Year: 2018

2018.

365 days.

22 years since the brewery was founded.

100 different beers brewed.

26 can releases.

Over 11,000 BBL produced (that’s over 18,000 hL)

AND LOADS OF MOONSHINE… around 1.8 million pints supped!

Here’s just a select few of our highlights of our year in beer…

The biggest development of the year for us and something which will continue to have a massive influence in shaping our 2019 was our expansion. This is something we’d been quietly working on behind the scenes for pretty much the entirety of the year, so it was not only an exciting announcement for us to make back in November but also quite the relief! Our new tanks have already enabled us to boost our capacity and the much needed extra space means that we are able to stay right at the heart of our beloved Abbeydale Road community. You can read more about the details of our new space in this blog post.

We’ve expanded our reach in terms of brewery events, hosting our 12^th Sunfest festival at the Rising Sun, as well as Funk Fest, the very first (we think!) dedicated sour beer festival to be held in the UK outside of London. We’ve met more of our drinkers than ever before at tap takeovers all over the UK – from the Hanging Bat in Edinburgh to the Stoneworks in Peterborough and all sorts in between, including our first “Funk Dungeon on tour” event held at Tilt in Birmingham in October. We’ve also had stalls at a number of local Farmers Markets which has been a brilliant way to get to know our neighbourhood even better! And we’ve been lucky enough to be part of some amazing festivals including Fyne Fest, hosted by Fyne Ales in the most beautiful setting imaginable, and Thornbridge’s glorious Peakender.

Collaborations have continued to be a great way for us to try something new and mutually learn from our brewery pals, and we’ve worked with some truly incredible people throughout 2018 both home and away, including Yeastie Boys, Haandbryggeriet, Bad Seed, Alphabet and Northern Monk.

Talking of working with brilliant people, we’ve been lucky enough to have art created by some of the industry’s finest, including James Murphy continuing to develop wonderful pieces for our Brewers Emporium range, Jim Spendlove working with us on our series involving other local institutions like Peddler Market, and Lewis Ryan (Lewy) creating an awesome colourful beery jigsaw from the can labels for us, something we believe to be a world first.

Our flagship pale ale, Moonshine, took home a bronze medal in its category at the 2018 Champion Beer of Britain Awards, an achievement we’re hugely proud of – more on that here.

We also cranked up our charity efforts this year, not only in raising oodles of funds for Bluebell Wood with this year’s charity beer “Brewbell Wood”, but also with 11 of the team challenging themselves to take part in the Sheffield 10k on behalf of Cavendish Cancer Care, and raising over £1500 for the cause. A great big thank you to everyone who donated!

Looking ahead to 2019, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that once again we have a mega year planned, including the launch of our first ever lager! Heresy will sit alongside Heathen at the heart of our Brewers Emporium range – we’re still in the final planning stages at the moment but watch this space for more details! 

Colourway not yet confirmed… let us know what you think!

From all of us at Abbeydale HQ, a huge thank you for all your support this year. We can’t wait to find out what the year ahead has in store.

Cheers!

We are pleased to announce that we can now officially state that Heathen can be labelled as a gluten free beer!

Heathen is made using gluten containing ingredients, specifically barley and wheat. However, in the production of our tasty American Pale Ale we use an enzyme called Brewer’s Clarex. Initially used to reduce chill haze by breaking down protein chains (polypeptides) found in the beer, this clever little enzyme also reduces the gluten to below the 20ppm threshold required to label a product as gluten free, meaning it is safe to drink for many of those amongst us who are sensitive to gluten.

There has been no change to the production of Heathen in this process – the beer itself remains exactly the same as it always has been! However we didn’t want to make this declaration until we’d undergone months of rigorous testing to be fully confident in the consistency of our product and the reduced gluten level it contains.

The vast majority of beers labelled as gluten free that you see on bars and shelves of pubs and bottle shops around the country will have been produced in a similar way to that described above as for Heathen. Whilst there are gluten free beers available that have been brewed with no gluten containing ingredients, these are few and far between. The reason for this is that gluten free grains generally do not hold the same characteristics as those more commonly used in brewing, and so a wider change of process would be needed for us to be able to utilise grains such as rice and sorghum effectively on a large scale.

