Outside of saving pubs by visiting them and writing about the carpet, I have a paid job producing radio. This means I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time down at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios, which was the home of Radio 1’s Peel Sessions as well as the Radiophonic Workshop (both good). It’s an impressive, quite mad space that has seen a lot of change over the years and arguably too many guitar solos.

They’ve saved the biggest change for last by flogging it to Hans Zimmer, who sadly has decided not to turn it back into a roller rink.

The last live session will come from there later this week, so I popped down to have a final nose and get some great photos which you can - and should - see over on my Instagram.

While I was walking up from Warwick Avenue station I realised that I probably won’t be back here any time soon, and as the area has more than a few decent pubs, I should check in on two of them for posterity’s sake. Maybe a little prosperity.

The Warrington Hotel is a big old thing. You can see it from a long way away, looming over a hedge-infested mini roundabout. This is west London, even the traffic apparatus is leafy. Once you get past the sumptuous mosaics at the entrance you’re confronted with a sign that states the pub is adults only - dogs are welcome, children are not.

Neither of those groups were busting down the door on my visit. Place was dead. It was a heatwave lunchtime, I suppose, though the fan on the bar remained unturned. The side of the pub I was in, which would have been the more opulent lounge in the Victorian era, was massive and dark and cool.

The whole place is a feast for the eyes. Chequerwork glazed screens let the light in, a necklace of glass lampshades has been draped above the bar. I order a pint of lime and soda, pay £1.40, and it’s placed on a smooth, cold marble bar top. The place is absolutely crawling with mirrors. There were three lime and sodas in this relationship.

Just down from my pints, a phone is on loudspeaker, blaring muzak that creates a heady soundclash from the sixties hits on the speakers. I try not to think what the studio engineers at the BBC would make of that.

Turns out the barman is on hold to the people who fix the pre-mix soda gun he needs for making lime and sodas, which has been on the wonk all week. When he eventually does get through we punch the air together, though his joy is short-lived at the response. He turns to me and asks, with some weariness, “when do people retire in this country?”

The pub is breathtaking, no doubt, but there’s more than a few incongruous touches. A lone England flag hangs limply over the bar back. The Spotify playlist has adverts every five songs. Next to a 1930s Art Deco nymph lamp there’s a home-printed BuzzBallz ad.

On the other side of the pub, originally split into three less elaborate sections, are the pub’s only TVs and a lot more England flags. The divide continues.

It’s clearly had bits added and bits taken away over the years. Faux chalkboard ads for “SNACKS” and “Cocktails” weren't on the agenda when the pub got its Victorian glow-up, but they’ve become part of it now. I'd bet carpentry as splendid as this will outlast thrills as temporary as wasabi peanuts.

Just a short walk down the road back to Warwick Avenue is the Prince Alfred. It’s a Young’s pub, which is an incredibly exciting prospect to men of a certain age. “Geoff’s taking us to a Young’s pub.” I hope you all like doors because this place has got loads. It’s packed with snugs, the sort of inner bar divides that the Warrington has largely pulled out, and as such there’s six separate entrances to this place.

Be careful which you choose, particularly if you’re as tall as I am, because the doorways between the snugs are about four feet tall. It’s giving Hobbiton. I avoid the lot and head into the main bar, and to keep things fair I ask for another lime and soda. This one comes in a pint mug, which is a first for this Limesman, though I’d argue that gimmick in no way makes it worth twice the price of my previous drink at £2.85.

Sidebar: I have for a long time been in a group chat devoted entirely to comparing the cost and quality of a pint of lime and soda and can confirm its status as Britain’s most erratically priced drink. Sometimes it’s £3.50, sometimes it’s free, ideally it's 60p. Feel free to share your findings in the comments.

The Alfred, as I will call it in this sentence, is also ornate and filled with wood but feels more restaurant than pub. The scent of fish and chips pervades and it's much busier in the dining room than the bar, where a man tries vainly to keep flies away from his mushy peas.

Half a family comes in through the main door. They've mislaid the rest of them. Oh, they're in the snug. Which one? They go back out.

I’m taken with the chairs that somehow manage to be armchairs and bar stools at the same time. For when you demand comfort but this really has to be your last one. Thanks to the huge windows across the frontage the bar is full of light, but not so full of life. It’s never a good sign when you can hear the kitchen beeping over the low hubbub of the patrons.

It’ll probably be a while before I’m back in Maida Vale, but no matter. I don't think these pubs are going anywhere.

So far in my quest to visit every pub in South Norwood I’ve been to a couple of community pubs and a brace of football boozers. This time I’m headed to a pair of hostelries that happen to be close to each other. Very close, in fact. They’re on opposite sides of the junction at Portland Road and High Street, you know it.

The businesses on the other sides of the junction are not pubs but a hardware store and an estate agent, which is disappointing for the purposes of this blog but certainly handy if you’re buying, selling or otherwise disfiguring a house.

On the south-east corner of this storied junction is The Jolly Sailor, which could have fitted into my last blog as Norwood Junction was originally called “Jolly Sailor” station after the first pub on this site. It could also claim to be a football pub, as it gets a fair amount of footfall on matchdays. I don’t think that’s quite right though - there’s a strong distinction in my mind between football pubs and pubs that get used by football fans. More on this hot topic in blogs to come.

What you’re looking at here is a Star Inns (read: Heineken) owned pub that re-opened in 2023 after three years of closure. Oh boy, you should have seen it before then. A pub with significant edge, the smell of damp mop, and an air of menace around the pool table. Put 50p down at your own risk.

It’s an altogether more sedate affair these days, and as somewhere I’ve popped into a few times since re-opening I’d argue they haven’t quite got the balance right.

It’s a very comfortable pub, it’s been well appointed and clearly had some money spent on the place. I think it lacks heart, and I don’t think it quite knows who it’s for. That said I was pleased to see the mop left out in the main room in homage to its former life.

No kitchen here, but there’s the ubiquitous south London option to order in Yard Sale pizza. While delicious this takes you slightly away from being in the pub, having to go and grab a pizza from the door. You could do that at home. They’ve laid on a dartboard, games, sport on the TV and a baffling table tennis table (tennis) which takes up most of the back garden. Perhaps it’s trying to be everything to everyone.

For reasons of comparison with the next establishment I will lean into traditional pub-review territory and bravely tell you that the Guinness was £6.65 and fine.

In further good news for anyone wanting to go between The Jolly Sailor and the pub across the junction, you’re looking at an all-red situation on the traffic lights. That’s right, perambulators - you don’t need to make two crossings. You can cross diagonally, meaning if you time it correctly you can get between these two pubs in twenty seconds, tops. What a rush.

The Albion is one of those pubs that probably looks a bit more off-putting than it actually is. It has much more of a locals feel before you even step in, and that only increases once you’re at the bar.

The pub is divided into a few zones, a back room with a parlour vibe, a grimy back garden for the smokers, and a sort of no-man’s-land where a dartboard hides, unnoticed and undisturbed.

Of particular interest to me was that several high tables had been pushed together just in front of the bar itself, creating the feel of a boardroom where the regulars plied their trade. Eight seats, which were filled and emptied by various characters during my spell in the pub, all matters up for discussion.

