Almost up the creek...

Close by Faversham Creek in Kent is the Shepherd Neame brewery and, after an evening tasting their beers, we almost were up the Creek.

Shepherd Neame dates from 1698 when the current brewery was founded, built on today's site which is a cluster of old and new buildings that combine the latest technology with generations of experience and tradition. Family-run, it is the oldest brewery in the country.

Although we previously visited the brewery on a self-guided walking tour as part of the annual Faversham Hop Festival a few years ago, Friday night gave us a greater insight into the history and process of brewing beer.

A guided tour, during which we heard about the origins of beer in the UK and brewing in Faversham, was followed by a tasting during which we were instructed in the "three c's" (colour, condition, clarity), smelling, and finally tasting, of the beer - using a lager and an ale to learn with. This was followed by a five course dinner, with each course accompanied by another lager or ale.

Stats? The water takes seven years to permeate the underlying chalk strata before be used in their private well to make 1.3 million pints weekly, forming 0.8% of the UK consumption. Although many of their beers are despatched in kegs or casks, the bottle production runs at 600 bottles a minute. Their organic Whitstable Bay beer is brewed using organic hops from New Zealand; while we didn't know it at the time, the New Zealand organic hops co-operative is based a couple of miles from where we took lunch in Nelson on the final day of our NZ trip. Equally strangely, we watched Whitstable Bay being delivered to the Ales Stenar organic bakery and restaurant (another place worth visiting) near Ystad in Sweden last year.

While not a fan of ales - not something to openly admit on such a trip - even I found some of their ales to my liking.

A final recommendation - stay in a local B&B or hotel afterwards!