City of Ale

Norwich's City of Ale is a grand celebration of Norwich's many pubs and generally about the only time of the year I get to sample any of the pubs in Norwich, since the CAMRA beer festival(s) tend not to lend themselves to you wanting to explore many further pubs, which funnily enough is largely the whole reason City of Ale came about in the first place to celebrate the pubs not just the beer, and whilst Norwich may be a fine city to some, opinion is divided on that from us South folk...and Ive normally no reason to visit the place.

Whats not in dispute is Norwich does have a fair share more of good pubs serving good ale than most places, so its always a good excuse to hop on a train and spend a relaxed day out there visiting them as long as you dont have to spend too much time participating in football related things.

The event started back in 2011, and without the cancellation due to lockdowns of the previous years would have been celebrating its 12th anniversary this year,its celebrating its 10th instead. It used to run over only 10 days to coincide with the May Spring Bank Holiday, but this year its been extended to a whole four weeks starting May 26th till June 26th and runs over the extended Spring bank holiday/Queens platinum jubilee. As an aside the first City of Ale I visited was in 2012, which happened to coincide with the Queens then Diamond jubilee.

51 pubs are taking part this year,though not all pubs have to serve cask ale to be involved, though many do, and many run events like beer tastings, food & beer pairings, meet the brewer and mini beer festival events throughout, and certainly you could easily turn each visit into a session at a pub, or just a visit for the special events if you so chose.

But for me the real strength of City of Ale as a visitor is in the Ale Trails, each trail has roughly 7 pubs

to visit some more spread apart than others. Each visit to a pub on a trail gets you a stamp in the event booklet you pick up in one of the involved pubs, and if you complete the whole trail, you get a nice enamel badge to celebrate your achievement with, which promptly gets put in a drawer when you get back home never to be seen again assuming it even makes it home in the first place. Ive been to 6 of the City of Ales, completed multiple trails and could only find a couple of badges from different years.

Most of the trails complete within the city centre and spread out in all directions from there,so its fairly straightforward to link the trails up, just so long as you remember to leave the last pub on the trail where you collect the badge from till last.

In previous years there has been usually a charity beer, this years is called Esprit 4.5% pale hoppy beer and supports the Norfolk & Waveney MIND charity, and some of the local breweries often produce other special one off brews, just to keep an eye out for too, plus there will be all the Jubilee celebration beers as well.

As my visits tend to be as a day tripper, my overall time in Norwich is limited and I try to be strict on the approach in so far as only covering pubs on the trail, so no wandering excursions off to try other pubs regardless of how good they look, or quirky parts of Norwich, and generally sticking just to halves in pubs, preferably of locAle Norfolk beers though with my avoidance of all things from Woodbastwick now since my last City of Ale,I might have to refine that, and no staying for an extra one however nice the venue is, but rules are there to be broken and they were formed largely to fit as many pubs to complete trails in on the one visit in the 10days I could make it, with 5 weekends to play with theres scope to be more relaxed about it and theres always some cask marque pubs to pick up.

Whilst completing the trails and getting the badges gives you a nice sense of satisfaction, actually the best bit of the trails is visiting pubs you wouldnt have found any other way, the River Wensum provides a natural kind of north and south barrier across the city, and its very easy to overlook visiting pubs on the north side, and not even know some were there, that are just as good as all the ones people will recommend you visit on the south side in the city centre.

If you are attempting the trails, my advice is to print the map out on an A4 sheet, and even print the individual trail maps out if necessary, just because your booklet is smaller and will get well worn and covered in beer over the course of the day, and you dont want to be wasting phone battery on google maps every two minutes. And it also gives you a sense of scale, some of the trails will require bus trips at least to get to the furthest pubs outside of the city centre and then to walk back in and so youll need to spend some time working out which buses go where, where from, and how often, and in my experience Norwich bus drivers are some of the grumpiest people youve ever met.

Dont forget to eat, the Coach and Horses did do some excellent burgers last time I went and it coincidentally is the nearest City of Ale pub to the railway station for out of "towners" so a perfect starting point to pick up a booklet and have lunch first, though its the last pub on the Cutler trail this year, so youll have to plan to revisit to pick up the badge if you are doing that trail.

If its your first time trailing at all, the Mercer trail is probably the easiest to complete as all the pubs on the trail are virtually within sight of each other, the Grocer probably the hardest as the pubs are quite a distance apart and the Woolcomber a close 2nd as it finishes outside of the city and theres not much else out that side of Norwich.

Do double check opening times though, not all pubs are open all day every day, bank holidays especially, I dont think Ive ever missed completing a trail from a closed pub, but I have missed visiting pubs Id planned to visit because they werent open on the day I went.

Above all enjoy it, Ill try and write a follow up of when I visit