Their crawl is very like my first thoughts - albeit theirs goes anticlockwise round the city!
I tend to agree with John that the Farmers Boy is not worth bothering with (see
my review of 26th February 2015 and his of a couple of days later). I think the Fighting Cocks and the walk through the park to the Six Bells are worth doing, though. Perhaps we need to separate out the "must does" from the "wild cards".
How about this:
Meet at
Wetherspoon - Waterend Barn
Boot [wild card:
Kings Arms ]
Peahen [wild card:
White Hart]
White Hart Tap [wild card:
Beehive]
Garibaldi [wild card:
White Lion]
Hare & Hounds [wild card:
Goat]
Fighting Cocks
Six Bells [wild card:
Rose & Crown]
Lower Red Lion [wild card:
Verulum Arms]
Farriers Arms [off piste:
Craft & Cleaver ]
Blacksmiths [wild card:
Cock]
Mermaid
That's 12 pubs on the central crawl, plus eight wild cards and one which I've designated "off piste". (This would have qualified as a "Full Alan Winfield", but he took me to task about that after York, because he now aims to do 22 pubs in a day, not 21.)
Anyone who doesn't fancy the
walk through the park to the Six Bells can go direct from the Fighting Cocks to the Lower Red Lion,
past the abbey.
I haven't checked the opening times for any of these, by the way - I know the Hare & Hounds is a late opener in the early part of the week but is OK Fridays. The Mermaid is about 8 to 10 minutes from the station, according to Google maps, so seems a suitable last pub.