Sunday 3rd February, 2008

A group of 20 young members congregated at the Fat Cat in Colchester for a night of ghostly tales and haunting. The Definition of young members for the purpose of this trip is defined by Georgina Root (February 2008) as under 100 years of age. So a good turn out for my first trip as Young Members Contact! After the paranoia that Derek Wray ( the ghosty man, story teller person) was not going to materialise had subsided, I began to relax a little. After finishing my half of Fat Cat Bitter and discussing the planned route with Derek, I met the rest of the gang outside of the pub, where the ghost crawl began.

We started to trudge through the cold dark streets of Colchester, the oldest recorded town in England ... we wandered down the road to the Fox and Fiddler! Once we were all inside and had been served, we gathered round the large wooden table in the dimly lit back room of this haunted pub. Here Derek told us stories of Sarah the resident ghost, of highway men and stolen horses. As you can see from the photo there was definintely a spooky presence…I believe the ghost of sarah must have been the cause of the blurring on the photo. She obviously didn’t like me! So I then started delegating.. the task of official photographer was given to my dad, who was making his official CAMRA trip debut. Once the 008 beer had been downed, we moved on to our next destination just a few minutes away across the road.

The Bull is one of the oldest haunted pubs in England………after selecting from the choice of three real ales we laughed for a long time at 1603 and Ye Old Trip, Nottingham. As We stood outside the back of the Bull in the chilly night air, we observed the four back windows high up in the walls of this historic Inn, hearing frightening tales of the hauntings within each room….. We all decided that worst thing to be in historic Colchester is a Chamber maid (they appear to have a bit of bad luck as far as ghosts are concerned and seem to have their throats slit on quite a regular basis!) After people had finished their beer it was time to move on yet again, how tiring is the pub crawl lark!

We arrived by the old roman wall at the Hole in the Wall. This pub has not long changed hands, and now serves good ale. As we placed ourselves in the corner of the pub waiting for Derek to start his theatrical tales, I amused myself by trying not to chuckle at the young man banging his head on the low ceiling opposite us... needless to say I failed miserably. It was in this pub haunted by two ghosts in the dining area, that we heard a random selection of scary tales and also I remember hearing Colchester Borough council mentioned on a couple of occasions too, and did I hear the word orgasm..or did I make that up? We also learnt about the true story behind the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty…the cannon that fell and couldn’t be put back together again.

Last but by no means least, the last pub on the crawl was the Stockwell Arms. Recently re-opened we selected a good real ale…or two (well it was the last pub) and made a semi circle around our the master story teller who took the stage for one last time. We heard all about our surrounding area…the Dutch Quarter , and about the first ever hopped beer in England being brewed right beneath our feet. It was a good note to end on.

Well done to Derek and everyone who turned up. Normally at this point I would have been falling asleep on the way home, unfortunately I was walking….so that would have been a bad idea! Instead I had to stay awake and avoid the ‘interesting people’ on the way home.

Georgina Root