Michael Scott

Between Christmas and New Year, my friend Matt and I set off on a “grand adventure” that usually involves beer, and usually involves travel. We had a very grand plan ready for this year: a 1200-mile pub and ale tour of Britain that would take in pubs in Leeds, London, Inverness, York, and Edinburgh. Travel would be by train (including the overnight sleeper service, the Caledonian Sleeper). The route was similar to day 6 and day 7 of the round Britain tour that I did with my dad in May. Booking in advance, this set us back £137 each.

Matt lives in Düsseldorf and the severe winter weather meant that he couldn’t get over for the adventure. So this year, I was joined by Richard.

We set off from Leeds before 11.00, so there was not much scope for a drink in Leeds as most of the pubs were shut. We therefore settled for the station’s Wetherspoon pub, where we drank Santa Pants from Elland Brewery (we opted for Leeds Pale first, but it was the end of the barrel and tasted foul). The Santa Pants however was far too sweet and was indeed a little pants.

We used the Good Beer Guide on the journey to London to plan a seven mile walking route between Kings Cross and Euston that would take us up Grays Inn Road, through Clerkenwell, down Fleet Street, across to Waterloo and back up Tottenham Court Road to the newly-opened Euston Tap.

We found the first five pubs, The Gunmakers (Clerkenwell), Old Mitre (Hatton Garden), Hand and Shears (Smithfield), Castle (Fleet Street) and Devereux (Temple) completely shut up. In fact, these parts of the city were completely deserted. I know it was a Bank Holiday, but we were really surprised to see parts of the capital city resembling scenes from 12 Days Later (without the zombies).

We eventually arrived at the Black Friar (Blackfriars) for a welcome pint of Sharp’s Doom Bar. The pub was a vision in carved wood and dark, cosy atmosphere.

We moved on via a rubbish non-pub whose name I forget, past Somerset House where an outdoor skating rink was buzzing with life:

We arrived at the Harp (Covent Garden), a tiny, full, buzzing city pub full of life. Dark Star Hophead is one of my favourite pints. It used to be a regular at the Junction, the best pub in Baildon, so it was a taste of home!

The Cross Keys, also in the Covent Garden area, is full to the rafters of stuff. It was another full pub, but we got a seat to rest on while drinking our wonderful Brodies IPA and gazing around at the thousands of bric-a-brac items that cover every available space in the pub.

We walked onwards to Soho next, past the art deco looking Foyle’s bookshop:

We enjoyed a pint of Yorkshire’s finest, Tim Taylor’s Landlord, in the Dog and Duck. There was a great atmosphere here, with friendly staff and customers.

We started our walk back to Euston via the Hope in Fitzrovia near the BT tower. The Flowers IPA was OK, but the pub lacked the busy atmosphere of the previous ones.

It was a challenge finding the Euston Tap, a pub that I really wanted to see, but when we eventually did find it, the tiny building was closed. This was a down point to the end of the day.

At Euston, we boarded the 21.15 ScotRail Caledonian Sleeper bound for Inverness. We had a berth aboard, which was the tiniest room I’ve ever seen. There was just enough room for the two bunks and the sink. There was no room to pass each other without one of us getting onto the bed. There was, of course, plenty of room for drinking the bottled ales we’d just bought in M&S on the station:

We awoke at about 7.00 the following morning. We were travelling through the total darkness of the early morning Cairngorms. The attendant brought us our morning coffee at 8.00 and told us we were running an hour late. This was a good thing, as it enabled us to catch the sunrise from the train and see some of the beautiful landscape we were travelling through:

We eventually got to Inverness at about 9.30. We’d originally planned to stay four hours and grab a pint in one of the pubs there. We walked around the city and along the banks of the river Ness, crossing the river a few times on the many bridges, gazing off to the distant hazy hills:

After walking around for three or so miles, we decided to head back to Edinburgh a couple of hours earlier than planned, so were on the train again in time for lunch. The glasses came out and we had a few bottles of ale that Richard had bought back in Leeds. We played cards and gazed out at the countryside of the Cairngorms. We passed bright plains:

The next minute, it was swollen rivers and distant mountains:

And the next, everything was white as the world became enveloped in snow and fog, just the occasional detail standing out of the whiteness:

We arrived in Edinburgh with four hours at our disposal. We went straight up the steps to the small, cosy, friendly pub, the Halfway House. The Harviestoun Bitter and Twisted is another favourite of mine and it tasted incredible in this lovely pub.

We took a stroll around the damp but buzzing streets of Edinburgh towards Grassmarket and the one-roomed, large, Bow Bar on West Bow. We opted for pints of Deuchars IPA, one of the best ales money can buy. Richard loved it as ever, but I thought it didn’t taste its best on this occasion. I took some photos of the interior, my favourite being this one of a man totally absorbed in the book he was reading:

The whole of the city centre seemed to be taken up by a colourful, noisy, exciting fun fair. We took about an hour just meandering around, taking in the atmosphere and snapping loads of images of the rides:

We eventually arrived at the Café Royal, a heaving, large Victorian pub with central island bar. The Guildford Arms, next door, was just as busy. We got accosted by a very drunk man calling himself Billy Seagull who talked with us for ten minutes, each ‘S’ pronounced with enough spit flying into the air to keep our pints topped up for free.

The ride back to Shipley was uneventful. We were too tired to grab a sneaky half in the 30 minutes we had at York while changing trains, so our five-city, 1200 mile pub crawl ended up only being a three-city one. But it was certainly a Grand Adventure!