Halton CAMRA Branch
Halton branch belongs to the Merseyside & Cheshire Region of CAMRA. The branch covers Widnes, Runcorn and surrounding districts including Hale, Preston Brook, Dutton and Moore.
Here you can find information on local CAMRA activities. All CAMRA members living in the area are warmly invited to actively participate in branch activities; be that beer festivals, attending meetings (branch and regional) or just going out and enjoying good beer! Please do remember to record your beer scores, ideally on-line as it is YOUR beer scorings that determine which pubs are selected for inclusion in the Good Beer Guide - see Real Ale Pubs
Most of the material on this site is available to everyone - CAMRA members and not-yet members alike. If you are not yet a member please consider joining the campaign to protect our British Pubs in general and Real Ale in particular - see Join us. Members can access additional content by clicking the Sign in link on the left or by clicking the Members' Area link.
Branch activity
Information about forth-coming events and activities can be found in Diary, what members report about what has happened can be found under Members' News and 'signed-in' members can find information about what has been discussed at branch meetings via the Branch meeting records.
Stop our pubs going to the checkout: Pubs matter and deserve to be protected. However loopholes in the English planning system are allowing pubs to be demolished and converted into several other uses without a planning application. Every week, two pubs are converted into supermarkets.
Don't let this happen to your community. Sign up to support the petition today. Please take a look at our new Pubs Matter campaign site for more ways you can get involved with the campaign - http://www.pubsmatter.org.uk
Get involved with your branch!!
One of the things we often get asked is what does a CAMRA branch do? Halton CAMRA is a small branch (210 members) and because of this it is easy to see what everyone does and what good fun it is to get involved!
The branch has bi-monthly meetings always held at pubs that serve quality real ale!! A recent meeting was held at the Norton Arms, Halton Village – a historic multi award winning pub. As with all activities any members are encouraged to come along and are made welcome.
A pleasurable duty of the branch is to survey all the pubs in Halton that serve real ale and to ensure that the entries on the Whatpub website are kept up to date. Many members are responsible for different pubs and my own patch includes the Grapes in Widnes and the Four Topped Oak. It is always good to survey these pubs and see what has changed, or sometimes to find a pub that unexpectedly has started to keep real ale!
Halton CAMRA has appointed a new Social Secretary and she has just nearly completed her first programme of social activities. These include trips to beer festivals, local pub surveys and brewery trips. Recent highlights have been trips to Birmingham, Stockport beer festival and a Christmas crawl to Chorlton.
Volunteers from the branch have helped at festivals such as the Cheshire Beerfest and those in Liverpool, Manchester, and even Bristol! Help can range from staffing the bar, setting up and taking down the festivals, ordering the beer or many other roles. The branch are even looking at nominating certain pubs as Assets of Community Value and members can work with other pub regulars and liaise with the planning department to achieve this!
If this appeals to you and you are in CAMRA, come on board and join in! If you are not in CAMRA, join up and take part – you will be made very welcome!