Here are 10 things you didn’t know about Western Park – brought to you by Western Park Beer Festival, which was held over September 14 to 15 at St Anne’s Church Hall, Letchworth Road, Leicester. This year we raised £10,000 for local causes Action Homeless, The Bridge homeless charity and…
It was the first day of the German spring offensive. The date was March 21, 1918 and the Kaiser’s boys were launching Operation Michael, an audacious bid to puncture Allied lines and seize the Channel ports that lay beyond. If they achieved that aim, Britain would be bracing itself…
On the edge of Leicester’s newest bar you’ll find a pink elephant, a gnome and two Trappists from Belgium. This unusual quartet is among 150 UK and international beers at Head of Steam in Market Street. The elephant, AKA Delirium Red, is a silky smooth cherry brew, the gnome is…
It’s Western Park Beer Festival on September 15 and 16. It’ll be ace. This year we’ll be spreading the love for Loros, the local hospice, and saluting the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Drinks-wise it means 16 cask, six keg, four ciders and liver-shaped swimming pools of gin…
Framework Brewery is a name you’re going to be hearing good things from in 2017. Leicester city centre’s first craft brewery started taking shape in the summer and their first brew, a hoppy American Pale Ale, only sloshed into a pint glass as recently as December 6. Since then,…
It was February and raining when they found him, covered in a century-old cloak of earth and chalk. In the dirt near his bones, attached to a shred of uniform, they found a brass shoulder title, green with age and a little twisted. One word could be seen clearly…Leicester.…
The 4th Leicesters had sat in trenches overlooked by the Boche on the Messines Ridge and at Hill 60. And now at Vimy the enemy were at the top of the ridge again thanks to those responsible for our shortage in guns and munitions. If you had wished to…
It’s that Paganistic time of year when 120,000 tattooed, long-haired, skinny jeanists come to worship upon the sacred fields of north west Leicestershire. Roll ups? Check. Leather boots? Check. The ability to lose one’s mind/wallet/friends? Check. This weekend, Download festival is serenading Donington Park. Rock’s General Synod first hooked up…
Wave after human wave crashed against the bar, the demand for beer ripping our prediction of 1.8 firkins per hour a new whatsit, and by the time we were four hours in – four hours ahead of schedule – the beer had gone. GONE! This is what happens when…
What in the blazes is going on? Beer. Firkins and firkins of it. For £3 a pint. Where? St Anne’s Church Hall, Letchworth Road, Leicester. And when is it? Friday, March 4, from 5pm. Eh? It’s a pop-up pub serving the liquid gold of Leicestershire’s finest brewers; Charnwood, Tres…
It was the sort of place where it was okay to spill your pint, ruminates Andy Wright. “It was what it was – stage, bogs, bar. Some called The Charlotte a toilet stop,” he shrugs, “I don’t have a problem with that.” For many, The Charlotte needs no introduction. For…
