With the sudden and deeply saddening news of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, we had to make a carefully considered decision about whether to proceed with this year’s festival or not. We decided to continue, but to tailor our arrangements slightly, to acknowledge and pay tribute to our great Queen. With that, the rain gave way to a full weekend of festival sunshine and our largest attendance ever, throughout the whole festival.
A selection of food and a gin bar concessions were on site to ensure we catered for all tastes.
Despite having our largest assortment of drinks this year, which consisted of 7 low alcoholic ales, 81 cask ales, 6 craft keg ales, 22 ciders and 5 wines, we managed to pour almost every drop. That equates to 6,500 pints and 224 bottles of wine and prosecco being drunk by over 2000 people who attended our most popular festival yet.
This year’s entertainment was provided by One For The Road on Friday night, Jonathon fryer, Strum and Bass, Tom Wilcox and Baler Twine Boys on Saturday afternoon and Queen Rocks on Saturday evening, which was fitting for this year’s festival. Both evenings were closed out by DJ Olly from Enhanced Entertainment, who played a popular range of hits to a very keen dance floor audience.
New to the festival this year, but an instant success was our children’s Silent Disco, this gave our young attendees somewhere safe to be and have fun, whilst parents could sit in the sunshine, listen to live music and enjoy a conversation with friends and family.
This year’s Sunday raffle’s takings were a record-breaking £1,895.75 with the top prize being 100 cans of beer kindly donated by Dawkins Ales. The auction alone made £10,813 which includes yet another record-breaking £3,150 raised for the festival’s finale, the ‘Beer Bucket Challenge’. This saw the following local participants getting doused in a lovely cocktail of the remaining ale by those who clearly cared:
| 1. Anne Childs
2. Jo Blackburn 3. Lyndsay Baker 4. Babs Lloyd 5. Helen Emmings 6. Andy Mulliner 7. James Laughrey 8. David Eccles 9. Paul Tatterton |
Many thanks to all of our brilliant sponsors, prize donators, volunteers and all other festival’s unsung heroes for their continued support and for working hard to help us make our 2022 festival an even bigger success than last year!
Applications for funding from this year’s festival has now closed. We will be reviewing all applications in the coming week and distributing our raised funds at this year’s presentation night, which will be held at Wedmore Masonic Hall on Saturday 1nd October at 7.30 pm.
Dates for your diaries: next year’s festival will be running from 15th – 17th September 2023. We will keep you posted on its developments via our Facebook page.
To keep up to date with all festival news please like our Facebook page @wedmorerealalefestival, follow us on Twitter @WedmoreRealAle or go to our website www.wedmorerealale.com
We look forward to seeing you all again next year.