A TROON beer festival has been cancelled because of Covid concerns, but that hasn’t stopped organisers arranging an alternative for thirsty revellers.

The Ayrshire Real Ale Festival were due to host their event over the course of the last weekend. Normally they would expect 2,500 punters, all congregating in Troon.

That would prove difficult to do this year, with the requirement for vaccine certification for events over a certain size and so they instead asked punters to go out and support local pubs.

A festival spokesperson said that they encouraged “everyone to go out at some point over what would have been the festival weekend and support your local pub, whether that be in Troon, elsewhere in Ayrshire, or indeed further afield.”

But as well as that, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has organised a replacement for three festivals that were due to take place.

CAMRA’s Autumn Ale by Rail Trail will see would-be festival attendees do a pub crawl by train, instead of all gathering in the same place at the same time.

The crawl takes in Glasgow, Paisley, and Troon on October 22-24.