Peterborough Beer Festival: 20 photos show thousands packing out beer tent on first day of action

Peterborough’s forty-fourth annual beer festival has been officially opened by the city’s mayor – with 3,600 customers on the first day of trade.

After 11 months of preparation, organisers were incredibly pleased to welcome huge numbers through their doors.

Peterborough Beer Festival, which hosts 150 breweries, is expected to sell 56,000 pints of cask conditioned ales this year.

Estimates suggest punters will have more than 500 beers to choose from, 350 of which will be draft beers, with the remainder being bottled beers and key kegs. Oh and don’t forget the vast selection of gins, wines, and ciders.

Raeanne Elliott, the festival’s publicity chief, said: "It went brilliantly from our perspective, it went really great. The turnout was similar to the same opening day last year - and we think that's really positive given the current climate. The weather was lovely, too.

"During the trade session we saw about 2,000 people, which started at 3pm before opening to the general public at 5.30pm.”

As well as pulling in greater numbers of punters than CAMRA’s flagship Great British Beer Festival in London, Peterborough Beer Festival also boasts the longest bar in the UK.

The 105-metre-long behemoth is 40 metres longer than its nearest rival, the 65-metre-long tiddler at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

Take a look through the following 20 images, taken by photographer Paul Marriott on open day: