Behind closed doors; a pub crawl with a difference

Posted by on Aug 18, 2014 in Pubs | 6 Comments

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You would think that being a fan of modern, interesting, well-made beer, if I found my drinking spectrum suddenly and dramatically narrowed, I would struggle to cope. But the truth is, cutting off the imperials and kegged saisons doesn’t really lead to big sadface. Why? Well, transplant me from my overly-complicated comfort niche to one of more simplistic an outlook, and the spectre of looking like a fish out of water means I fairly instantly order the first thing I see, even if the choice is limited only to base cooking lagers. The “Err, pint of that” attitude does reduce the perceived glances from other pub-goers (whether real or imagined), and can get you out of a tight spot, if needed.*

* Unlike the oft-doomed bar-approach, the “Oh, sorry, I was just looking in the fridges”, which then results in an uncomfortable silence as the staff and barstooled regulars watch you perusing the forest of Miller Genuine Draft bottles and cans of Rubicon.

The whole point of going to a pub, after all, is to extend your sphere of comfort; to transplant your relaxed feelings somewhere other than home, in a slightly more social context. Like caravanning. Static caravans of booze, Where Everybody Knows Your Name. But, what if you chucked all that out the window, just for one crazy night? Decided to roll the dice, and mix things up a little? For some reason, the other day a vague memory popped into my head, of a time when just exactly that happened. Preston. 1996. The night we livened up our drinking experience by going in every pub we’d never been in.

We had only one rule; if any of us had ever set foot in a pub, as we wandered around the town centre – even just for a single previous visit – we’d walk on by to the next one. After thinking, as I got off the number 33 at the (now World Heritage status) bus station, that it could be a very short night indeed, it turned out to be anything but. Preston had a lot of pubs. Half of the ones we’d never gone in before were within half a mile of the bus station, it seemed. Old Victorian boozers with crumbling signs, and faded PNE or Preston Guild ’92 stickers in the windows. I can’t even remember most of their names – I guess now, twenty years on, many of them will have disappeared.

So, why did we actually want to do this in the first place? That question – which admittedly I asked myself more than a few times that night (not least when a middle-aged woman made an inebriated grab for my balls), started with our regular haunt – the Sherwood. A friendly Sky Sports and Sunday roast kind of place, ensconced in a seventies-housing-estate, we started going there as it was near college and they would actually serve us (like the pub in that great post-exam episode of the Inbetweeners). The beers revolved around Carling and Worthington’s, the former of which I drank a fair bit of, back in the day; the latter, I thought too bitter.

I think the reason we departed from this, if only for one night, was just that – a break from weeks – months, even – of going to the same place, drinking the same thing. Of course, that was before the CRAFT BEER revolution, and all its associated mystery and variety. Nowadays, only having three high-gravity US IPA’s on draught is cause to do the modern equivalent of tapping the watch and looking at the streetlamps, to gauge the severity of the rain. How times have changed.* So, we ploughed our hesitant furrow around the streets of Preston, instantly and consistently breaking the number one rule of middle-class pubgoing – beware of those you can’t see inside.

*We just dial up our weather apps, for one thing.

Of course, in actual fact what really happened is that we had a pretty good night. Even in pubs we’d stood on the stoop of, quietly wishing for one of us to lie and say they’d already had a drink there previously, the most we got (testicle-dip aside) was swathes of ambivalence. Lots of cheap rounds, pints of Stones Bitter and Fosters, darts and 20p pool. Being committed lagerboys at the time, I suppose it was easier to fit in than if we’d doffed our Craft top hats on entry and enquired as to their barrel-aged menu, but at the end of the night I did wonder why the heck I’d been so frightened, and exactly what it was I was I’d expected.

Having said that, I do wish I could say there was a legacy; that we discovered a pub gem we returned to, time after time. In truth, none of us went in any of them ever again; the next night out, we were back in the Sherwood, drinking Carling. Oh well. Our loss, I guess.

6 Comments

  1. Dave E
    August 18, 2014

    This was part of the aim of our recent tour of Edinburgh Pubs. I was hoping to find some hidden gems. We found a few we’ll definitely revisit, but I was surprised how quickly we reverted to old habits once it was all over. My favourites are mostly unchanged.

    As for the “holy shit, we’re not going in there” aspect, all the pubs we thought would be dodgy turned out to be ok, and in fact some of the friendliest in town.

    Being a certified beer snob myself, I’m kind of glad we’re back to normal, I’m almost guaranteed a nice beer on a Tuesday again, instead of derivative pish. To be fair, most pubs have something not bad in bottles to fall back on, Brooklyn, Sierra Nevada etc are becoming quite prevalent, albeit a bit pricey.

  2. Pat Hanson
    August 18, 2014

    Well Dave_E has paved the way here with his epic crawl but it’s a great idea. Not far from the Royal Mile, or on it, I could go to Frankenstein, White Horse, Waverley, Royal McGregor, Albanach and Tron for a start! 3 of those even have cask ale.

  3. Richard
    August 18, 2014

    I don’t recall seeing any Sierra Nevada in 1996 in Preston – if only! Of course, I wouldn’t have had the blindest idea what it was…

  4. Barm
    August 19, 2014

    This is an excellent way in general of widening one’s horizons. I agree with Dave E that “scary” pubs are generally much less scary than they look from the outside. As I live in Glasgow, people often assume that the pubs here are going to be full of razor-wielding gangsters. In truth there are very few pubs I’d be scared to go into, at least in the city centre. There are a substantial number more that are depressing rather than dangerous, but most are fine.

    I am reasonably sure I’ve been in every pub in my home town, but I can think of one that I don’t believe I’ve actually had a drink in.

  5. Richard
    August 20, 2014

    Absolutely true; the only thing that gets in the way is a huge selection of comforting, familiar, local pubs 😉

    But as you both say, if you pluck up the courage and spread your beery wings a little, you soon realise there was no need for courage in the first place.

  6. Tom
    August 28, 2014

    I find the “lucky dip approach to choosing pubs can be quite entertaining as you try and figure out what the landlord/landlady’s influences are and how the clientèle is made up. Sometimes there are obvious clues (football team pennants, photos of horses, why that italian flag etc) but other times it takes a bit more figuring out.

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