Papers on the table, pints of Foster’s in various states of completion, low-level chatter from the old boys. Inexplicably, one of them passes around a pack of salami. “This is vegetarian, right?” quips one, before attention moves back to the racing. The 3.40 at Ascot. “Who won it? Number four?” It was number four, Racing Post gets biro’d.

Two pints of lager are ordered with change from a tenner. There’s value. I’ve never seen Heineken 0.0% on tap but here it was, even if it wasn’t getting touched on this visit. The fruit machine goes off like a car alarm, no winnings to be seen. A man comes in with a bulldog, restrained with a Union Jack harness. If anything this seems slightly on the nose.

The Guinness here was £4.60, by the way. It was also fine.

One of the many confusing aspects of south London nomenclature is that Crystal Palace FC - you may know them as the Eagles - are not based in Crystal Palace. They’re actually based in South Norwood, so don’t get the train to Crystal Palace (that’s in Upper Norwood).

You’re better off getting the train to Selhurst or Norwood Junction, and if you do you’ll find a pub on the way from both. I decided to swing by when there wasn’t any live football going on at Selhurst Park (because the season has ended) or World Cup football on the telly (because of time zones) to see what they’re like when not packed to the brim of lager enthusiasts. I mean I’d be there but that’s still considerably less than usual.

The Cherry Tree used to be known as The Cherry Trees, but presumably due to rampant deforestation is now a singular sapling. In the last few years it’s had a batshit insane paintjob committed to its frontage, which looks like a cross between a thrilling regional fairground ride and a sweat-drenched fever dream. It’s also immediately outside Norwood Junction station, which means it’s good for your first or last pint on a day with Palace.

As such it has something of the last-chance saloon, echoed by the shirted men in the garden when I visited: “Next train is twenty-nine past, so we may as well stay here for another”. Fine logic and the tumult of Thameslink, Southern and Overground services can only have added a fair few pounds to the pub’s coffers over the years.

You can hear trains passing loudly behind the yard (I think garden is stretching it), which felt both spacious and bleak without hundreds of fans drinking from plastic cups.

I don’t think the pub suffers any pretences. I’ve been here a few times around football and whilst it’s a little rough around the edges the atmosphere is good, and the pints get served.

The red and blue influence extends all over, and when it’s busy lateral thinking may be required for seating and drink placement options. I was particularly taken by whichever enterprising soul had decided to use a dog bowl as an ashtray.

Inside it’s bedecked with the usual England paraphernalia, screen and a barely noticeable jukebox on what is known in Bromley as “cab driver’s volume”. Take a step back though, look at the panelled bar and walls, and you see there’s a bit more to this place than purely a Fosters tap. Built shortly after the train station in the 1860s it was originally the South Norwood Railway Hotel - as grand a title now as it was then - and some of that heritage still carries through.

Sky Sports News on the telly, no-one watching.

It’s only a ten minute walk to Selhurst Park from The Cherry Tree, and I happened to catch a bit of the ground’s evolution en route. They’re building a new stand, which means knocking down a few houses that happened to be in the way.

Fortunately that didn’t extend to The Clifton Arms, the other side of the mini-roundabout and the closest pub to the ground. Home fans only on matchdays, come bearing an SE postcode and an opinion on how former manager Oliver Glasner will do at Nottingham Forest.

They’re mad for red and blue in here too, as well as a kid’s bedroom level of ardour for all things Palace. Beer towels, flags, bunting of both the World Cup and Crystal Palace variety. Double bunting. And they said it couldn’t be done.

A regular collects his pint from the bar and is told to go put some songs on, there’s credit on the machine. Let Your Love Flow, Rebel Rebel, Pictures Of You. Impeccable selections. Music is a big part of what does or doesn’t make a pub for me - I’d rather have nothing than the wrong kind - so when it’s right, it’s noticeable. Your man comes back to the bar and gets a polite nod in return. There’s class.

A corner of the pub is devoted to pictures of the staff with club legends like Mark Bright, Ian Wright and Clinton Morrison. Not sure how long the Glasner one will stay up.

Dartboard in the corner, an extensive board game selection. No surprise there’s a criminal lack of Yahtzee, but you can get your hands on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and a curious game called “Pongsecco”, which looks the fastest way to blackout drunk I’ve ever seen.

Mark’s hot pub take: I don’t think Jenga is a very good pub game.

Two other regulars lurk by the bar. The immortal, impossible words “usual please” get uttered and acted on. A conversation about orange drinks takes place. “Then again, I like that pear cider. I know it’s sweet, but that don’t give me heartburn”. A floor fan keeps the place aired. It’s casual, relaxed. Imagine what it’s like when it’s busy, you can’t hear the jukebox, the red and blue comes off the walls and onto the people.

Today there’s golf on the telly. No-one’s watching.

I haven’t written about any of my local pubs yet, and as there are no easy wins for Good Beer Guide ticks in an era of World Cup football and punishing daytime heat, I thought I’d take you to a few places in South Norwood. Eventually we’ll go to all of them.

There’s two that I think of primarily as community pubs, and given that South Norwood is my community, that’s an apt place to start. What I think is interesting about them is that while one puts “community pub” front and centre, the other does not. It also doesn’t call itself a pub.

The Portland Arms is about ten minutes from Norwood Junction, and crucially the opposite direction from where I live, but it’s still a regular haunt. One of the few places you can get a Sunday roast in SE25. A well appointed garden. Two for one burgers on Wednesdays. It’s a good pub.

I popped in the day after England’s opener in the World Cup, and I was keen to know from the barman how it had been the previous night. Turns out it was busy (they’d got a DJ in), but he “didn’t much care because I was drinking and not working”. It’s possible he’s still smarting from the fact that pub-wide pictures of him in the crowd watching Crystal Palace, just up the road from here, had been affectionately vandalised with a succession of googly eyes.

Bit of fun.

The cricket was on the TV, Starz In Their Eyes by Just Jack was on the speakers. The place was quiet but when conversations picked up they didn’t feel awkward - they just added to the natural thrum of the pub. It’s like a chat with a friend that doesn’t need constant filling, the gaps are all part of the conversation.

There’s always a few regulars in, groups of friends sharing a bottle of prosecco, a mum and her even older mum enjoying a pot of tea. It’s the kind of place you can leave your bag for a moment and know it’ll be looked after. Parents with kids dropping by after school, or before swimming lessons. I was once in as a bar staff interview ended. “I’m going to give them the job” “How come?” “They had the right vibe”.

On National Lego Day they got big boxes of the ever-popular stacking bricks and filled a couple of tables up for the kids to play on. It wouldn’t be right for every pub, but here it was another small touch that made sense.

Ten minutes up the road is the Craft Beer Cabin. My local. Doesn’t call itself a pub.

The owners originally had The Craft Beer Cab, a vintage black taxi they turned into a mobile bar. Come 2018 they moved into these premises, added the -in to the name and here we are. They might call it a bottle shop and taproom, and you might as well, but for me it’s a pub.

