Drinking And Fundraising At The Saddleworth Beer Walk
Stopping the traffic on Wool Road.
Saddleworth’s biggest pub crawl, the annual Beer Walk, has been taking place, with hundreds of drinkers in fancy dress marching around our area raising money for charity.
Here’s just a selection of some of the pictures taken by Lorraine Jones when the crowd reached the fourth of ten beer stations on the route, at The Navigation on Wool Road in Dobcross. The course starts in Greenfield, and also takes in Uppermill, Dobcross village, Delph, Diggle and finally Uppermill again.
It took more than an hour for the huge crowd to pass by. The agreed 3pm cut off at the Navigation was extended by half an hour by the organisers, the Saddleworth Round Table, but even then they had to stop serving before everyone had made it through.
From small beginnings almost four decades ago, the Beer Walk has become of the highlights of the Saddleworth summer calendar, with tens of thousands of pounds raised each year for all kinds of good causes. This year’s theme is Crawl Of Duty: Black Hops, after video game Call Of Duty: Black Ops, which meant there were plenty of drinkers dressed up as soldiers this year.
I caught up with a few people who were clad in outfits paying tribute to Saddleworth’s own top TV astrophysicist, Professor Brian Cox. One of the group, Uppermill business owner Nick Watts, said: “It’s lots of fun, there’s amazing people here, it’s just so good!”
You can hear our chat by clicking on the box below:
Look out for more pictures of the Beer Walk on Saddleworth News over the coming days. If you took part, see if you can spot yourself! And if you’ve got photos of your own that you’d like to share, please e-mail them to editor@saddleworthnews.com
More information about the event is available from the official website here.
The Professor Brian Cox Appreciation Society.
Fancy dress was essential.
A key ingredient of any Beer Walk.
The crowd swarms up Wool Road, heading for The Navigation.
Author: Jude Gidney - Editor
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Looks like this a much better place to watch the walkers, we were in Greenfield and all we could see was a huge swarm of people with the odd tall person in costume stand out from the rest of the crowd- it was so busy and overcrowded. Left a bit disappointed and i guess some of the fundraiser’s may feel the same as they just couldn’t get to the spectators to collect…. because is this not the whole point of it? It used to be.
We joined the walk for part of it and it was mainly a good natured event. Thank goodness the rain held off this year. Friends and family have joined us in the past because it’s such a unique day that brings in a lot of money for charity.
We left the Church to walk up to the Cross Keys for a pint – the Church was overwhealmed and crowd management wasn’t its best. Unfortunately it seems the Beerwalk is not welcomed by many. Despite being in everyday clothing and sober, we were told the pub ‘was closed for a private event’. People were cearly having a drink on the terrace. On the phone I was later told they ‘didn’t want that kind in the pub’. As we walked back down to Uppermill parents looked at walkers with frightened horror as if they were about to wreak havoc on their perfect neighbourhood. Not really in the spirit of things.
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[…] few photographs taken at the Saddleworth Beer Walk – with audio footage (courtesy of Richard Jones of the Saddleworth News ) – taken with iphones and under the influence of a few beers – so not up to normal standard. I […]