BRANCH REPRESENTATIVES
The people in these 'Branch Representative' pages form part of the current South Bedfordshire CAMRA Branch Committee.
Please feel free to email any of us or approach us if you see us in your pub. Landlords, you can always try a bribe of good ale/cider for that extra bit of publicity!
Social Secretary - Paul Sharp
Email to: socials@sbedscamra.org.uk
Profile
Born: 1948 in Luton
Joined CAMRA: 2006
Home: Dunstable
Occupation: Retired in 2008 from Vauxhall Aftersales after neraly 38 years
Favourite local pubs:Globe, Dunstable; Star & Garter, Dunstable; Bricklayers Arms, Luton
Favourite Ales: Fullers London Porter, Youngs Winter Warmer, Sarah Hughes Dar Ruby, Adnams Broadside
When I grew up in Luton, there was very little choice as regards beers. The main brewery was Whitbreads, there were other breweries such as Green King, Watneys, Ind Coop and Charles Wells these were all tied houses. Most of the pubs only had one or two draught beers not like the choice we have today. The beer choice Watneys (Red Barrel) Ind Coop (Double Diamond) Whitbreads (Flowers Original, Poacher) Green King (IPA) and Charles Wells (Eagle) to name a few of them.
I used to play darts for the Highlander at the bottom of Farley Hill in Luton in three different local leagues in and around the Luton area. I married Anna in 1972 at the age of twenty four and we moved away from the town centre. By this time I had started working at the Vauxhall Aftersales warehouse on the Toddington Road site and with early starts and a mortgage to pay we went out rarely so I started making country wines of various types blackberry, orange & ginger, blackberry & elderberry also rose petal made from my highly scented roses.
When we did go out our local was at the Star & Garter in Dunstable which was over six miles away as we lived in Turnpike Drive, Luton at the time, it was also over four miles from the Luton Town centre. We used to go and visit our friends on Saturday nights, some of our friends were members in CAMRA and we would go to the local beer festivals in Luton, Dunstable and the GBBF in London with them, we also went on pub crawls locally or London.
My wife has worked in Dunstable for over thirty years so when we decided to move from Turnpike Drive in Luton and down size.
We choose the town centre of Dunstable as this was where we had the most friends and knew a lot of the local people, we moved just over three years ago and since then we have made new friends in our local and in the Town. The time was now right for us to join CAMRA and our local is now the Globe where I have played Crib, Dominos and Dwyle Flunking over last two years. Since joining CAMRA we have both worked at the last two beer festivals in Luton and would recommend this to other people as it is a good way to make friends, and we also had the good fortune to go with South Beds CAMRA to Brussels in August this year with eleven others from our branch.
I still help run a charity shop at my old work place this was set up to help the people who worked at Vauxhall and the local area.
I hope to arrange trips to festivals and breweries during the next twelve months so if you are a CAMRA member and have an E-mail address and we do not have it please send it to us so you may be included.