Chesham Tour 2016

With the away match before Christmas at Redditch having been postponed, we looked at the match at Chesham as a banker. The pitch itself is sloped and is also raised, so any drainage issues should not have endangered the game. Especially with the use of the BBC weather app, any idiot should be able to predict if a game is going to off. That was until we realised that this particular corner of Buckinghamshire is slap bang in the middle of monsoon season.

When leaving from Luton Airport Parkway, we normally meet at the Sicilian Café for breakfast. We arrived to find that the café was shut, so boarded the train bound for London. With two cafés bookmarked, we set off with our tummies rumbling. At this point, we realised that Saturday 2nd January must be a national holiday for café owners as the two establishments we visited were also shut and decided to head for Chesham and sacrifice a small child at Marylebone station.

We pulled into the picturesque Chalfont & Latimer station with a short wait for the connecting train to Chesham. On arrival we found a café, which defied the national holiday and we tucked into large amounts of saturated fat before our visit to the Chesham Brewery Shop.

   

The Chesham Brewery Shop is the brewery tap for the local Red Squirrel Brewery. It has 8 draft beer lines, 2 draft cider lines and over 150 of the best bottled & canned craft beers and ciders. First off was Chocolata from the Bristol based Arbor Ales. A rich chocolaty porter with a hint of orange zest, was followed by a couple of Red Squirrel ales. The Mad Squirrel’s American Pale Ale, and the Flying Squirrel, which is a delightful 4.4% premium pilsner.

On the short stroll across the road to the Red Lion, we heard the news that the game had been postponed and downed a couple of pints of Doom Bar whilst we hatched our alternative plan for the afternoon. The consensus was to head back to Dunstable. We would normally have slipped in the Euston Tap, Mabel’s Tavern or the Royal George on the way back via London, but decided to save our livers for the Leamington away game!

Back in Sunny Dunny, we popped into the First & Last for some Hardys & Hansons Rocking Rudolph, a fruity Christmas ale from Greene King. It was here that we bumped into Kevin Kitt, the son of our old chairman, the late Bill Kitt. He was slightly worse for wear, but still managed to wipe the floor with most of us on the pool table. At this time of night, Scottie was having more joy with the fat end of the cue than the thin end, but was crying into his beer after Man City had turned over the Hornets and ruined his weekly acca. Better luck next week loser!