The 4th CAMRA Greater Manchester Cider and Perry Festival, Friday 27th and Saturday 28th June 2014.

The 2014 CAMRA Greater Manchester Cider and Perry Festival takes place this weekend.
This is the 4th Cider and Perry festival. This festival takes place at the Palace Hotel in the Copper Face Jacks Bar on Friday 27th and Saturday 28th June 2014. It opens at noon until 10:30pm on both days.

Admission is £3 or £2 to CAMRA & EBCU members.

The Palace Hotel, Manchester :




The Palace Hotel is a stunning Victorian Gothic building with an impressive 217-foot-tall clock tower.
Grade II* listed red brick and terracotta building, designed for the Refuge Assurance Company.
Look at this amazing Terracotta  design around the entrance:

The entrance to the Manchester Cider Festival at the Palace Hotel

It was built 1891–1895. The inside has Burmantofts faience and glazed brick as you can see here on the entrance down to the Festival bar. Amazing stuff.

The interior of this hotel was amazing, covered in stunning Terracotta and Glazed tiles like this.

Once down in the Copper Face Jacks bar you can hire your 1/2 pint festival glass.

The bar will be well stocked with Ciders and Perries and served by friendly staff. Here is a photograph (taken with iPhone) of the bar last year.
There are 57 different real ciders and perries to try from all over the UK. As is usual at festivals you can have either a 1/3 or a 1/2 pint. There is no option to have a pint for obvious reasons :)

The bar on at last years festival.

You can buy a carry out of your favorite cider.

The festival glass last year:

Last year I was chosen to be on the official CAMRA judges panel for testing Cider which was a great honor. I have never done this before. There were six of us on the panel, we had a cordoned off area in the pub. The table had 42 small glasses, 6 x 1 litre containers containing mystery ciders which were simply marked as "Sample 204" etc.
You were told how to mark a cider on its Aroma, Initial taste, Aftertaste and personal enjoyment. You had to cleanse the pallet between ciders with some water and a cracker. Once you had tasted all 6 ciders you were encouraged to go back and taste them again and change scores if you wanted to.

Me judging some Ciders for CAMRA.

For information on the Manchester Cider Festival see their website :
www.manchesterciderfestival.co.uk


Thanks
Andy

Thunder storm in Derby right now. View a real-time lightning strike map.

Right now there is a thunderstorm in Derby.
Did you know that you can view a real-time lightning strike map of the UK so you can see where the thunderstorm is and how severe it is?

Here is a screen grab showing the last 60 minutes of lightning strikes for the UK.
The next image below this one is a current map of lightning strikes for the UK for comparison. Scroll down a bit to see the live map data.

Next time there is a thunderstorm in the Derby area you may be able to see it comming by looking at the local webcams - Derby and Derbyshire webcams.

Live real-time lightning strike map for UK
If you would like to see real-time lightning strike map for the UK right this second then here it is below.
If there are no coloured markers on it then thats because there are no thunderstorms at the moment!
The map below shows all of the lightning strikes that have occurred in the last 60 minutes. Also what charge they were and if they connected between clouds or to the ground.

Here is the key
+CG Positive cloud to ground strike
-CG Negative cloud to ground strike
+IC  Positive in cloud or intracloud strike
-IC   Negative in cloud or intracloud strike

Photographing lightning is very difficult and offers a great challenge

Here is some intracloud lightning in Derby, NOT the Derby in Derbyshire but the Derby in Kansas, USA !



Hope you found this of interest.

Thanks
Andy