The next batch of Heathen to go into cans will display a declaration of the beer being gluten free on the label, and this information will also be made more visible on our website. This is all part of a wider scheme to make sure our drinkers are all fully informed, which includes clearer labelling for our vegan-friendly beers too!

Those of you who’ve been following our progress for a while will already know that we were hoping to expand, and have been bursting at the seams of our current premises for a good few years now. We’ve looked into a whole variety of options along the way, from building an entire new site from the ground up, to looking at ways of adapting existing buildings all over Sheffield, but we couldn’t make any of them work for us in quite the way we wanted them to…

…And in the end, despite the years of difficult decisions and seemingly endless hunting, we’re really pretty glad it all happened this way, as our search has eventually led us right back to our very own doorstep! Some of the units that join directly on to our current site have recently become available, and so we’ve managed to get hold of a massive 7426 square feet of extra space! By being able to spread out rather than pack up and move, we haven’t had to halt production and have been able to boost our capacity by a much-needed extra 20%. It also means that we’ve been able to stay right at the heart of the Abbeydale Road community which we love so much and which inspires so much of our identity.

Look at all this lovely space! And this is just one small part of it!

As well as increasing brewing capacity, we’ve also got improved warehousing capabilities, meaning we can look after all that delicious beer even more carefully than before, and shiny new office facilities for the team. There is also the potential to create our very first dedicated on-site events space which is something we are HUGELY excited about, so do keep your eyes peeled for details of a little launch party coming in early 2019!

There’s SO much more to come from us, this really is just the start of the next stage of our ambitious development programme, so do watch this space for more!

Cheers!

Swanky new office for our events and marketing team!

November already. How on earth did that happen?! It’s been a whirlwind of a year so far for all of the team here at Abbeydale Brewery with new tanks, beer festivals, expansion, collaborations galore and an upcoming office move keeping us all very busy. So if, like us, you’ve not found time yet to make a start on your Christmas shopping, well DO NOT FRET… we are here to help with our gift ideas!

Visit our online shop where you will find all of our cans available to purchase by the six-pack or case – you can also get your hands on a four-can gift pack complete with glass, exclusive to buying through us direct. There’s also merchandise, art prints, cookbooks and more! We can deliver to your door or, for those of you local to Sheffield, you can choose to collect from the Devonshire Cat where your beer will be kept nice and chilly in our specialist beer box.

We’re also taking our beers and merchandise out on the road to a variety of festive markets, so do come and say hello! Find us with our fairy lights and of course plenty of samples at Bakewell festive markets on the 24^th and 25^th of November. The same weekend we’ll also have a stall at Whirlow Hall Farm Christmas Market where our beer will be on the bar too, and we’re really looking forward to our first appearance at Kelham Island Victorian Christmas Market on the 1^st and 2^nd December. Your last chance to find us will be at our neighbourhood favourite, Nether Edge Christmas Market, on Sunday 9th December.

And finally, if you’re still looking for the perfect spot for your Christmas party or celebration, don’t forget that our lovely pubs can host you with their carefully curated festive menus. Get in touch with The Rising Sun or The Devonshire Cat for further information and to book!

Chances are that by now you’ve spotted our most colourful cans yet… an ambitious project which takes six individual labels and turns them into one enormous interconnecting illustration, a beery jigsaw if you will! The man behind these incredible creations is Lewy (Lewis Ryan), a local chap whose epic and eclectic style first caught our eye at 2017’s Tramlines festival. At the launch of Cold Conscience, our collaboration with Brewdog and Alvarez Kings, Lewy created live art right in front of our eyes, and we were blown away. We’ve been lucky enough to get him on board the good ship Team Abbeydale to bring our latest hairbrained scheme to life, and with the project half way towards being fully released, we thought it was high time for you to get to know Lewy a little better. Read on to find out more…

Hi Lewy! Tell us a little bit about yourself – what’s your background and how did you first get into doing what you do?

