"Who's brought the get out of jail free card?" we all joked as we sat on the train headed for London Waterloo. "Beer anyone?" said AL clearly starting as he meant to go on. It was his 21st birthday and we were all going to attempt to pub crawl around the Monopoly board. Starting with a couple of beers on the train was probably not the best move but we were all having a laugh spurred on by SemiPro who was in particularly good form.
Our effort to make all 26 pubs (22 spaces that you can build on and the 4 train stations) took a blow right at the start as we struggled to find a pub that was open on the Old Kent Road but we got there in the end. It amazes me that so many pubs were shut in London but I'm not a city boy so maybe I'm not up with what goes on in town. The barmaid in The George must have thought we were a bunch of amateurs as she told us that we were an hour late starting and would have been better off starting with halves instead of pints! Apparently 3 groups had already been through.
We had opted for the quickest route encompassing each of the spaces rather than going for each one in order to avoid criss-crossing London which was probably a good idea but in all honesty we were never likely to make it to the end from the word "Go" (pun intended).
We found some excellent pubs en route, The Castle on Pentonville Road was particularly good given it's roof top beer garden and the blazing hot weather. Having moved on SemiPro displayed his skills on the ivories by giving an excellent rendition of "It's a little bit funny" by Elton John whilst the pub DJ kindly bought AL a birthday drink.
The pints were beginning to take their toll and we soon reverted to the halves so rightly advised by our first barmaid. We made the fatal error of taking a seat in The Rocket in Euston Road and never really got back on the crawl properly after that. I think we took in 2 or 3 pints here which was the start of the end but the day was clearly being enjoyed by all so no-one was too worried.
My brother has an in-built failsafe for when he goes out drinking, he falls asleep. He's never sick and never causes trouble but almost always catches some Z's. This led to an ejection from a bar but we were able to find another with seating outside so he could nap in a chair whilst the rest of us carried on drinking.
It was a combination of SemiPro's attempt to do the chivalrous thing by escorting a lady home and us trying to coax Sleepy toward the taxi rank that saw us miss our chance to get the last train home. I will not take the blame even though I was buying some food. So we embarked on a £160 taxi fare across London and back home to what was undoubtedly going to be an enormous hangover!
Many thanks should go to the guys over at Monopoly Pub Crawl whose maps and guides helped us get as far as we did (14 I think?).
"Right, who is up for the circle line?"
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