The Great Inter-County Pub Crawl

[Conrad]

Looking forward to hearing the reports on this, it is a quite extraordinary effort, the starting time alone is enough to scare me, let alone the quantity of beer.

[hopwas]

Brilliant, although you do realise you won't get a beer in 'Spoons before 9am.

My own plans to do Brum (as well as everything else I had planned this weekend) have all gone A over T for varying reasons so I can only marvel in jealousy at your efforts and await a full report.

I had a crafty pint at Silk Kite BEFORE 9am. Barmaid took pity on me after pleading with her..

[Millay]

Right, I suppose it’s about time I reported back on this, I’ve had a day for both my body to recover and for my mind to remember what happened. I now just need to decipher my scrawled notes.

The day started at 05:15 when I left home and tested out the claim that McDonalds open at 5am. Well they do but they when I eventually spotted a member of staff they seemed pretty surprised that they actually had a customer at that time of the morning. I did consider ordering a Whammy Burger in the style of Michael Douglas in Falling Down but thought the comedy nuance probably wouldn’t be appreciated, so settled for a Sausage & Egg McMuffin and an orange juice. Despite the early hour I was pleased to see that the McDonalds indoctrination process was still effective as I was asked ‘do you want a hash brown with that’.

On to the train station and I find to my horror that the 05:53 train is not showing on the departure screens, is this thing going to fail at the first hurdle? There is a special timetable in place today (when isn’t there) but I’d checked and that train was definitely on there. I ask a member of London Midland staff if the train is running and he says “I hope so, I’m catching that one myself, they‘ve probably just screwed the screens up”. With spirits slightly lifted I head for the platform where I think it would arrive and it duly does - the Great Inter County Pub Crawl is on timetable.

We reach Hemel Hempstead where I am due to meet Peter, my crawling companion for the day. I don’t see him on the platform, which is a bit worrying. Just as we’re pulling out and I’m looking through the timetable for a train that Peter might be able to get to catch me up somewhere my phone rings and rather breathless Peter asks me which carriage I’m in. When he finds me and gets his breath back he tells me that he dragged his wife out of bed, drove like a madman to the station, jumped out of the car leaving her in the passenger seat in her nightclothes and with a Herculean effort hurled himself onto the train just as the doors were closing. Welcome to the pub crawl mate, I never said it would be easy!!

[Millay]

The journey to Milton Keynes gives Peter time to recover and we arrive in the land of the concrete cows on time at 06:40. This allows us to take a leisurely stroll up the concrete and glass thoroughfare that is Midsummer Boulevard and we arrive at some sort of glass and metal structure, rather reminiscent of the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, that turns out to be Wetherspoons. We sit outside for a while and enter dead on 7am, where they seem just as surprised to see us as the guy at McDonalds did. Our request for a couple of halves of Salem Porter were politely refused as they informed us they didn’t serve alcohol until 9am, so we settled for an orange juice and a coke. Left at 07:10 to walk back down to the station where we just caught the 07:23 (the fact that these Great Escape tickets don’t work at electronic barriers needs to be factored into the planning for any similar endeavours). The first county Buckinghamshire had been successfully negotiated.

[Millay]

The next county is Warwickshire and we arrive at Rugby at 08:04. After consulting the Google map I’d brought with me I set off purposefully in what I believe to be the general direction of the Wetherspoons. Peter trustingly follows me, clearly thinking I know where I’m going! I always thought this stop was going to be a bit of a challenge and it took us longer to find the Rupert Brook than I envisaged, but find it we did. We only spent around 5 minutes in here, with Peter spending 4 ½ of those minutes in the Gents, he did however have the decency to leave the money for the round before he disappeared. Still no beer but then again we didn’t really have time. If we were going to catch the next train we needed a quick route march back to the station, not helped by the fact it had started raining by now. Luckily there were no barriers to negotiate and despite initially heading for the wrong platform we managed to catch the 08:37 and had ticked off our second county.

[Millay]

We had about 30 minutes at Birmingham but rather than a dash to the Briar Rose we decided to have a healthy breakfast at the Pasty Shop (taking advantage of the BITE Card discount) before catching the 09:49 to Worcester. We arrived at 10:31 and it was hammering down with rain so quickly ran (well as much as I am able to run these days) to the Postal Order. The first pints of the day were had here, Goffs Galahad for me and Brains Rev James for Peter . We’d ticked of the third county of Worcestershire but there was no time to hang around as the next train on the schedule was the 11:02 to Cheltenham Spa, so we rushed back to the station.

