Pub Crawls
A popular pastime when pubs were more plentiful and there was little in the way of alternative forms of entertainment, the halcyon days of the classic British pub crawl have now long gone.
My first experience of a true pub crawl was in my late teens during a summer camping holiday with the Air Training Corps, a sort of Boy Scout movement for those more interested in aeroplanes than woodcraft. The squadron was spending a week at an RAF base near the Yorkshire market town of Beverley and on Saturday a bus took us into the town centre for a night out. Just outside Beverley is a horse racing track and in those days whenever there was a race meeting many thousands of visitors would arrive. In order to cope with this huge influx of thirsty punters, over time more and more pubs were opened along the High Street until, when us cadets arrived on the scene, there was something like 30-plus drinking establishments in less than half a mile! In our youthful naivety we decided we were going visit every single pub that night… I cannot remember exactly how many we did get to or the number of drinks I had – or even how bad my hangover was the next day – but it was certainly a memorable experience. One curiosity in Beverley was a pub – I’ve forgotten its proper name – that all the locals called ‘The Push’. Enquiring about this peculiar nomenclature that didn’t seem to bear any relation to the name displayed outside, I was told that some years earlier the sign had fallen down and wasn’t replaced for quite a while. During the signboard’s lengthy absence, the only identifying feature on the building’s facade was the front door with a large brass plate that had the word ‘Push’ engraved on it, so that’s what everyone called the pub and the name stuck, even after the proper sign was re-erected! Since that initiation into the ritual of the pub crawl I have since taken part in many similar excursions, but never have I found anywhere with the concentration of boozers that once existed in Beverley. However, there are two other pub crawls that particularly stand out. Much later in life, when I was employed as a Project Engineer by a multi-national corporation, our factory in West London was visited by a group of engineers from a German machine manufacturer. As they were staying at a nearby hotel I was instructed by the Sales Director to look after them that night. When I asked the three men what they would like to do, the senior engineer replied:“We have heard so much about your British pubs, can you show us some of them?”
This was in the days before breathalyser tests and strict drink driving laws, so that evening I arrived at the hotel in my car to pick them up. Our first stop was The Master Robert on the Great West Road in Hounslow, a pub named after a famous racehorse, where each of them quaffed a pint of Fuller’s Extra Special Bitter (5.5%) with gusto. We then moved on a few miles to the Express Tavern situated at the northern end of Kew Bridge over the River Thames. This time the tipple was a bitter named Bass (4.7%) which also met with approval. Crossing over to the south side of the Thames we visited Ye White Hart in Barnes to sample Young’s Special Bitter (4.6%) and after a couple more stops we ended up in the Duke’s Head at Putney.
The beer was again Young’s Special Bitter but the undoubted hit of the evening was a plate of fairly ordinary bread rolls filled with slices of cheese. When I poured the Germans into the hotel lobby later on they were still enthusing about the rolls and their appreciation was repeated at our factory meeting the following day. While this pub crawl earned me plenty of brownie points with the director, I had a hell of job getting my expenses for the outing accepted by the accounts department! But the most extraordinary pub crawl came about when my wife was working for an American medical products company. The UK office was hosting a conference which was being attended by managers from all over Europe and her boss decided that they would organise a pub crawl around London for the delegates. Because there were too many people for one group, they were split into several smaller parties.
For a few joyous weeks my part in the exercise was to spend time each night travelling around London on the Underground sampling the pubs near various stations and mapping out different routes. Imagine it, actually being paid to go out to a pub and drink beer – sheer heaven! In the meantime, my wife was busy contacting all the European offices requesting that the conference delegates supplied their hat sizes, which caused no end of confusion in some countries as you might expect.
