In Glen Fyne, on one specific Saturday morning, a steady stream of hikers walked north along a narrow road past deer enclosures, aggressively beautiful hills, and mountains resembling old men made of grass and sedimentary rock. The sight could only mean one thing: It was river pints time.
The team behind Fyne Ales’ annual festival, FyneFest, only opens the Walkers’ Bar for one day. An hour’s hot and gentle hike from the festival site—a trout’s leap from the beautiful and bountiful Loch Fyne—along the River Fyne, it takes the form of an unassuming tented bar next to a tumbledown bothy, in the lee of mountains peppered with crags and house-sized boulders, peaks carved by a thousand phthalo thunderstorms.
Unlike my first FyneFest in 2019—the year it rained and didn’t stop—this year was all thirst-making heat and cloudless-skies-and-heatstroke sunshine. No sooner had we reached the bothy and small bridge than I slowly descended into the cool, refreshing waters of the gently bumbling river.
A pint (later, pints) of still, juicy, cool cider in hand—as I waddled and slipped across a riverbed worn smooth with time and left slick with algae, and let stress, ache, and an abundance of heat leave my skin—and it was hard to imagine a better place in the world for that moment, with those friends. Like river nymphs we bathed and drifted and splashed, only worried about dunking the dogs to keep them cool, and when the next pints would arrive.
Words + PhotoLily Waite