My name’s Lewy, I’m a Barnsley based creative. I collect plants (mainly cacti and carnivorous plants) and old film cameras. I love HB Stadtler Noris school pencils and big bottles of indian ink. I have a lot of pets – 7 snakes, 2 Whites tree frogs called Helvetica and Garamond and a Border Terrier called Ted. I like camping and hiking and have recently got into axe and knife throwing. I work from home in my art studio – which is really just a room I’ve renovated with reclaimed pallets to look like a shed (note from Laura @ Abbeydale Brewery – Lewy kindly shared some photos of his studio, scroll down to the bottom to see!). I grow my own fruit and vegetables in the garden most of which end up in either some kind of homebrew beer or cooked on the bbq.

I’ve always been artistic… I’ve always needed a creative outlet throughout my life, be that illustrating, painting, sculpture, photography, music, building things or even knitting. I’m a keen musician and the singer and guitarist in an Alternative folk band called The Rolling Down Hills.

Initially my goal in life was to become an artist, but somehow after studying Fine Art at University I finished and ended up in a career in graphic design. When I was studying at College and Uni’ in the late 90s the internet had just really started to be as rich as it is nowadays. I grew up coding bits and pieces, making rubbish art websites and animated gifs as a hobby – my skills kind of grew along with the net. When I finished Uni my pastime in design became my career. My art (back then mainly oil painting) took the back seat and became the hobby. Over the years I’ve worked for various web developers and graphic design businesses. I worked up from Junior designer up to Art Director. 

Then somehow along the way my career took a path into Marketing; I worked at an LED lighting company for 6 years as Design and Marketing Director. The owner of the company I worked at decided to step out of the business and become CEO. He only planned to be coming in every so often, so he asked me to step up as Managing Director. Being very career minded I jumped at the opportunity. I was part way through training when he decided to sell up instead – the new business owner taking the MD position I’d been training for. I handed my notice in the next day without much thought of which direction I’d take. I was so angry that I had put so many years into building that company up. I had never felt anger like that before, so I knew I had to get out and get back to my creative roots.

I started setting up on my own the day after that. For the first year I set up an online knitting company, which still ticks over in the background today, and I did the odd photography shoot to keep the bills paid. 

A lot of people know how stressful it is to work in an office, running a team and keeping a business profitable. I was like that when I worked in marketing. A lot of the creative things I used to do when I worked in design were handed to my team to develop. I ended up doing more paperwork than anything else, so by the time I got home I was too drained to feel creative. A lot of the creative energy was kind of knocked out of me. After leaving the lighting company it took me about a year to pick up my art again. When I did it was with the aim to work with people in the industries I loved – Music and Beer. I did a few illustrations to build a bit of a portfolio and hit out trying to get into those markets.

I realised shortly into that first year that my background was quite unique and it could be used to the advantage of breweries and musicians trying to get themselves noticed. As well as the illustration, I could do graphic design, print/packaging design, photography, marketing and even video editing to get new beers/albums in front of people. Having a diverse skills range has helped my career a lot.

How would you describe your own style?

Colourful, Gloopy, Detailed – I like to think people can get lost in my illustration- at least for a little while.

I like to think of it as art that could be hung in a gallery rather than just graphic design or illustration, but maybe that’s my inner fine artist speaking.

I feel my style is still developing with each project I work on. I’m consciously playing around with colour palettes in my current work, trying to use as much colour as I can in some pieces. I experiment by placing colours next to each other from opposite ends of the colour wheel, to get as much impact as possible. I’ve grown to like pink a lot recently.

When I was a child in Nursery my teachers took my Mum to one side and asked if I was alright. They were concerned that I only ever used black crayons. All the colours of the rainbow I could choose from and every time I drew, I only ever used black. I’d draw an outline in black, and then colour it in with black also.  When my Mum reminded me of this recently I set about to see how much colour I can actually use in a piece. It’s a personal challenge.

As far as I know, this “beery jigsaw” is the first project of its kind. How did you go about making each piece work individually as well as being part of a whole, and do you have a favourite “segment” within it?