[Millay]

And this, dear reader, is where things started to go a bit wrong, well it was inevitable really. As the train pulled in it was announced as the First Great Western service to Gloucester and I realised that the tickets weren’t valid on FGW trains. We could either risk it, buy another ticket or give up on doing Cheltenham.

We had plenty of time to debate this as some platform cabaret had been laid on for us.First we had the guard hollering at a young girl with a large suitcase to get on the train, and to his credit Peter did go and offer his help. She seemed to be waiting for an old guy on crutches to get off first but when she finally boarded the doors closed and the train readied itself to pull out. It was then that the afore-mentioned guy banged on the door, shouted to the guard that he had a rucksack on board and hurled one of his crutches to the floor as the train pulled out, screaming obscenities towards the guard of the type that frankly I wouldn’t have expected from the older generation. I think it was something along the lines of ‘My ing rucksack is on there, what the am I supposed to do now, it’s got all my ing walking gear in it, you’ve ruined my whole ing holiday’. He was standing among four or five other bags and rucksacks and the thing that amazed us more than his language was why a septuagenarian on crutches would embark on a walking holiday with so much luggage.

After a bit of debate about whether the guy was actually trying to get off the train or to board it, as Peter insisted, we thought we should reflect on our current situation and decide what we were going to do now. At least this episode had taken the attention away from what had been a piss-poor bit of planning and research on my part . In my defence I have since found that the London Midland Worcester to Gloucester service was only discontinued in December 2009. I wasn’t too bothered about missing out Cheltenham anyway as the thought of a 17 minute dash to the pub and back for the next train wasn’t particularly inviting.

[Millay]

We decided to do the next county on the schedule, which was Herefordshire, and the little village of Colwall. We spotted a train going part of the way, to Malvern Link, so we decided to catch that and have a look around to see if there was a pub close to the station. There wasn’t and it was still lashing down with rain so we hung around for the 11:40 train going to Colwall where we arrived a few minutes later and found the Crown Inn. They didn’t open until midday but took pity on us waiting in the rain and opened the doors early. Nice pub this, friendly service, clean and tidy, two bars, pool table. The beer selection reflected the fact that it is tied to Enterprise, GK IPA, Abbot and Bombardier. The Abbot had clearly gone but was quickly replaced with a decent pint of Bombardier and we also took the opportunity to grab some lunch, scampi & chips for Peter and a tasty pasta meatballs dish for me. Suitably fortified, and with the rain abating a little we caught the 13:04 train back to Worcester. A text exchange with some mates at Lords confirmed that there had been no play in the Test Match and it was still raining there, never mind, they’ll be in a bar somewhere, better than spending all day sitting on trains anyway .

[Millay]

13:22 back in Worcester and having missed out Gloucestershire we were now about an hour ahead of schedule. As the rain had stopped I took the opportunity to introduce Peter to one of my favourite pubs in Worcester, The Plough. Most people who have visited this place will have gone away with fond memories, it’s what pubs of old were all about, good beer and good conversation. Peter had the Millstones True Grit and I had the Malvern Black Pear . Unlike time in this place we couldn’t stand still, I wanted to do the Dragon Inn as well before leaving but again underestimated the walk. We grabbed quick halves in here, another Millstones for Peter, something with Vale in the title I think, and a half of Alcazar for me from a brewery I’d never heard of before, the Little Ale Cart brewery . We were probably only in the Dragon for 5-6 minutes before rushing back to the station for the 14:22 train to Droitwich Spa.

[Millay]

Now, I had Droitwich down as qualifying as a stop in the ‘county’ of the West Midlands but good old Wiki tells me that it’s actually in Worcestershire, but also in the ‘region’ of the West Midlands, so I’m a bit confused. Anyway, we arrived in whatever county we were in just after 14:30 and were in the Westcroft Arms about 10 minutes later. 20 minutes later we were out again after a couple of pints. Peter had the only cask beer Bombardier, I played it safe with a Guinness , neither were particularly good, and may even have contributed to Peter’s continuing frequent trips to the Gents. Nice enough pub though well decorated and they even had some (I’ll add some photos to this report at some stage). Plus someone there seemed to have an obsession with Marilyn Monroe judging by all the photos on the walls.

Off to the Riflemans Arms next for another 20 minute slurp, in this case we both went for the Ringwood Boondoggle while watching the start of the Millwall v Swindon play-off final. More Marilyn Monroe photos in here, strange place Droitwich. This inexorable journey then continued with the 15:33 train to Birmingham New Street arriving at 16:15. Just time for a quick half in the Shakespeare on the station to formally tick off the West Midlands, in case Droitwich didn‘t qualify, and see that there was some play in the Test Match. The 16:33 train beckoned, and we were off again.