Adnams Brewery

We recently visited Adnams brewery in Southwold, home to some of the finest beers ever brewed; and beer is important to me just now because it was one of the things I looked forward to enjoying again when we moved south from Scotland, for the Scots are, in my humble opinion and in general, light years behind the English in their beers.

I enjoyed the tour; it was slick, informative and we weren't hurried - not even when we came to sampling the beers at the end of the two hours. Yet when we left I felt deeply disappointed for, as the sign says in this pictures, a modern brewery is a place where engineers tinker, where art seems to have quit the process. Strangely, good as the beers still taste, I wish I didn't know that they are the product of chemistry.

Nor was it possible to find any sense of English pride. While the water came from England - out of the tap, and after it had been cleansed of chemicals in a process called burtonisation - and the single yeast they use came from another, English, brewery, of the other essential ingredients, the malted barleys and hops, most came from abroad.

I had been to Southwold once before, at a time when I was badly in need of a change of job. I applied for the post of deputy head in what seemed at the time to be a very pleasant little comprehensive school in a very pleasant little seaside town. Having returned to the place, I'm a little relieved that I didn't get the job.