The way I approached this piece was a little strange compared to the way I usually work, not just because of the jigsaw aspect, but mainly because I envisaged the whole thing pretty quickly as a whole piece. I had a tick list of all things supernatural in mind that I wanted to add. A lot of it was very clear in my mind to begin with.

It’s been an extremely exciting project to work on, because at the very start I didn’t know what kind of beers were to be brewed. Ideas were roughly pencilled in, then added to and clarified if needed when I found out a little more about the beers themselves. 

I tried to zone each of the areas by using variations of colour palettes and I was careful to give a sense of scale by playing about with perspective a little. 

The thing I tried hardest to do was to have just a little glimpse of the joining segment/label on each piece by letting some of the art creep into the corners or edges from the next beer in the series. It’s a fine line to do so without giving too much away, whilst building the excitement and keeping people guessing what’s coming next. 

Usually I like to add directional paths or elements that the eye will naturally catch or follow to keep the viewer looking at the piece for as long as I can. With this piece I found that to be much harder to do, I really had to think about how I could do it for the overall piece, but then how it would work when the labels stood individually. I also wanted areas with loads going on, and then sparser areas that celebrated the colours a little more, the challenge was getting the right balance so the overall piece was still composed nicely. I think I’ve hit that sweet spot quite well.

My favourite segment is “Splash It All Over” – mainly because it changes the scale of everything else and gives the biggest hint to what’s going to come in the last panel. When it was launched I think it did this quite subtly, people realise there’s a hand in there, but your eye is really drawn to the mermaid, I think the hand that holds the glass gets pushed out of your mind. I was listening to a lot of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds when doing the initial sketches; I think the song “Mermaids” influenced this panel. I realised afterwards that the mermaid is a friend of mine and I inadvertently added her. I let her see the artwork shortly after I finished inking to make sure she was alright with it all…for weeks she was asking “When’s my beer coming out? – I want to show my Mum and Dad!”

Which other artists (whether within or outside the beer community) do you most admire?

I like the bold and graphic cutouts and collages of Gilbert & George. Style wise their work is as far away from what I do as you could possibly can get, but there’s something about the bold grids and bright colours that I have always found quite pleasing. 

Audrey Kawasaki is probably my favourite fine artist. I’ve been following her work since my 20’s when I was in graphic design. Her work is mainly oils, painted onto wood so wood grain shows through, it has a very dream like quality to it. (https://www.audkawa.com/)

At the moment I’m really loving Polly Nor’s illustration work, it’s very stylistic and often quite dark, I’ve always been drawn to art that’s a little sinister in some way. Her art is filled with devils, demons and strange slug-like worm creatures. I highly recommend taking a look.

Simon Davis is also a big inspiration for me – He’s created some amazing artwork for comics and graphic novels over the years, my favourite being the artwork he created for “Slaine: The Brutania Chronicles”. He has a very painterly style when compared to other comic book artists, preferring to work with gouache over his ink work, rather than colouring digitally like most modern comic artists. I think it’s that more fine art approach to comic book illustration that I like about what he creates.

There are a few artists in the beer scene I admire: James Yeo over at Left Handed Giant is so prolific, and his style is just up my street. He has a way of using colour and line work  that makes his art seem simple and yet complicated all at once. 

Although more an all round illustrator McBess has done a few beer labels – One for US Brewery Oskar Blues, and their Dale’s Pale Ale Cans – His illustration work is lovely stuff, with a very pen and ink style – I like that he prefers not to use colour at all, it gives his work a real traditional hand drawn on paper feel , even in instances where he has drawn digitally.

Finally… what’s your favourite beer style?

Can I have two? Imperial stout – The thicker, gloopier (is that even a word) and richer the better for me when it comes to an imperial stout.  Also Flanders Red – there’s something about the sourness and that vinous edge that I love in a good Flanders Red. Out of the two styles I find it very hard to choose one or the other, it all depends how I feel that day, however if I ever see Duchesse de Bourgogne or Rodenbach on tap in a pub it’s got to be that. 

