketing is all over the place.
I like this, it feels like a better way to contact the hotel.
In what might sound illogical, I’ll rate the breakfast as a disgrace to Accor even though I liked it. There was no hot food other than bacon, sausage and mozzarella rolls. I had the very last sausage roll and it was terrible, just junk food. Other guests didn’t get anything hot.
The reason I mention that I might not be being fair is that I liked the breakfast as I didn’t want any hot options. I had a lot of chorizo, indeed, I had all of it. The muffins were OK, but the fruit was absolutely fine. The yoghurts were adequate and the juices, when they refilled them, were generic but OK.
My complaint is that integrity is important. Don’t advertise a hot breakfast when there isn’t a hot breakfast. The reality that the hotel happened to stray into what I wanted isn’t perhaps the point. The online reviews are also very poor, there are clearly substantial issues here where guests continue to be disappointed.
The breakfast room was large and clean, this is clearly what the hotel used to have as a restaurant area. Again, someone has pumped money in here and so an effort has been made at some staff.
The rooms next to me came back at around 03:00 banging about. I’m oblivious to noise generally, but there should have been someone at reception dealing with this.
If this wasn’t an Accor hotel and I stayed here, I would have been content for the money. But, they’ve signed up to certain standards by being part of Accor and they’re playing fast and loose with it as far as I’m concerned. I think it’s important that managed hotels understand that they represent their brand they’ve signed up to and not just their own venue.
I’ve already complained about how unnecessarily difficult it is to get to Bournemouth Airport unless you’re wealthy or like walking (I went with the latter). The airport is owned by the same people as who operate Norwich Airport, but at least that one is accessible. Although Bournemouth Airport doesn’t charge the ridiculous £10 per passenger surcharge in the way that Norwich Airport does (unless you’re flying Ryanair from Norwich which feels an unfair exemption).
No expense has been spared here with the security area.
There were three flights, mine was the 20:55 one to Wrocław.
Can travel get any more decadent? I didn’t take any photos in the security area as I imagine they wouldn’t like that, but the security area itself was actually inside and the staff were friendly and helpful.
Inside the terminal which had a bar, a coffee shop, a duty free and an expensive WH Smiths. There were plenty of seating, although an absence of power points other than in the bar for their customers.
It was spacious and warm, so I didn’t have any complaints. I was only flying from Bournemouth Airport as I was already in Bournemouth and there was a cheap flight to Poland. It was also all mostly clean and tidy, with all of the gates visible from where I was sitting.
Bournemouth Airport began life in 1941 as RAF Hurn, one of many wartime airfields that sprang up across the country during the Second World War. It was used by both the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Forces, mainly as a transport and fighter base, and it played its part in operations leading up to D-Day.
As the war started to come to an end, Hurn was quickly repurposed for civil aviation. In 1944 it became the temporary base for British Overseas Airways Corporation, which used it as London’s main airport until Heathrow was ready, which I think is quite a claim to fame. For a brief period between 1945 and 1946, Bournemouth and not London was the country’s principal gateway for transatlantic flights.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the airfield evolved into a proper commercial airport, with charter routes opening to holiday destinations such as Majorca. It changed hands several times, from local authority control under Bournemouth Corporation and Dorset County Council, to National Express in the mid-1990s, and then to Manchester Airports Group in 2001. The 1990s also saw the runway extended to 2,271 metres, capable of taking larger aircraft, and Concorde even made a glamorous visit to mark the occasion. Ryanair arrived shortly afterwards which must have been the icing on the cake for the locals after Concorde.
Ownership passed again in 2017 to the Rigby Group, whose Regional & City Airports division continues to run the site. The new terminal was completed around 15 years ago and if the expansion that is planned takes place then they might well need a terminal extension. However, perhaps their priority really should be actually getting public transport to the airport and sorting out the pedestrian access.
This is Norman House, a rather nicely located residence situated by the river in Christchurch. It still looks rather decadent even though half of it has fallen down.
Looking from the other side of the building, which is located near Christchurch Castle. The history of the two is interlinked, the castle was defensive and a place of safety, but the property was where the Lord lived when people weren’t attacking him. Built in around 1160, it was a luxurious property for the Lord and it was later used by the Constable of the Castle.
Inside the building which fell into disrepair after the medieval period. I’m surprised that it survived after this, as it would have been easy to cart the stone away to use elsewhere which is what happened to most of the castle.
The sockets where the first floor slotted in are clearly visible around the structure.
And the remains of the steps with a sign warning of deep water, although it didn’t look very deep to me.
The remains of a former fireplace, with the rare Norman chimney, and the whole arrangement is notable as it’s one of the few surviving Norman residential properties in the UK, although there’s one in Norwich hidden under the magistrates’ courts.
English Heritage has this plan of the property and I’m slightly amused by the little bit of modern there and I’ve stared at photos and I have no idea what they’re referring to, unless it’s the closing up of a door. Some sources say that demolition started in the eighteenth century, but the local vicar was able to intervene to stop the total destruction of the property. This would explain why it has sort of survived, it became recognised quite early on as a building that needed to be retained for future generations.
Anyway, the monument is accessible for free at any time for anyone who wants to see the modern section of the building, or indeed, the Norman bit.
