Swindon & North Wiltshire CAMRA

CAMRA has been campaigning for real ale, pubs and drinkers' rights since 1971. The national membership is over  90,000 (June 2008). Each member belongs to an individual CAMRA Branch in the UK - like this one.

If you're not already a member, why not join online at CAMRA Membership?

Headlines and pub news in brief

Local Wetherspoon pubs will have a beer festival during the last week in June and the first week in July. The great thing about this is that all the real ales will be local ones.

The Steam Railway in Old Town beer festival was so successful that plans are afoot to hold another one in August! We will keep you posted as soon as more news comes in! This is good news for Real Ale drinkers, who just enjoy the choice of craft beers without the aggro of binge-drinking, usually caused by other types of products.

The new Redhouse pub in Swindon's uncharted northern territories will be a Marston one!! There are no signs yet of a building.

The Pipers Arms in Old Town closed some time ago and has been boarded up since 19 March 08. An Internet search revealed that the lease is for sale at about £44,400, presumably per annum. That's a lot of money to earn before a landlord/lady makes a living. Let's hope a buyer is found soon. The pub is in a good location to be resonably successful.

The New Inn at Winterbourne Monkton is not just a B+B any more. They are serving real ale again.
There is a survey in the pub database, which can be accessed below.

Other stories and events

Visit to 'southern pubs' to do overdue surveys on Sat 24 May

We visted five pubs pubs on the southern extremeties of the Swindon & North Wilts branch of CAMRA:
Our last pub was the Swan at Wilton (see pictures above), where we were welcomed by a landlord, who is very keen on real ale.
We all enjoying a drink - even the Branch chair (and driver on the day) enjoyed his cup of tea.
These are the five pubs we surveyed:
Seven Stars, Bottlesford
Charlton Cat, Charlton
Crown Hotel, Everleigh
Plough, Shalbourne
Swan, Wilton
The pub database will be updated shortly.

The Swindon & Cricklade Railway Beerfest 2008

The Swindon & Cricklade Railway held its second beer festival over the Bank Holiday weekend - 3 to 5 May.
16 real ales, three ciders and a perry went down very well. The theme of the beers was 'Swindon's Other Railway'. Breweries from Cheltenham to Andover were represented. You can visit The Swindon & Cricklade Railway - website.
Swindon's Other Railway is celebrated on this - website.

Beer of the Festival 2007

We headed down to Plymouth on Saturday 12 April to hand over the trophy to South Hams Brewery because Eddystone had won back in November 2007. There will be more details on the visits page soon.

Local pub database

We have got an online beer and pub guide for this branch. It contains 289 pubs, bars and hotels; around 32 of these do not exist any more; they are in the database for historical reasons. About 55 of our pubs don't serve real ale and five are currently closed. This leaves just under 200 pubs that probably serve real ale. We try to visit every pub as often as we can.
Have a look at Swindon Area Beer & Pub Guide.
Please help us to keep it up to date by completing a pub survey when you visit a pub in the area. You can print or download the form as a pdf file. Pub Survey Form.pdf (10kb).
Here are some of the establishments that would benefit from a survey:

Bolingbroke Arms, Hook
Foresters Arms, Leigh
Parklands Hotel, Ogbourne St George, Marlborough
Royal Oak, 35 North Street, Pewsey
Bell, Purton Stoke
Abbey Mead, Abbey Meads Village Centre, Elstree Way, Swindon
Brookhouse Farm, Middleleaze Drive, Swindon