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Cheese Fest

Posted by Dan (Sub-Editor) from Cardiff - Published on 26/09/2009 at 00:00
0 comments » - Tagged as Food & Drink

  • cheese

Cheese Poisoning.  It might not receive as much attention as Swine Flu, but visitors to The Great British Cheese Festival can certainly confirm its existence.  And, if my bowels are to be trusted, it's equally as dangerous.

That's right: I said Cheese Festival.  Held in the grounds of Cardiff Castle, it is a gathering featuring everything from a marquee and bandstand to fancy dress and customised vehicles devoted to something most people are more likely to put in a sandwich than follow around on tour.  I'll admit I was sceptical about the idea, particularly when I saw that tickets were £8.50.  No one's going to pay that just to look at a bunch of cheeses, I thought.  But, as I approached Cardiff Castle at lunchtime today, it was apparent I had underestimated the enticing power of cheese: the queue was so long that by 2pm staff had resorted to selling Sunday's tickets in a bid to get people to leave the queue and return tomorrow, despite the festival not ending for another four hours.  I never knew cheese could be so popular.

I opted for a combined ticket (£13.50) which allowed access inside the castle and keep in addition to the castle grounds.  I chose it not only because there are some truly breathtaking rooms to admire in the castle, but also because it meant I could enter through the gift shop and avoid the mile-long queue.  Gallantly weaving my way past Daleks and Welsh Love Spoons, I crossed the drawbridge and climbed the keep.  When I reached the top I looked out over The Great British Cheese Festival and cast my eyes upon the magnificent sight of a thousand cheese lovers who had made it past the epic queue outside and were now standing together in... another queue.  One even longer than the first.  Arse.

It turned out that, while there were a number of tents and stalls throughout the castle grounds, only the big tent at the end contained the free cheese.  Not feeling overly inclined to join the line, I decided to see what the other tents had to offer.  They were all devoted to Welsh produce and filled with that delectable fresh smell that is distinctly lacking when you buy fresh food at a supermarket.  There was no need for signs; you only needed to bring your nose near the entrance of a tent and you immediately knew whether it contained fresh meat, home-brewed ale or a tower of Welsh Cakes.  While each pleasant in their own way, and offering a range of healthy and no doubt delicious products, these tents seemed mainly tailored towards the sort of people so patriotic that they're happy to pay upwards of a pound (on top of the £8.50 entry fee) for a cocktail sausage or a dribble of authentic Welsh water.  I appreciate that it's helping local business and that not every stall was to blame (the Welsh Cakes in particular were delightful, and at £1 a pack come highly recommended) but if you brought a family of five to this event your wallet would be tearful enough covering the entry fees, without also spending £20 on a handful of nibbles for everyone to munch on while they wait in the enormous queue for the cheese tent.

Outside the tents and with slightly less extortionate pricing were a few stalls which appeared at first glance to be selling hamburgers.  Closer inspection revealed them to be buns containing a range of fillings from minced pork with apple sauce to black beans and blue cheese.  Certainly not to everyone's tastes, but then if you don't fancy trying something a little different you probably shouldn't be at a food festival.  Anticipating I had about a 25-minute wait before I made it into the cheese tent, I grabbed a shredded-pork-with-apple burger and joined the queue.

As I approached the entrance I became increasingly aware of what can only be described as 'the overwhelming smell of more cheese than you can possibly begin to imagine' an aroma diluted only by the hundreds of tourists and Cardiffians with cocktail sticks, shuffling very slowly around the marquee and murmuring things about Red Leicester.  Upon entering the Great Cheese Hall Of Cardiff I was handed a cocktail stick: an invitation to stuff as many tiny pieces of cheese into my mouth as I could manage.  I looked around.  From sensuous and satisfying to the downright bizarre, if it had the word 'cheese' in the title it was there: bacon cheese; honey cheese; onion cheese; cranberry cheese; cheese dips; cheese crackers; cheese and chutney; mouth-burning chilli cheese; mature cheese; vintage cheese; tough cheese; crumbly cheese; stomach-churning gooey cheese; blue cheese; green cheese; orange cheese; white cheese and occasionally even some cheese flavoured cheese.*  I'd queued and paid £8.50 to get inside this tent, and I was determined to get my money's worth.

An hour later and I had visited every stall and sampled every cheese on display.  My tongue was an amalgam of wood smoke and mould, and I suspect the cocktail stick now housed its own ecosystem.  As I trudged in a dairy-induced daze towards the exit I suddenly remembered something... the whole reason I had come to this bizarre place: the Cheddarnaut!  {If you don't know what the Cheddarnaut is, be sure to read the single most amazing piece of journalism ever featured on theSprout}  How could I have missed it??  The intergalactic cheese was supposed to be the star attraction!  Ignoring the growing cheese-cramps in my stomach I ran around the marquee in search of this almighty, cheesy space being to absolutely no avail.  It definitely wasn't in any of the other tents, and I was sure I'd have noticed an extraterrestrial cheese floating around the field while I'd been in the queue.  I grabbed a member of staff and demanded to know where the “space cheese” was and, after giving me some rather odd looks, she produced a walkie-talkie and asked it whether anyone knew what I was on about.  My heart sank as the words “It's been put away” crackled out in reply.

Journalists are basically thieves with tape recorders so I wasn't about to let a little thing like that stop me from seeing the Cheddarnaut.  I did some snooping and, with the help of an accomplice (a nice chap called Duncan), I was able to sneak backstage to interview it.  Sadly, as is often the case when you finally meet your heroes, I couldn't help but feel underwhelmed.  In my mind I had built the Cheddarnaut up to be the Admiral Adama of cheesekind.  In reality it was small, quiet and mouldy.  The remnants of its spacecraft were more 'Blue Peter' than 'NASA' and the fact that it was wrapped in a Morrisons bag rather than a cryostasis chamber did detract somewhat from the awe-inspiring wonder**.  But all the same, it was a triumphant end to a very filling day.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have cheese clogging every pore in my body so I'm going to lie down and have some very weird dreams.

* theSprout will award £10 to the first person in Cardiff able to read that list aloud without making a mistake.  Upload footage to YouTube to be considered.

** I found the cheese perched on top of the 'spacecraft'; it's entirely possible I just picked up someone's lunch.  In which case the Cheddarnaut could still be out there, in all its cheesy glory.

IMAGE: Patrick Hoesly


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