It doesn’t have many places to sit, inside or out but you still want to go there in spite of that. That’s one of the many markers of a great pub to me - you’ll suffer a slightly odd space, moving out the way as a place does a brisk trade on takeaway cans, because of how it makes you feel. During lockdown one of our neighbours popped in so regularly to pick up “a couple of cans” that his son started calling the place “Cans”. The nickname stuck for us. See you at Cans.

It’s the place I want to go for a beer coming back from the station, and also be there at 2PM at the weekend when it opens up. This is not a beer blog but they’ve started stocking bottles of Augustiner and (be still my beating heart) Tegernseer Helles. Long-suffering barman Sam knows that I’m going to ask him for a pint glass and has it ready.

They’ve got a fantastic gimmick in that they have taps purely devoted to a different kind of beer - all from the UK and all handpicked to be nice. I’d never seen this before and as a way of making craft beer accessible I don’t think it can be beat.

For the beer nerds among us, they have a screen to the right with all the vital details on what’s on tap today. As for Balls Of Wonder, that’s a game where you pay your money, a ball comes out of a bingo cage, and you get a mystery beer for cheap from the fridge. Fantastic fun but do watch out if you don’t like sours because I always get sours.

I don’t think Cans would ever describe itself as a community pub, it’s not their style. But people meet friends here, make friends here. They stop for one and stay until it makes sense to go, taking notes from the fetching DON’T BE A DICK mirror next to the bar. Children have a nickname for this place. My glass preferences are noted and acted on. Call it what you fancy.

Previously on this blog I’ve been to the heady heights of Leyton and Sheffield in my relentless attempts to tick arbitrary things off lists. Someone else who’s been trying to complete one of those lists - and with rather more success than me - is your old mate Thom Gibbs.

He’s been hacking away at The 92 - that is, visiting every football league stadium in the country - for some time now. By his own admission, supporting QPR and going to Manchester for university opened up untold opportunities for mediocre football in the north which he took full advantage of.

Many such cases left him in the enviable position of being 91/92 on the last day of the season, with only Notts County to finish the lot. Would I and our friends Will and Ben like to help him complete The 92 in style, as County took on Bristol Rovers at Meadow Lane?

I said “yes”.

I also said “let’s go to some pubs so I can write about them”.

Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem presents itself with some confidence as “the oldest inn in England”. You get a lot of this patter in the pub ticking game. “A pub on this site since 97AD”, “world’s oldest pub dog”, that sort of thing. Most of it is optimistic at best, dubious at worst. This chancer might not even be the oldest pub in Nottingham!

The Bell Inn down the road was in use as a pub by the 1630s, which knocks Ye Trip into a cocked hat given that the earliest reference to it as a pub comes from 1751. Seems the “oldest inn” business comes from a landlord trying to drum up trade in 1910.

Does this matter? Not really, no. I think what’s more important is how a pub is used now, never mind how long it’s been knocking around for. A two hundred and seventy five year old pub is still a house of some repute and worth savouring.

When we visited the pub was just opening up - the staff might have been the same from 1751, such was the lack of service in the main bar - and there was a steady flow of Cardiff fans dropping in ahead of their away day in Mansfield.

From the interior you get a sense of the history, imagined or otherwise, but no-one’s banging on about it as you collect your pints and wander back to the dappled yard. It’s a pub like any other, where the people and the moment are what shape it, not the words on the walls.

Next we headed to a place with some real, traceable history. And a beer garden.

The Vat and Fiddle is the brewery tap of Castle Rock, who have been banging around in the craft beer game for some time now. Mad for brewing, this lot.

I didn’t actually realise it was the brewery tap and not a standalone pub until 1. I noticed the enormous brewing vats out the back and 2. Thom told me. In my defence it did use to be a pub in its own right, built in 1937. What’s more it’s had some cracking names - the Grove Tavern, Miami Bar, Ziggy's Bar, the Grove Tavern again, Tom Hoskin's and then V&F as it stands today. I bet Ziggy’s Bar absolutely went off on a Friday night.

Anyway never mind that, have a look at this floor.

Would you look at that terrazzo! I’m no pub historian (despite the fine efforts you’ve surely enjoyed in the last few paragraphs) but I reckon that’s original gear.

I love the fact it’s still here, probably for the reasons it was installed in the first place - terrazzo is durable, easy to clean sick and smashed glasses up from, still looks great when covered in sick and smashed glass. Once upon a time that line might have led you directly to the bar, or out the door - you’d think the layout has changed as many times as the name. I could have looked at it all day.

Instead we decided to go and look at some broadcast football, and for that we headed to Trent Navigation.

This is an interesting one because we didn’t actually go into the pub itself. It’s made a name for itself on match days, and by being close to Trent Bridge and Meadow Lane, for the “Big Shed” fan zone next door. And no, it’s not a clever name, it’s massive.

The place was rammed with fans from both County and Rovers, and more than a few just there to watch things on the biggest screen I’ve ever seen. They had a few bars outside, pizzas were getting slid along tables, Madri was getting put away at an absolutely astonishing rate.

After I’d finished that Madri I popped to one of the outside bars where a queue had broken out. Now, this is happening with alarming regularity. Maybe it’s a triple-hit of COVID protocol hangover, the insatiable British lust for joining queues and reluctance to smash social norms. Well bollocks to that if you ask me.

I gently made my way to the bar around a loose queue of three, and said to the bloke at the front “we don’t queue in pubs, do we? Are you next?” He said he was, I proffered the ‘after you’ hand movement, the queue disintegrated. I’m not saying I saved pubs entirely at that moment, but it can’t have hurt. I didn’t hang around to check because it was nearly kick-off.

Meadow Lane then. A 1-1 draw for the fans, 92/92 for Thom, 45/92 for me. Carling for everyone else.

Time for one last drink before we headed home, and thankfully there’s somewhere very decent just by the station. Brew Tavern is a converted Edwardian cabbie’s locker and rest room, and it’s stunning to see a building like this turned into something seemingly well liked and used.

It’s one tiny room, with tables and chairs spilling around the station entrance, and original features like bench lockers and painted panelling be still my beating heart. Even the window frames are original which probably is less of a thrill in winter, but on this day it was heaven.

If you’re a beer nerd as well as a pub nerd, then this is the place for you. Do you want a foamy banked Bass - that is to say, a pint that’s been filled half way and put in the fridge, then topped up to have an absurd head like a 99 from the ice cream van? Well you my friend are in luck. Do you have a preference on the distinctly unusual tasting Orval, from either the cellar or the fridge? They have both!

What I like about micro-pubs - good micros, like this one - is that they can be several different places all at once. Take the Brew Tavern. It could be just what you need for a quick one before the train, or a swift one on arrival. These are two very different drinks. It could be the place you spend your whole evening, or somewhere you tick off on a pub crawl. Maybe you just want to sit somewhere and have a pack of crisps. Whichever of those you fancy - and I insist you pick one - you’re sorted.

This was my first trip to Nottingham, and whilst it’s tempting to think about also ticking every city in the UK (imagine the spreadsheet!) I’ve probably got enough on my plate. Haven’t even scratched the surface of its pubs.

