Quote Originally Posted by oldboots View Post
Post #2


Stripping out the geography arguments etc, the list (mainly dis'd) of suggestions is so far:

Loughborough
Newark
Lichfield
Norwich
Stourbridge
Stamford
Bridgnorth
Northampton
Kettering
Grantham
Cambridge
Peterborough
Ludlow
Kidderminster
Lincoln
Shrewsbury
Leamington, Warwick, Kenilworth as one.
Nice job putting that lot together!

I've been to all of those bar Stourbridge, Stamford and the united boroughs of Leamington, Warwick, Kenilworth. (The last named having had their credentials quite severely questioned above, so I wouldn't want to put them forward for a group crawl, though may still do it myself.)

I would say that there are travel objections that could be raised with regards to most of these - we are talking, after all, about some of the smaller towns in the midlands and (in the cases of Peterborough, Cambridge, Norwich, Stamford and Lincoln) places that are usually considered to be in the East rather than the Midlands (#geographygalore).

I've never done a proper visit to Shrewsbury, i.e. one that is purely for the purpose of visiting a large number of pubs, so would like to take that one on.

I tend to agree with others that (in my experience) the following are a bit short of a reasonable number of decent pubs for a visit of our sort: Loughborough, Lichfield, Bridgnorth, Kettering, Grantham, Peterborough (without doing quite a bit of walking), Ludlow, Kidderminster.

I'm inclined to think that, transport objections put to one side for a minute, the cathedral cities of Norwich, Lincoln and Peterborough would be suitable targets. The more easily accessible towns of Shrewsbury, Northampton and Newark could also be worthy of consideration. (I think somebody made the case for Stourbridge in another thread or possibly this one, so I would be grateful if someone could link to it or repeat the argument in response.)

So how about whittling the list down to these seven for a poll:

Lincoln
Newark
Northampton
Norwich
Peterborough
Shrewsbury
Stourbridge