Hive Mind Brewery / Wye Valley Meadery is a new venue to me in Caldicot. It is located on the Severnbridge Industrial Estate, not far from the back entrance to Caldicot Castle, near the Mitel Roundabout. It is open as an entertainment venue on Friday and Saturday nights and has a licensed bar with decent prices. The other part of its business is to sell wholesale alcohol that it produces on premises: traditional mead and craft beer. After my first visit I was very impressed by the establishment. The owners seemed young, dynamic and friendly and it really is a hidden gem in Caldicot’s nightlife.
The reason I popped down here was to see my old mate, Ben The Hat, do a live performance. Ben is a quite a talented (young) singer-songwriter. He is Caldicot’s very own Ed Sheeran, just better looking then Ed and has a bit more talent too. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds on Saturday, 17th August 2023 at Caldicot Castle is the big event of the summer – everyone here is buzzing around eager and ready to see the sky blue star set our little Welsh village alight with his ‘Council Skies’. I managed to catch Ben performing Oasis ‘Supersonic’, a song he’d been learning all week. It’s on the embedded youtube video on this page.
At Wye Valley Meadery, they had some nice tables and chairs set up outside which was great in the hot summer sun. There was also a nice Malaysian street food restaurant set up, The Roti Shack. They are based in Caerleon and go all over the area and are looking for new business too so if you are an event organiser run any festivals or community events then give The Roti Shak a call. Beautiful food, accessible prices and friendly people. I had a nice little Roti Bread and Malaysian curry sauce for less than a fiver and it did its job and lined my stomach and helped ease the Mead going down.
I bumped into super rock chick Liz Goo (of Jools Holland fame) and Nathan who seems a nice bloke and likes hunting stags. It was good to catch up and luckily for me, as I was zipping off to a gig and was sort of stuck for a lift, after a few nice traditional Mead bevvies, Liz drove me back to Shuffle Towers to pick up my records and head off to the Rogiet Rave….
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