Leicester Beer Festival goes space age

There’s a space-age theme to this year’s Leicester Beer Festival, which touches down from 13-16 March 2019 at the Haymarket Theatre, in the heart of the city centre. With Leicester being home to the National Space Centre museum and educational facility, this year’s festival commemorates the 50th anniversary of man’s first steps on the moon…

Long-standing Lougborough tradition

Some of the breweries and beers that appeared at the first Loughborough Beer Festival 43 years ago are still around today… but few of them would make it onto the lineup for a beer event in this day and age. Back then real ale was something of a rarity, but the industry has moved on…

Lacons’ Audit Ale wins top award

Following more than a year of local tasting panels and regional heats, Lacons’ Audit Ale has been named champion winter beer of Britain. Announced at this week’s Great British Beer Festival Winter in Norwich, Audit Ale got its name because of the way a number of Cambridge and Oxford university colleges used to celebrate the…

Festive flavour to gin and rum

Just three weeks before Northamptonshire welcome Middlesex for their first home game of the season, the club will be hosting a very different occasion when gin and rum will be the order of the day at the County Ground. Sponsored by Schweppes 1783, the venue hosts a Gin and Rum Festival on 16 March, where…

Metronomy to headline Handmade

Metronomy, The Futureheads and The Sherlocks are among the bands lined up for the Handmade Festival, which descends on Leicester over the May bank holiday for a seventh year in 2019. Set across 10 stages, Handmade is an independent music and arts festival that takes place at the O2 Academy Leicester, the Attenborough Arts Centre…

Nottinghamshire venue for the Big Fake

Nottinghamshire’s Thoresby Park is the setting for one of the biggest gatherings of “fake” bands seen in the UK, with The Big Fake Festival bringing 24 unreal acts together for three days of the nation’s favourite hits from 30 August to 1 September 2019. The conclusion to a summer of “Fake Festivals” across the country,…

Exciting climax to Cardiff Blues season

The Cardiff Blues home clash against South African outfit Southern Kings could prove to be a key fixture in the side’s battle to qualify for the end-of-season Pro 14 play-offs and provides the ideal time for supporters to enjoy the climax to the 2019 season, with the fixture on 2 March being officially designated as…

Vintage Bath haven for antiques

Selling everything from decorative antiques and silver jewellery to vintage curiosities and salvaged items of interior decor, Bath Vintage and Antiques Market has been running for more than six years and takes place on the last Sunday of the month at the historic Green Park Station, a listed Victorian building with a stunning vaulted curved-glass…

Open returns to Royal Portrush

The last time the Open Championship left mainland Britain was 68 years ago when it was held at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Antrim, Northern Ireland, and this year it leaves for the second time in its 148-year history… returning to Northern Ireland’s flagship course from 18–21 July. The 36-hole club has two links courses,…