If you’re going to try and visit every Greater London pub in the Good Beer Guide - and good for you, if so - then you’re going to come across a lot of Wetherspoons. They keep their ale well, they sell it very reasonably, and they’re easy to access. Safe to say, if you’re a CAMRA branch member - and good for you, if so - you’re probably spending more than a few nights a month in a Spoons.

They’re not my very favourite pubs, mainly because they’re homogeneous by design, but I don’t have an aversion to them other than the fact I’ve got the general gist of them by now. On a rainy Monday in June I decided that some mop-up ticking for three of the Tim Martin-run enormotaverns in South London would be a good use of my time.

In order to make up for a foreseen lack of foibles, I decided to change up how I usually do this sort of thing.

• I normally have something alcoholic to drink, so I’d stay off the sauce.

• I normally travel by public transport, so instead I’d take the car.

• I normally have my breakfast before I go, so I wouldn’t do that.

The Sir Julian Huxley (208/293) is in Selsdon, about as far as you can go due south in Greater London before you get to Surrey. Thanks to our good friends at the London Borough of Croydon, parking outside was free for an hour. What’s more I wasn’t in Surrey, so things were already looking up.

I’ve been to Selsdon before, when I ticked off the excellent Golden Ark micropub a few years ago, and frankly should have popped in here even though it wasn’t in the Good Beer Guide that year. Über-ticker Si Everitt calls these “pre-emptives” and would say that if you see a Spoons you’d best go in, because they have a high frequency of appearances for reasons outlined in a previous paragraph. Not to worry, I was here now. Even better, I still wasn’t in Surrey.

It was a quiet morning, with the usual mix of tradespeople, young parents, and a bloke taking photos of the carpet. It was a particularly good one, you’ve already seen it at the top of this post. Dead geometric.

The prices in here were barely credible for Greater London. Guinness for £3.70! Real ale for £2.10! A five item cooked breakfast - meat, vegetarian or vegan - for £3.19! I’m sorry but that’s shit cheap.

I ordered the traditional breakfast with black pudding and a cup of tea for £6.58. It came in seven minutes. I don’t really think you can have much of an argument with that. The breakfast was perfectly adequate and sometimes good enough is good enough - though I was somewhat thrown by the coffee machine offering “TEA WATER” rather than using the word “hot”. I don’t think that’s on.

Meanwhile in the pub, a man gripping his phone to his ear with consternation says “You’re going to struggle to find someone to love you” and drops a few choice oaths. A parent blows bubbles with a wand across the pub. I make a small bacon sandwich with brown sauce. Two old boys engage in some gentle badinage, “nice and clean in here innit?” “You taking the piss?” This all happens before 9:30AM. I adored it.

A delivery of nine thousand kegs of beer stopped me from taking my usual photo of The Nonsuch Inn (209/293) from directly opposite, but I bravely moved a bit to the right and got this one instead. I am prepared to try any technique in the brave world of pub blogging.

It’s named after one of Henry VIII's former palaces, which stood nearby, and according to the CAMRA website “there is a statue of King Henry near the entrance”.

Listen, fair play.

I decided to switch things up and order a Guinness 0% for £2.63 - but as it’s a canned beer you’ve got to pour it yourself. That’s where the margin is, you have to assume.

Standard decor inside, a quiet but mildly hubbub-ish vibe. I was particularly taken with this bookcase being used as a vertical sauce depository, though if I’m being picky I’d have preferred them to be alphabetised.

The 2026 World Cup kicks off this week, and they’ve gone mad for it here. Flags all over the gaff. I always feel a bit weird about Spoons showing the football, which they do because it’s on free to air TV and they can, because it goes against what they’re usually about, no music and rolling news on mute.

It’s not like you can’t watch the World Cup in thousands of other pubs, but money talks and quiet conversation walks. The lads on the table next to me were already on the subject: “well it’s too many games isn’t it Frank”.

Disappointingly given the pub’s royal connections, I’d say the carpet is more William Morris than Big Hank Ocho, but I’ll take whatever Tudor revival I’m given and I won’t apologise for it. Sound off in the comments if you disagree!

The last pub of the morning for me was The Holland Tringham (210/293), which you find on The World’s Busiest And Least Pleasant Road, also known locally as Streatham High Road. Christ it’s unpleasant. If this was one of your arteries you’d be rushed to A&E.

The 2023 guide had one entry in Streatham, a place called Pratts & Payne which is still on my Google map of GBG pubs because it closed permanently and there’s no way to remove it from my list. Cheers lads. Subsequently I’ve missed doing this Spoons before because I keep thinking it’s P&P and therefore none of my business, so delighted to get it sorted now.

Opened in 1998 but refurbished in 2024 (the CAMRA lads were very taken by an especially impressive upgrade to the men’s toilets), it’s almost an oasis of calm compared to the road outside once you get in.

Walking down to the bar, the smell of coffee was absolutely delicious and I gave in to temptation. £1.89 and worth every penny, the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had in a pub. At least as good as a Pret filter and from me that’s high praise indeed.

Paint-splashed workers were eating, people were moving high chairs where they needed to be, a bloke tried to sort some level of financial concern with his bank. The PIN is being sent by special delivery, yes. It was an amiable time, and like all three pubs the service was friendly and warm.

As I pondered what state of mind I’d need to be in to stay in a Wetherspoons until 2AM on a Wednesday night to watch the fulfilment of Scotland v Brazil, someone from the pub came round each table to take the breakfast menus away. It was lunchtime and the shift to the next set of customers was underway.

The carpet felt a bit estate-agenty but you can’t have it all.

I enjoyed my personal shift to soft drinks, I very much enjoyed driving my car, and I think I took in some things about each pub that I might not have done if I was less than stone-cold sober.

Also every pub should keep the ketchup on a high shelf.

It will not have escaped your notice that this post has started with a photo of an enormous fibreglass cat. This is intentional. Nothing brings in the clicks like outsized plastic felines, and far be it from me to mess with a winning formula.

Oh, it’s one of the main draws of Catford, sure. You’d be a fool to come here and not pay a pilgrimage to the Catford Centre and its greatest attraction. I’d also suggest popping into a few pubs while you’re here. I certainly did.

It’s a tale as old as time, or at least this blog - go somewhere I need to tick off a Good Beer Guide pub, and then go to another pub while I’m at it. If you’re so inclined there’s two stations in Catford right next to each other, the titular one and also Catford Bridge, so access is not an issue.

The Catford Bridge Tavern (207/293) is indeed right next to that station, though “bridge” seems to have been censored on the outside of the pub’s sign. No matter. I know what bridge I’m standing on at any given time. Catford Road is a busy old thoroughfare, difficult to cross and noisy as you like with buses coming along like buses.

Kerb appeal is lacking, mock Tudor meeting concrete blocks not being that easy on the eye, and frankly this is a pub that’s been through plenty of ups and downs. Saved from closure in 2012 and being voted CAMRA South East London branch Pub of the Year in 2013 are both things to be proud of, but after that came closure and a fire in 2015. More recently it re-opened, with ownership taken over by Portobello who added real ale back to the place. Frankly a scrubbed out name on the front is the least of its worries.

