ALAN MARRIOTT WRITES: THERE are things in life you don’t realise you are missing out on.

I still steadfastly refuse to ‘enjoy’ Queen, Coldplay or Phil Collins and I will have no truck with musical theatre. But it was an error of omission which, until this year, had seen me fail to take part in Beer and Buses.

Thankfully a bunch of reprobates of my acquaintance from the West Wight corrected this oversight as they dragged me kicking and screaming down to Newport Quay on the sunny Saturday.

I should explain the Magnificent Seven from Totland and Freshwater (plus a foolhardy lady called Ali) are known to like a pint or ten but I never had them down as public transport enthusiasts.

So it was sheer happenstance key organiser and real ale connoisseur Tim Marshall lived up to his surname by ushering us onto a London Transport double decker going to Ryde.

Some of the mates hale from the capital and were soon chinwagging about the 321 to Kilburn or some suburb. They then made the mistake of trying to out-Cockney the clippie be commenting on the bus being a classic Routemaster. You might as well have questioned the marital status of his parents, but he recovered his composure to tell them it was NOT a Routemaster but a smaller, earlier version of the London red bus.

We reached the Ryde Bus Museum to find it packed with punters  going hither and thither but thirst was getting to us and we made our way to the Railway pub, which had done a fantastic job of laying on at least ten ales and ciders, which could be sipped in third-pint snifters, carefully selected by my personal beer sommelier and group leader, Steve, (the nicest man in Totland but also the thirstiest). We missed out on the Bloodstone Morris performance as we made our way via another bus to the lovely Village Inn in Bembridge, where they had put on a beer festival.

By this point, things were getting a little hazy and we went off piste to return to Newport in a taxi for fantastic music courtesy of Donal and Charlie O’Riain at Quay Arts, and another pint at the Ale House, where I chatted to a couple who had brought a bus down from Durham for the weekend (hate to think of the fare!) while my mate and landlord Rod told me he thought 15,000 people had taken part.

I have rambled long enough, but my point is this was one of the most wonderful weekends you could imagine. The atmosphere was friendly, bus bods and other volunteers tremendously knowledgeable and the IW’s beleaguered licensed trade had pulled out all the stops to make the most of this manna from heaven.

Cheers for the beers (and buses)!