You need a beer. You need a vacation. You need a beercation.
Here is the latest Tour News:
- It’s now a week until we embark on the LambicLand Tour and I’m glad to report that the lovely Ritchie is our driver again.
- Tour 97 / The Waterloo Tour: Breweries, Beer and Battlefields of Brabant – August 2019 – our coach company has managed to swap our ferry crossing for a train crossing – outbound 0920hrs Eurotunnel and inbound 1950hrs
- Tour 98 / The In Flanders (Hop) Fields Tour – September/October 2019. PRICE NOW ISSUED – see below
- Tour 99 / Christmas in Antwerp – December 2019. PRICE NOW ISSUED – see below!
For those of you who are following my beer-related classic English poetry research, who knew that the great Modernist poet T.S. Eliot had CAMRA-leanings as can be seen in line 120 of his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915):
I grow old … I grow old …
I hate beer that is too cold
We are running our usual Belgian Beer Bar at Chelmsford Summer Beer Festival 2019 in Admirals Park Chelmsford from Tuesday 2 July to Saturday 6 July 2019. Come and see me and have a beer. We are focussing on lambic beer this year and will have draught lambic and loads of sparkling bottled oude geuzes and fruity bottled oude lambic beers. Of course, we will also have a great selection of twenty-four draught beers from quality Belgian breweries and some specials aged in Siobhan’s cellar (back bedroom).
Tour 97 / The Waterloo Tour: Breweries, Beer and Battlefields of Brabant
Thursday 8 August – Tuesday 13 August 2019
Latest news on this Tour is that crossing times have just been issued by Eurotunnel and our coach company Galloways have booked the crossings. We will be on the P&O Ferry Crossing on the way out on the 0925hrs from Dover and we are on the Eurotunnel on the way back on the 2050hrs from Calais, so arrive in Folkestone at 21.20hrs. The Tour cost is £895 per person based on sharing in a twin or double room. The Single Supplement is £225. If you are travelling alone and want to share a room with another traveller please contact us as we are regularly able to pair up travellers in twin rooms to avoid the need for payments of Single Supplements. I’m aiming to include a visit to Hougoumont Farm, the key to the battlefield. I’ve also just found a Salamanca Eagle carved from wood from the gates of Hougoumont nestled within the Essex regiment Museum down the road here in Chelmsford, find out more on Tour! If you want to join us on this Tour please send a deposit of £130 per person to secure your place. Read More. Read More.
Tour 98 / The In Flanders (Hop) Fields Tour
Friday 27 September – Tuesday 1 October 2019
This Tour is a four-night Tour staying at the pretty Oude Abdij Hotel in Lo at a beautiful time of year. It will explore the beers and hops of West Flanders at the end of the hop picking season but will also include a unique chance to find out what was going on with beer 100 years ago in this area. More particularly, what British soldiers were drinking in Flanders which caused so many courts martials for drunkenness to take place, making it one of the top ‘crimes’ in the British Army. Siobhan will give a couple of evening lectures revealing new information coming to light in her researches into alcohol and the British army in the Great War from findings at The National Archives in Kew. I have booked us in at the new Bar Bernard the bar with 360 degree views over the Flanders plain built on top of the St Bernardus Brewery in Watou. We’ll have a group beer cuisine meal here. The Tour cost is £750 per person based on sharing in a twin or double room. The Single Supplement is £185. If you are travelling alone and want to share a room with another traveller, please contact us as we are regularly able to pair up travellers in twin rooms to avoid the need for payments of Single Supplements. If you want to join us on this Tour please send a deposit of £140 per person to secure your place. Read More.
Tour 99 / Christmas in Antwerp
Sunday 22 December – Friday 27 December 2019
We will once again be spending Christmas in Antwerp in 2019. I have plans for a meal at a restaurant in the grounds of a beautiful East Flanders castle with the oldest wrought iron suspension bridge in Europe and as if that were not exciting enough, the restaurant is in the brick tower dove-cot with room for 700 pigeons. I can’t wait. We are already booked in at the castle Slot Ostende in Goes for a Christmas Day brewery visit, beer tasting and luxury hot and cold buffet. The Tour cost is £795 per person based on sharing in a twin or double room. The Single Supplement is £225. If you are travelling alone and want to share a room with another traveller, please contact us as we are regularly able to pair up travellers in twin rooms to avoid the need for payments of Single Supplements. If you want to join us on this Tour please send a deposit of £150 per person to secure your place. Read More.
For those of you who travel to Belgium independently, or if you just want to know more about beer cafes and beer tourism in Belgium, check out Podge’s Belgian City Bar Guide online maps which cover the whole country. Read More.
Siobhan McGinn (Mrs Podge)
Podge’s Belgian Beer Tours
Driving people to drink since 1994
01245 354677
mobile 00 44 (0)772 272 4558