Inside it’s cavernous, loads of places to sit, booths, armchairs and the rest. It feels lived in, pockmarks all over the walls and ceiling where you can feels the imprint of Christmas decorations, halloween spider webs, international flags for football touraments. You get the sense it rides the occasions as they come and go, the pub becoming whatever it has to be for that particular moment.

Also coming and going when I was there was a bloke who reeked of weed, popping off a bus to come in and use the toilet before scurrying out again. It’s in a location where that’s more likely than not, but for all the regular use I’m sure the toilets get they were in a decent state.

Regular readers of this periodical will know my love of wood panelling in a pub - the stuff here was painted maroon, which is less to my taste. Make Panelling Varnished Again.

It’s been looked after, recently given a lick of paint by my estimation, and you can tell food is an important part of their offering. There was a short and reasonably priced lunch menu, but despite the light and airy room clearly intended for dining it still felt like a pub more than a restaurant. I think it would be a fine place to while a way a Sunday or a few pints if your train from Catford Bridge (or Catford) was delayed by a few hours.

No train for me, as it was time to head down the road to the Bythe Hill Tavern.

Here’s a longstanding Good Beer Guide pub that I ticked off a good few years ago, but it’s difficult to resist popping in if you’re in the area. It’s quite the pub - it’s got a three room interior based round the bar, each with a different feel and vibe.

Good news if you like panelling from a hundred years ago, because the gear in here is from the 1920s. Plenty of fittings from the always interesting inter-war pub period, and all of that adds up to an interior of outstanding national historic importance. There’s a lot to enjoy here, or alternatively “a whole lot of crazy crap on the walls”.

I think I like the back room the best - you’ve got the Guinness mirror, framed photos and prints you’d expect, and a fruit machine that doesn’t feel out of place. I was particularly taken with the number of coats hung up in the corner which far exceeded however many people were in the pub. Not sure whether they belonged to the staff, or perhaps more romantically were left by regulars in case they ever came in sunshine and left in rain. It made it feel very welcoming in any case.

One of south east London’s best pubs in my book - and I suggest you take a chance on the other one as well.

I think I’ve probably been slightly unfair about west London, in my time. I’ve never lived there, being based in south London since I moved here in 2009. Central London is work and going out, there’s fun and exciting things in east, and leafy parks and nice architecture in north. What does west have to offer?

Well let me tell you, it’s got the Hammersmith Flyover.

I’m aware this probably sounds slightly facetious but I love a good flyover. Have you ever seen the Croydon Flyover, a vast bit of business that makes up three quarters of an unfinished and therefore useless ring road?

I have. I love it.

I don’t have to live next to it, of course, but I adore the hulking design of that edifice. Even better, there’s a pub adjacent to it - The Royal Standard, which I ticked off in my quest to visit every Greater London pub in the Good Beer Guide a few years ago - and that pub’s garden is under the flyover itself. For me, that’s an urban paradise.

I didn’t go to Hammersmith the other month just to gawp at an elevated overpass, mind you. I had tickets to see David Byrne at the Apollo, and time to kill beforehand, which meant a tick could be on the cards (and maybe more).

Craft Beer Co, Hammersmith (206/293) is unusual in that it’s within a shopping centre. I don’t mind that, though I think we can probably agree we’re looking at a bar rather than a pub here. It’s clearly a good staging post for anyone going to a gig at the Apollo and I saw a good few Talking Heads-heads already in situ.

Something told me I’d been here before, but that might have been a different craft beer place in Hammersmith. There was something of a boom in the 2010s, you may recall. This place was refitted seven years ago and looks very swish now - I thought the hexagonal mirror tiles you’ve seen at the top of this post were very fetching.

Mark’s hot blog take: not sure you should describe things as “swish” or “fetching”.

Really good hits on the stereo, as you might hope but not always expect from a venue catering to a pre-gig crowd. Bizarre Love Triangle! Siouxsie & The Banshees! And then they played The Calling and the whole house of cards fell down.

I remember going to a lot of Craft Beer Co. venues in the early years of living in London, and they definitely served a purpose - a range of interesting beers, German lagers, stuff you couldn’t get anywhere else. See also the superb Cask in Pimlico.

I think a lot of places have upped their game in the years since, not to mention the big beer companies getting in on the act, so Craft Beer Co. bars aren’t so thrilling to me any more. Still, this was a nice space with decent gear on tap and I’d be glad of it if I wasn’t going to go to a pub by the water for a second pint.

I then went to a pub by the water for a second pint.

The Blue Anchor is a riverside pub that looks like a riverside pub. Do you know what I mean? It’s the white and blue, I think. It’s saying nautical to me - and there are in fact a few rowing clubs around it.

It wasn’t quite warm enough to sit outside, which absolutely would have been my preference, and on a warm summer’s day I don’t doubt this is a magic spot.

It’s a nice space inside, well lit, gastro food menu, decent enough energy. Service wasn’t the best, I get the feeling you can be a bit complacent when your location is as good as this one, but on a weekday evening in early spring that’s no big deal.

David Byrne was one of the best gigs I’ve even been to, by the way. Could be big.

Recent readers of this publication may be aware I had a lovely day in Leyton a while back, where I managed to combine my two interests of ticking off pubs as well as football grounds. Well if you enjoyed that, good news because I’ve done it again - this time in Sheffield.

I had cause and interest regarding Sheffield Wednesday v Southampton - I’d never been to Hillsborough and it loomed large as a tick for The 92. It would be rude not to enjoy a few pubs (hey! that’s the name of this blog!) while I was up there. Time enough for a couple, at least.

I planned to meet my dad at the second of the afternoon’s pubs, dropping into Fagans first. I say dropping in, I was there on the stroke of twelve as it opened. The door was not opened. I hid round the corner until ten past and guess what, this legend was the first person in.

It’s a pub I’d been hoping to get to for a while, with an interesting story behind it. The interior dates from 1953, which is very much my sort of thing, and since the longstanding landlords retired in 2023 it’s been run by a group of locals who call themselves The Fellowship of Fagan’s. One of them happens to be Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders, which has no doubt given the pub a decent bit of publicity.

The thing that piqued my interest was that the pub’s new overlords planned to change very little - keeping the interior, pouring a nice pint of Guinness, regularly having Irish trad sessions. Apparently the quiz is double hard if that’s your sort of thing.

I’m happy to report that even empty, the pub has that feeling you get in a good pub. Maybe this blog is a wood panelling stan account, but for me it does the job every time. If these walls could talk they’d ask for another coat of varnish.

I was served by the landlord Jed Willacy, who could not have been more delighted to find someone who loves pubs as much as him and is prepared to chat at length. We talked about where to get the best Guinness in Sheffield (he said The Grapes, I said Fagans from a sample size of one), our favourite pubs in London, and the Crossed Wires podcast festival which took over the city and Fagans last year. Jed urged me to come back in July to see the pub in full flow, and I’m sorely tempted.

All too soon I had to head off so I could meet Al at our agreed next pub, which was recommended to me by Sheffield native and noted pub enjoyer Ella from work.

