Bizarre Brews

This has to win the prize for the most original name on a pump clip - a very tasty egg-nog stout it was too. This appeared at the Spring House Brewery in Lancaster Pennsylvania, the brew pub had a fairly limited range - 5 stouts (eggnog, peanut butter, mint, chocolate chip and coffee) and 4 IPA's (including the Astounding She Monster IPA brewed with jalapenos) and that was it - sounds gruesome but all the beer we tasted was top notch! I'm beginning to think that the further we get away from the big cities the more bizarre the USA seems to be.

Next stop was Asheville, North Carolina, a beer lover's Mecca. This is a city the size of Chester but it has nearly 20 microbreweries! We were there for 3 nights and managed to hit eight brewpubs - it seemed to us that you fall out of one to find another over the road. One of our favourites was Wicked Weed (this refers to the quote from nearly 500 years ago by Henry VIIIth who said ' Hops are a wicked and pernicious weed.') The Freak of Nature Double IPA was especially special.

Asheville is the gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains, and further into the mountains is Waynesville where we stayed with our wonderful relatives Robin and Mary. Using their house as a base we were able to run and walk and explore the mountains right up to the Tennessee border. They took us on the Blue Ridge Parkway and, heading upwards we came across a herd of elk - what magnificent creatures these are! Close by was the visitor centre where Mary introduced us to the head ranger Linda, who promptly brought out a pair of antlers from her office which dwarfed her - these were from a fine elk stag that had been trimmed off the previous year

Run of the weekend was the Be Prepared Trail Race from the remote Daniel Boone Scout Camp in the Smokies. This looked like it was going to be 15K and 2600 feet of climb but in the end was more like 13K and 1800 feet (according to the guy in front of me who Garmined the route). The long uphill over the first four miles was on forest trails, but I kept it up thinking I was saving something in reserve for the final climb to the top. However it didn't quite work out like that and I found that we were directed down along more trails from an indeterminate point in the forest - hurtling along at my usual nippy pace I overtook a fair few runners who seemed to be picking their way through the tricky bits. In the end I thought I was doing well to finish in a time of 1.19.49 (1st V60 and won a woolly hat which said 'Be Prepared ' on it).