Huge thanks to Lewy for taking the time out to chat to us and share an insight into his artistic mind! The remaining three beers of the series are due to be released over the next 6 weeks, so keep a look out for those and keep that jigsaw growing!

Cheers

We’re in celebration mode this month after receiving a total of FIVE awards for our beers in can at the Global Beer Competition 2018, hosted by the Drinks Business magazine.

A gold medal was awarded to our Double IPA, Deliverance, with Voyager IPA and Unbeliever sour taking silver recommendations in the “hop forward” and “speciality” categories respectively. We’re also chuffed to bits that our flagship canned beer Heathen APA received a bronze award along with Lost Souls imperial stout. We’ve been canning for eighteen months now, and to see this level of recognition really does help fuel our desire to continually learn and grow, and keep on releasing a wide variety of tasty treats for you all to enjoy.

If you haven’t had chance to sample all of our award-winning beers, head over to our new online shop where you will find them all excluding Lost Souls – which is sold out for now, but is due to be brewed again in the near future, so watch this space!

A big cheers,

All at Team Abbeydale

Next up in our exciting series of collaboration brews, we are very excited to introduce “Splash It All Over”, our first ever Brut IPA, brewed with the wonderful Haand Bryggeriet, whose brewer Kacper Kulpa joined us all the way from Norway.

The Brut IPA is an emerging beer style in the current UK market, named for its bone dry nature which emulates that found in drinks such as champagne, with the lingo itself swiped from the wine world. These beers tend to be aromatic, with a lovely effervescence which dances across the tongue to work in harmony with the dryness on the palate.

In terms of the recipe, we kept this one fairly simple. We kept the base of the beer relatively straightforward, selecting a low colour malt base, with added rice in the grist to keep the beer light and crisp without the addition of the potential for any further sugars. The brewday itself however required a few amendments to our norm to ensure we were going to hit the brief on this up and coming new style. The main differences being a longer mash stand (120 minutes instead of our usual 75) at a lower temperature (60.5 degrees C instead of around 66) with the addition of the enzyme amyloglucosidase (AMG). This enzyme is capable of breaking down the more complex sugars found in wort which would otherwise not ferment (and as such has for many years been used in the brewing of styles such as imperial stouts, to help avoid them having too high a final gravity and too sweet a flavour). In breaking down the starchier sugar chains, the yeast is able to find more munchies and act upon the wort for longer, thus producing a very low final gravity – we were aiming for 1003.5 and hit 1003.0.

AMG is denatured at high temperatures – as such, some people choose to add it to their wort along with the yeast at the start of fermentation. We took the decision not to do this to avoid the risk of cross contamination, as we have a house yeast which we continually re-use and re-pitch. We were conscious that the enzyme could also act slower than our yeast, and so would have had potential to lead to continued fermentation after packaging and thus have a less stable product in can. The longer mash stand allowed the enzyme to have sufficient time in the right environment (including pH) to cleave as many sugar bonds as we desired, create enough simpler sugars for the type of fermentation we were aiming for and therefore have the effect we were going for, without any added risk.

We co-fermented with Saccharomyces Brux Trois and US-05 which allowed for a low final gravity, another element which helps to obtain the dry character associated with this beer style whilst also adding a hint of fruitiness.

The subtle malt character allows the hops to really shine, and so Splash It All Over has been brewed and copiously dry hopped (at a dry hopping rate of 12g per litre) with Ekuanot, Enigma and Eureka, for a delicate bittering level, a resinous character and a smooth mouthfeel.

The fantastically colourful artwork for this beer has been created by the amazing Lewis Ryan, and forms part of the same series started by Creeping Brett. Keep hold of those can labels as you’ll be starting to see a little puzzle starting to solve itself very soon… big clue below!

Splash It All Over is due to be released in keg and can only (to make sure you’re always getting the characteristic fizz associated with the Brut IPA style) from the 8th October – eager beavers can come to our Tap Takeover and Meet the Brewer event at Tilt in Birmingham this Friday 5th October for the first pour!