The Fat Cat in Kelham Island dates back to 1850, but in its current guise opened in 1981 as Sheffield’s first real ale pub.

Like Fagans it hasn’t been messed around with much, and keeps the original layout - two downstairs rooms, a wonderful central bar that looks like three Welsh dressers arranged next to each other, plus a mosaic in the doorway and delicious terrazzo floor passageway. It’s small, but it’s proper.

It was not Christmas when I went but I didn’t mind the decorations being up.

I noted with interest you could buy a selection of vapes behind the bar, along with your Quavers.

Al had managed to grab some space on the banquette seating which curved around the room we were in. The pub was already busy with more than a few Southampton fans in the place, and more came as we arrived. It had that quality I’ve spoken about before, a busy room that never feels overcrowded. There’s always room for one more person in the best pubs.

Both of these pubs should be high on your list if you’re planning a visit to Sheffield. You should also begin or end at The Sheffield Tap, in the old refreshment room at the station. Couldn’t hurt to do both.

The football was great fun, Wednesday are in a right old pickle at the moment so the 1-3 win wasn’t entirely unexpected but it felt lovely to see such a rare old ground and tick it off (44/92). A fine old day out in Sheffield and worth popping back any time.

Not just content with trying to visit every Good Beer Guide pub in Greater London, I’ve got a few other “catch ‘em all” missions on the go. I won’t bore you with all of them - that will be a separate post - but for the purpose of this update, I’m also trying to visit every football league ground in England.

It’s known as completing “The 92” and if you really go for it, it’s eminently achievable. If like me, you only really go to the odd Southampton away game and occasional midweek fixture that’s relatively convenient, it can take a lot longer. No matter, I’m not in a rush - but it’s nice to have something to aim for. I’d got up to 42 grounds visited with Notts County also to come later this season. I also went to Sheffield for a football ground tick recently and don’t worry, I went to some pubs too so you’ll be hearing all about it.

This challenge is also made trickier by the fact that when clubs move ground, you lose that from your total (like Everton moving to their new stadium this year), and if they drop out of League 2 you also lose them. Conversely you can gain a new ground if they get promoted from the National League. I’d keep a spreadsheet if I were you.

I’m telling you this because on a bitter February day, back in February, I had the opportunity to do some combined ticking. Leyton Orient were playing Plymouth at home, and Brisbane Road is a ground I haven’t been to. Leyton is also a place I haven’t been to. There are four places to tick off there. You can probably see where this is going.

Thrillingly, one of those ticks is the Leyton Orient Supporters Club (202/293), which has extremely limited opening hours - before and after matches, and the occasional CAMRA ale festival. I’m not currently a CAMRA member, but fortunately for me you can access for the price of £1 and what else can you get for a pound these days I ask you. I also had a home ticket for the game, which felt the most sensible option. I do quite like Plymouth in small doses, had a fantastic time seeing Saints there despite getting COVID on the train home. We won though so I’ll take that deal any time.

I decided to make the Supporters Club my first tick of the afternoon - I’m nothing if not a reader of terms and conditions, and the website stated that at busy periods actual members would get priority to come in. I certainly wasn’t going to come all the way to Leyton and not get this most elusive of ticks, so I made my way there pretty much as soon as it opened.

The place is run by volunteers, and there’s a lot of CAMRA crossover - they keep a very interesting range of ales, and they keep them well. I was probably a little too excited to tell the bloke behind the bar about my double-ticking mission, and received a somewhat non-plussed response. I suspect he’s heard this sort of thing more than a few times.

It absolutely feels like a social club, and I imagine more so when the place is packed just before the match. Fortunately for me the relatively sparse attendance allowed me to bask in the glow of the sensational carpet spanning the gaff. Superb flooring. The ale I had was indeed well kept and excellent, they were selling rolls on the counter, the strip lighting was far too bright but I can’t say I’d expect anything else.

I particularly enjoyed the same bloke behind the bar serving some lads who’d wandered in and asked for “four beers”, rolling his eyes, sighing and asking “When you say four beers, what sort of beer?”. Brilliant bit of curmudgeonship.

That’s not a million miles from a story I should have added into my write-up about my favourite pub in the world, The Stag’s Head in Fitzrovia. This was just after the pubs re-opened following COVID - you remember that - and everyone had to sit outside with table service. A couple of American women grabbed a table, and when Nige the landlord asked what they were after, received the response “Could you do us a negroni?”

Nige replied with a sad, slow shake of the head. Not round here, friends. I believe they settled for a brace of gin and tonics and were all the better for it.

Having had my fill of the supporters club (though not one of the rolls, to my later chagrin) I went off to the Coach & Horses (203/293) where I was asked for my ticket to the game before being allowed in. This is pretty much par for the course on matchdays in busy areas, and if you’re going to try and tick off the Leyton pubs on a match day you had better plan ahead.

This is a big old independent pub, and was buzzing with fans and table reservations ahead of the game. I suspect it was home fans only, as most of these pubs were apt to be tonight. It’s been refurbed I’m told, and I’d say they’ve done a decent job. Wood, glass, chandeliers - it put me in mind of The Boleyn Tavern which benefited from a stunning glow-up recently. This wasn’t quite as good but looked exactly the place you’d expect to see an upmarket football crowd. Even the projectors, separate restaurant area and vaguely indie jukebox couldn’t take the shine off. Again I had got in ahead of the crowd and I can imagine it gets a mite busier as kick-off approaches, but it was a good pub. I had a good time.

Northcote Arms (204/293) was a slightly different proposition. This, the furthest from the ground and on the corner of a backstreet, felt very much like a local’s pub. It was a lot busier than the Coach & Horse, perhaps because you didn’t need to show a ticket to get in here.

Not much room to move, it felt lively and a lot louder. The pub itself has seen better days - whilst there’s a lot to enjoy about the exterior, inside not so much care has been taken and it’s a little scrappy around the edges. I’m not a fan of grey paint in pubs, it doesn’t age well, and can show up the usual wear and tear you get in matchday pubs. You can’t say it wasn’t being used well though - each of the five (!) downstairs areas were heaving, and out the back the sofas were covered in kids I suspect dragged along against their will.

Mark’s hot pub take: I don’t think pubs should have sofas.

The odd chant broke out here and there and there was a bit of Orient memorabilia on the walls. I don’t think I’d fight my way back to this place, but it’s clearly important to its community and for me, that’s the best thing a pub can be.

Grander settings awaited me at the Leyton Engineer (205/293), which used to be Leyton Town Hall. What a shed! Originally it was a pop-up pub during the 2012 Olympics - you remember that - which closed ten years later and re-opened as this place in 2024. It’s absolutely gorgeous inside and very much feels like a town hall, which I personally don’t have a problem with.

Clearly the great and good of Leyton agree with me, because the place was absolutely rammed despite being another home fans only pub. It took fifteen minutes to get served, but everyone was good natured while this was happening and the bar staff did their very best to quench everyone’s thirst.

I very much enjoyed the fixtures and fittings including busts and chandeliers, and it’s fantastic to see a space like this becoming a well-used pub rather than a shared workspace or unaffordable flats.

