Beer, buskers and alarm bells

Follow @barhopcousins Looking at the timeline, this pub crawl seems to have happened a couple of years after the famous ones in  Bristol  and  Ireland . Not sure why it took so long to have one in London, maybe we had other commitments or perhaps just recovering from Bristol and Ireland. However, I do remember what my cousin said to me when I invited him to London for a pub crawl …"Make sure there's plenty of trivia!". Damn, I didn't think of that! So I Googled "London Pub crawl" and discovered the Charles Dickens one. As I added a few extra ones to this list, I called mine "The Historical London Pub Crawl". Borough Market All good pub crawls should start with food to help line the stomach (Hey! I'm a responsible drinker!). Some might say, that "eating is cheating" but to me this only applies half way through a pub crawl, not before starting one and definitely not after one. So what better place to get some food then to ...

Bank holiday Beers There was a bank holiday coming up, we had decided to meet up to while away a long bank holiday in the company of ourselves and a couple of local pubs.  Harry has recently taken up running and had found a nice route around Kew Green and as all people when exercising thought – “I really should do a pub crawl around here!” I like his style.  I made my excuses from home and decided to make my way down the M4/5.  We had a list of four pubs, nicely located around the green so we could get a few pubs off the list and also get to see the sights south of the river. Being a bank holiday, the forecast the weekend before had been good.  “We’ll have a BBQ in your garden” we thought.  Being a bank holiday the forecast suddenly turned bad.  “Stuff it, we’ll do it anyway” we thought.  There was a forecast for thunder and lightning and wouldn’t you know it, it was a balmy night in London!  I don’t care what the weatherman says, when the w...

The bar hop cousins have a funny family tree, we are spread out the length and breadth of the land.  We cover all parts of the UK as well as Eastern Europe, probably further afield too.  For today’s blog I want to concentrate on a crawl we did in Northern Ireland.  Now the history of Northern Ireland is complex, far too complex for an idiot like me to try to summarize, I will leave that to far better educated folk than myself.  I want trivia not a history lesson! – So, as an example, The anchor for the SS Great Britain is on display along the sea wall.  And one of Bristol’s crown jewels is…. The rest of the SS great Britain!  See how is that for trivia? So before I start I want to give you an idea of the crawl we had in a place called Newcastle.  “But why on earth are you going on about Northern Ireland? If you now go on about Newcastle!?” I hear you ask.  Well this Newcastle is in County Down, situated about an hour south of Belfast....