Cheers,

Team Abbeydale

Last weekend, 8 of us from the brewery, plus one of our trusty barkeeps from the Devonshire Cat (and a couple of our other halves!), took to the streets of Sheffield to take on the challenge of the Run For All 10km road race in order to raise funds for Cavendish Cancer Care.

For many of the team it was our first ever 10km, with some of us never having run before – more about our motivations for taking this on in this blog post.

And so on a chilly Sunday morning, we apprehensively approached the start line, minds on the long 6.8 miles ahead of us but with the surefire knowledge that we were raising money for such a worthwhile cause and that so many people believed in us!

The run itself is a bit of a blur for us all (excluding the giant hill up Hangingwater Road, which I think is firmly entrenched in all of our minds, and thighs, as I type!) but the atmosphere was absolutely incredible. So many Sheffielders lined the streets to cheer on the runners and it was a genuinely inspiring race to be a part of.

Devonshire Cat superstar Tommy was the first of the team to cross the finish line in an amazing 43 minutes, with almost all of us who followed behind achieving a Personal Best. Of course there was a can of Heathen waiting for us all back at base camp once we’d crossed the finish line, which definitely spurred us on over the last (uphill) kilometre!

We’ve raised over £1250 for Cavendish Cancer Care so far and we’re immensely proud to support such a wonderful cause. For any of you who were waiting to see how we’d do before parting with any of your hard earned cash, we are still accepting donations so please head over to bit.ly/teamabbeydale to help us smash our target even further!

A huge thank you to everyone who has supported us. It really does mean a lot!

Cheers,

Carly, Dan, Laura, Toby, Ethna, Jim, Scott, James, Tommy, Steve and Lucy, aka #TeamAbbeydale!

As a team, here at Abbeydale we obviously love our beer. But it’s not always just about beer. We’re also a big group of foodies, with a fair few cocktail lovers thrown in too.

Our recent Salvation release, inspired by the Espresso Martini, seemed the perfect opportunity to blend together loads of the things we love, and it’s fair to say we’ve had an excellent time conducting plenty of important research. Here’s just a few of our favourite suggestions of alternative ways to imbibe your Salvation stout…

Fully loaded burgers with Salvation caramelised onions

Pop a whole can of the stout in a pan with three chopped red onions and a sprinkle of demerara sugar, and let it all sit for 2 hours for the flavours to combine. Then, bring everything to the boil before allowing it to simmer until the consistency becomes akin to a jam.

We served a hearty dollop of our naughty jam atop beef burgers with melted red Leicester, a fried egg, lettuce, mayo, salt and cracked black pepper and accompanied with a couple of hash browns. Deeeelish.

Espresso Martini stout chocolate brownies

Earlier this month we partnered up with Hathersage Social Club to host a four course beer and food pairing dinner, for which Salvation brownies were the final course. The stout was used in the brownie mix itself, with more used to create a sweet syrupy reduction which was drizzled on top. You can’t go wrong with beer brownies!

Blackberry stout jam

The Hedgerow Preserving Company are based just up the road from us in Sheffield and their delicious pickles, jams and chutneys made using locally sourced produced are absolute cupboard staples for many of us at the brewery. They’ve recently created a blackberry jam with the addition of our new Salvation Espresso Martini – a combination which we initially thought of as a little odd but it totally just works. The beer adds a sumptuous richness to the jam which works superbly alongside the sweet tartness of the berries. With a doorstop wedge of toast and some proper butter, a delicious brewery breakfast! (We also got to sample an apple chutney infused with our “You Scratch My Back” smoked scratching stout, absolutely scrumptious with some strong cheddar.)

And of course we couldn’t write a blog post on what to do with an Espresso Martini stout without rustling up an Espresso Martini with it! Shake together 25ml vodka, 25ml coffee liqueur, 50ml strong espresso and a dash of simple sugar syrup. Strain into a glass and top up with Salvation stout.

(We’d also recommend trying this in a bigger glass to allow more space for your stout top!)

If you have created any dishes using our beers, we’d love to hear them! Please drop an email in to hello@abbeydalebrewery.co.uk and we’ll get them on our blog!