As I was leaving, I saw a bloke stick a Plymouth sticker above the toilets, despite this ostensibly being a home fans only pub. I gave him an inconspicuous “come on you Janners” and went on my merry way to the ground.

Given that I had been to four pubs I didn’t feel like I needed to test the quality of the cooking lager within Leyton’s ground, currently known as the BetWright Stadium but usually called Brisbane Road. It’s a nice ground! The football was typical League One fare and I was happy to take it in and tick another ground off (43/92).

There’s plenty of other pubs in Leyton and I’m sure you could make a very nice day of it. Just plan ahead if you want to go on a matchday - oh, and be specific when you’re asking a CAMRA-associated volunteer what beer you’re after.

One day you might find yourself looking for a place in Herne Hill for a drink en route to North Dulwich. It’s not short of pubs - The Florence and The Commercial both do a job - but The Half Moon is probably the pub most on your route.

Alas, this is 6 Nations season, and whilst The Half Moon is a gorgeous building, beautifully restored after a water main burst in 2013 and caused five feet of flooding, it is a Fullers pub and therefore rugger central. Still, needs must and you can enjoy the stained glass if scrums aren’t your thing.

Then again, what’s this you see out of the corner of your eye while sat on the upper deck of the 468? The Bird House Brewery, down in the arches where Canopy Beer Co used to be? That sounds like the sort of place they wouldn’t be showing the rugby. It’s a taproom, after all. They’ve barely the beers on a chalkboard, usually.

Canopy was one of my favourite places to drink in south London. How much could have changed? That brewery and taproom opened in 2014 and, like many of them that that emerged around that time, was fairly rough and ready. Here’s what it looked like ten years ago in 2016, a photo taken after a sensational day of drinking that gave me my worst hangover to date (I regret nothing):

Pallets everywhere, a bit of a mess, weird combination of glitter balls and bunting, but an exciting addition to the area and very nice beer. There was a metalworks round the corner and it felt slightly like you were trespassing to even find the place.

Sadly, as detailed by Brixton Buzz here, they had to close in 2022, and until now I didn’t know they’d been replaced by another drinking establishment. So it was worth a look - I’m no stranger to taprooms and don’t mind sitting on an stack of pallets if needs be.

Well sucks to be me, because there were no pallets and they were showing the rugby.

This feels different. It feels slick. The telly really threw me, it’s way more hotel bar than taproom - but it was warm, friendly and everyone inside was having a nice time. What’s more, it’s purely a tap, no brewing apparatus anywhere. That feels like a change from the mid-oughts era of breweries in arches, and for good reason.

The Londoner have written a fantastic account of chaos on the Bermondsey Beer Mile, which rose in popularity very much the same time as Canopy did. The move there has been away from small brewers opening up with a few trestle tables of a weekend, to something much more slick.

For Herne Hill, the presence of a place like this taking up two arches, with a bustling courtyard outside and a sourdough pizza place in another arch down the end, signifies a change in the area and what a space like this is expected to provide. Higher rents charged by The Arch Co mean higher prices, which means a higher level of sheen is required.

The beer has changed as well - more session drinks, mid range fare. House Lager, Pale Ale, White IPA. Less mad experimental triple IPAs, which probably reflects current tastes better. They did have Augustiner in the fridge, for which I was thankful because it’s delicious and I had two.

Compared to Canopy the only thing that’s stayed the same inside is the white corrugated arch itself - but even that’s been obscured with a drop ceiling housing speakers and hanging baskets. It feels more like Spiritland, the bar in King’s Cross that prides itself on a superb audio setup.

Other than the fact they were showing sport that I was trying to avoid it’s a lovely place to have a drink, and lots of people were making use of it. It’s changed my perception of what a tap room is, a very different proposition to what Canopy was - not worse, just different. I wonder what it will be in another ten years time.

Living in London’s trendy south London, I’ve rarely had cause to go out in Stoke Newington. It’s a long way to get there and crucially, a long way back. I’ve always liked the look of the pubs though, so when my good friend Hana suggested that I and a number of other like-minded souls could do a pub crawl, it was difficult to resist.

We went to more than three pubs but as you’d expect from a crawl, I forgot to take photos in some of them and was significantly more refreshed in the ones towards the end. I’ve chosen to focus on my three favourites from the day that all offer something different. And now you get to read about them.

We started in The Rose & Crown, a pub that curves handsomely round the corner of Church Street and Albion Road. It’s a big, open ex-Truman’s house that’s been kept in very good nick. I loved stepping across the flagstones, the big windows that keep the place feeling light and airy, and the chessboard flooring next to the bar rail is a lovely touch.

At lunchtime it was doing a brisk trade - we ate, we drank some very well kept Guinness, we enjoyed that my seat had been carved out of a barrel for some reason. It’s a pub that’s full of the sort of people you’d expect in Stokey but the vibe was good. There’s something about wood panelling in a pub that just works for me - a warmth to it, particularly when like here it’s the original gear.. Maybe it’s echoing the feeling of a social club. The Stag’s Head in Fitzrovia (as previously covered) and The White Horse in Peckham also panelled, also great times.

Next up is The Shakespeare, a Victorian corner pub tucked away in the backstreets. It’s worth taking the time to find it, because this one is a bit special.

It’s deeper than it looks - once you’re in, there’s a long horseshoe bar, stools arranged haphazardly at the southern end. It divides the room up into a few distinct areas, meaning you feel secluded whilst still being part of a whole. I was particularly taken with this excellent print behind our side of the bar.

Excellent serving suggestion, in my opinion.

Round the corner the telly was on, fairy lights were festooned all over the shop, and there was a sign stating that “anyone found, or even suspected of consuming their own alcohol, will be asked to leave immediately - THE MANAGEMENT”. Now there’s a story behind that, but who exactly has been sneaking booze and what it was will forever remain unknown because I forgot to ask. Still, great pub.

The Londesborough and The Auld Shillelagh were also visited, but I can’t remember much about the first one and I’ll probably do a write up about the latter another time. So we turn to Macintosh Ales next.

For a full primer on this place you can’t do much better than Lily Waite-Marsden’s excellent write-up for Pellicle, but briefly this is a very small ale house, situated in a yard just off Church Street. It doesn’t call itself, a pub, but it feels pubby. It’s not a brewery tap, even though the only beer they sell is their own. It’s not a bar, though they will do you a gin and tonic. It’s very much its own place and it’s quite special.

What’s even more distinct about this place is that they only have two beers available - Macintosh Best Bitter as your cask option and Macintosh Pale Ale on tap. I had the best bitter and it was sensational - one of the best pints of cask ale I’ve had in a long time. Look, here it is.

There’s a few tables outside, room to perch inside, and a function room round the corner where we made ourselves very comfortable. In the summer I imagine it’s an absolute delight, in winter it was still a very nice time. They also have a lovely collection of vintage bar towels which I thoroughly recommend checking out.

If you’re going to go out for a drink in Stoke Newington you could do a lot worse than dropping in to any of these three.

