Monopoly Pub Crawl

25th September 2010

On the one hand this meeting had a slight strain of "we're too old for this" running through it. Our youthful days of putting as much alcohol as humanly possible into ourselves and then seeing what happens have passed. We have explored those territories; they hold nothing new or exciting for us, only dehydration and regrettable mornings. On the other hand was maturity and practicality.

The day started on Fleet Street at the delightful  Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.  It is one of a number of pubs in London to have been rebuilt shortly after the Great Fire of 1666. There has been a pub at this location since 1538. While there are several older pubs which have survived because they were beyond the reach of the fire, or like The Tipperary on the opposite side of Fleet Street because they were made of stone. We particularly liked this pub and was a great starting point.

First beers of the day. There's something repulsive about having alcohol before lunch, so we were a little later than others and commenced our day at 12.30pm.

From here we set off to The Wellington which stands on a corner of the Strand opposite Waterloo Bridge and was built in 1903.  By the time we arrived around 1pm it was overflowing with people. We had one beverage here and then moved onto the next.

Remarkably discipline is required to get the whole route in, which we lacked. Instead of spending 15-20 minutes in each pub, we spent a good half hour to an hour.  The other sensible thing to do would be to have halves all the way round. David thought a little differently than me and started out on Pints and then slowly adapted to the idea of half pints.  By the time we got round to our third pub, the hunger was setting in, so we decided to exit Convent Garden and try for a lesser expensive area and have lunch at The Chandos off Trafalgar Square.

After several rubbish pubs we decided to change our course and head over to Angel.  However, on our way over to Embankment Station we had a detour to Gordon's Wine Bar.  A little gem that is definitely recommended.  You enter through a rather grubby looking doorway in Villiers St, The Strand and down some very steep steps.  Once inside, you walk into the candlelit cellar  dug into the rock under the street. There's old posters and newspaper cuttings on the walls going back decades. There's no beer, no spirits, just very good wine, and sherry and port from barrels behind the counter.

We then proceeded along to the Aldgate Exchange in Whitechapel which, has had some sort of interior makeover and now looks like somebody's Ikea kitchen, all friendly and squeaky clean..

The Hamilton Hall, on Liverpool Street while beautiful, was an absolute shocker. Packed to the rafters with people, another expensive pub with nothing much going for it.  From here a few of us were getting peckish and stopped in at McDonald's for a cheeseburger to carry us through to dinner as it was 9.30pm. We then jumped on a bus and headed to the Red Lion in Angel - our 8th and last port of call.  From here we went across the road and finished the night on margarita's and burritos.