Cheers,

Laura

So with only 2 more relaxing Sundays until #TeamAbbeydale take part in the Jane Tomlinson Sheffield 10K I thought I’d share with you why we’re all taking part.

Since I was little Cavendish Cancer Care has always been the charity that I’d pick to fundraise for, having been introduced by a family friend who worked there. To the point of when a dear friend got a charity place in a marathon and asked who should I run it for? Before he’d even finished the sentence I’d said Cavendish. It will now always be a much bigger part of my life, as in 2015 I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Now I’m back fighting fit I want to push the relationship Abbeydale Brewery has with them and give something back.

It is my belief that we need to raise two things to help a charity not only sustain itself, but to grow; money (of course) and awareness. Which brings us nicely on to the below; excerpts from an interview I gave as part of their “How We Help, Stories” feature. Which is going to be published in full on their website, I chose to get involved as I think it’s vital that people are more aware of it, I was lucky that I already was. You get so much information within those first few weeks, I hope that if someone reads my story it registers on different level in some way.

“Carly was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma aged 26; she came to the Cavendish for sessions of reflexology and healing between having treatment and working.

“I was diagnosed in April 2015, I’d found a lump on my collarbone so I had a few tests and they told me I’d get the results in two to three weeks. I’d convinced myself it couldn’t be anything serious, I’d had a cold so I thought it was just a swollen gland, and I thought if it was serious they wouldn’t leave it two weeks.”

 “It didn’t feel real, it’s almost like it happened to me but it doesn’t feel like it happened to me, almost as if I was watching it.”

“It was a bit of a whirlwind, I’m normally one who likes to be prepared and organised but I didn’t google a single thing. I never read any information on chemo because I thought if it happens, it happens and if it doesn’t then it doesn’t need worrying about.

“I already knew of the Cavendish Cancer Care because one of the therapists, Janet, had been a family friend since I was eight years old. We’d been involved and fundraised for them before, so I came to the Cavendish pretty much straight away when my treatment started.

“I had around six months of chemotherapy followed by three weeks of radiotherapy. My sessions at Cavendish were all about me and keeping my body as healthy as possible through this process. You typically think of someone going through chemo as really sick and nauseous but I only got that towards the end of my treatment. The chemo would shake me up and make me feel a bit woozy but because I interspersed it with my sessions at Cavendish I could physically still do things and it helped keep my energy levels up.

“I’d say making the choice to come to Cavendish and continue working were the best things I ever did, they helped me get through it. Coming to Cavendish was so calming and relaxing; it was never an event or made a big deal of.”

 “Sessions at Cavendish helped me clear my head; although I didn’t feel like I needed counselling I knew that it was available to me or my family and friends. I have a very open relationship with my family and friends and we all have a bit of a dark sense of humour, I sometimes think I was a bit too cavalier with some people in terms of humour and my attitude towards it but I got through it the way I got through it.”

 “I don’t think people realise how valuable Cavendish is. I wasn’t picking between Cavendish and somewhere else to go for respite and rejuvenation, it’s invaluable because there’s nothing else like it.”

Back to the run, I actually found it quite painless to get colleagues to sign up and run with me, I mean I did only give them three options; 1) run it, 2) come down and cheer us on/volunteer or 3) donate!! I felt particularly bad when one of our owners, Sue, donated £100, saying well we’re on holiday so that’s options 1 and 2 out! Thank you again Sue, we’ll take lots of photos.

I had only been working at Abbeydale for a couple of months when I started floating the idea around and therefore didn’t know everyone particularly well/they didn’t know my history so it is true testament to their characters that within a couple of days we had a running team of 5. We’re now up to 10 runners, and training has been incredibly tough… We work in brewery for goodness sake, beer is all around us!

It is on that note that I make a donation plea, no matter the amount everything helps. To support 1500 families per year they need to raise £350,000. Whether you’re donating because of the charity or because you know us and like to see us suffer – we don’t care!! You can donate online via http://bit.ly/teamabbeydale or if you’re around on the day we’re most likely to be in The Devonshire Cat with a pint celebrating and would love to see you!

 

Carly

 

Carly Honeycombe

Events Manager // Communications