In which Mark eats (and drinks) in one pub, and then drinks (and maybe eats) in another

I’ve been meaning to visit The Eagle in Farringdon for a long time. This is a pub that’s regarded as the original gastropub, and has been written about by people with much more authority on the matter than me over many years. See Jay Rayner’s 2020 write up on the place as it celebrated thirty years of operation, or read this extract from Boak and Bailey’s superlative book 20th Century Pub.

Bottom line is this: if you’re in a pub that has mismatched furniture, blackboard menus and a short but exciting menu, it’s been directly influenced by this place.

I arrived for lunch on a quiet weekday, not entirely sure what I was going to come across. Would it feel like a cliché, a pub stuck in a moment? Had it changed from what everyone thinks a gastropub is today?

One of my regular lunch haunts is The De Beauvoir Arms, N1, which has all the hallmarks of what you’d think a gastropub would be in this era. Short lunch menu, sanded floorboards, incoherent seats. How would the original model compare?

First and foremost, the way the pub is setup is immediately striking. You’ve got the bar at one end, and the open kitchen at the other. In my experience, most gastros these days keep the kitchen away where you’d expect it to be. Hearing the sound of frying, knives clashing against boards, chefs in aprons and casual attire talking about the day’s orders - this is thrilling stuff.

I was one of the first in, and took one of the small, unreserved tables because I’m a man of the people. As the pub started to fill, everyone instinctively took seats facing the bar and kitchen. It’s the pub as theatre. It’s worth watching, as gas hobs flame and orders get served up. There’s a ceremony to it, you feel you’re part of it - like a lock-in, or a live music session. It’s inclusive, long as you can afford the price of lunch.

This is a pub blog, not a food or beer blog, but I hope you’ll permit to me to tell you what I ate and drank because it was some seriously good gear. A pint of Five Points Pale slipped down a treat, an ale that feels a safe choice across London. For food I ordered the roast hake with broccoli and anchovy aioli.

This is gastro through and through, and let me tell you it’s one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten. It’s restaurant quality, but you can tell you’re still in a pub from the way it operates.

You pay when you order, for starters. The staff might look beyond relaxed at the bar, but as soon as people leave they’re up to clear the table and wipe down. This is a pub, and margins are slim. You can’t afford to leave a table out of action - you have to think about the next sitting.

I’d go back in a heartbeat - it’s a special place and gives so much more than your usual gastropub. There’s heart and rhythm to the place.

After that, with the taste of anchovy aioli unlikely to leave my palate for some hours, it was time for a drink.

The White Swan in Aldgate is the last remaining “central” pub I had to tick off from the Good Beer Guide 2026 (201/293). After this is it’s the wilds of east, west and north London.

Dark ceilings, eighties hits on the stereo. It’s got a bit of the old school about it, a drinking den divided by dark wood. There’s something about a pub with an awning outside - you feel like you’re being invited in out of the cold and the rain into somewhere with a bit of hospitality.

It’s a decent pub and couldn’t be more different to the vibe at The Eagle. There’s not much more to it than that - but the Whitstable Bay pale ale was very nice, as was the welcome. I’m glad both pubs exist.

I’m trying to go to every Greater London pub in the Good Beer Guide. I went to some of the most westerly pubs in part one. Here are some more pubs (in the west).

Three very different pubs for you today.

After feeling very grubby about this whole “go to loads of pubs on weekday afternoons” business because of that grotty Spoons in Feltham - a feeling experienced for the first time, I have to say - I decided the best way to continue was with another grotty Spoons, but this time in Hounslow.

The Moon On The Square (198/293) is once again archetypal Spoons. A big room, stairs that lead to toilets and nothing else. I always find this very strange, an upstairs with nothing but public conveniences, but go off Tim Martin if that’s what you’re into.

This one felt slightly less murky than the last - a bit less edge, more people eating than drinking. And let’s not forget that Wetherspoons pubs really are restaurants that happen to sell a lot of booze - open early for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner on the menu, open late for post-whatever snacks. It felt a bit calmer with people getting stuck into reasonable priced microwave fare (I recommend the wings, myself).

Lot of fruit machine action in this one which felt a nice throwback to the old days of pubs, though no-one was cleaning up on pound coins while we were in there.

Reasonable carpet though. Regal. Not covered in rubbish.

We now navigated our way to The Jolly Coopers, Hampton (199/293). Traffic was very trafficky (a quick reminder when driving - you are the traffic) but fortunately I was able to jump out with the understanding this would be a quick trip. Alan (my dad and lift for the day) was a lorry driver many moons ago, so this is small beer for him.

After heading inside I would have longed to have a bit longer and let me tell you why after this photo of the outside of the pub.

I told you about the traffic!

As I got inside, the landlord was holding court sat outside of the bar, then headed back to take my order. How can I tell it was the landlord and not someone who worked there, you ask? You get a sense of these things, when you go to nearly two hundred pubs. No pub worker would dare take up prime position on the outside of the bar. Languorous, is the word I would use.

He served me briskly and not in an unfriendly manner (this is not a beer blog but the Courage was drinking well), then headed back to continue his conversation with the two other people in the room. I’m not an eavesdropper but the words “NATO” and “Ukraine” stood out. There was also talk of “my regiment”, and in my experience when you hear that sort of phrase, you’re in for an absolute world of pub chat gold.

Also look at all the crazy crap on the walls. And a bar billiards table!

The restaurant behind certainly looms large - empty on visiting but you get a sense does a brisk local trade. I’d love to come back here and see what it’s like when it’s bustling, it had the feel and heart of a pub with stories and characters. Quiz night promises to be pyrotechnic.

It was an absolute sea change from the last two identikit Wetherspoons, and it’s pubs like this that make me want to do this London-wide exploration. You truly never know what you’re going to find and Hampton is richer for this one.

Time to return to the scene of a previous pub ticking mission, in Surbiton. I’d been here back in 2022 and managed to get a few pubs ticked off, but one evaded me due to not being open when it said it would. Now I’ve been there, I understand why they might not have been as punctual as other pubs.

This is The Lamb, Surbiton - and the 200th pub I’ve been to in this year’s Good Beer Guide. What a sensational milestone to finish the day on.

From the outside this looks like any London suburban pub, but it’s actually a bit special. It was Local CAMRA Pub of the Year 2024, which is some accolade for those of us with an interest in beer that doesn’t taste like vinegar, and when you get inside you immediately feel it’s a bit different.

What are they on about. It’s like being inside a Campino sweet, off of the nineties.

We got here about five in the afternoon or so, and it felt like they’d just opened the doors despite it ostensibly being open from 12PM. That feels ambitious, and no wonder I wasn’t able to get in knocking on the door three minutes past noon in 2022.

Live music looms large and it feels like being in a drama student’s halls at uni, all floating fabrics and low lighting. I absolutely loved it and once again, would have loved to have seen what it’s like when it fills up.

This had been a really fun day and I have to thank Alan (my dad, chauffeur, zero percent beer connoisseur) for being so game when I told him the aim was to visit pubs based on their compass direction, not quality. He took it in his stride, before speeding down the A3 back to Salisbury. Had I planned the pub route so he’d be able to get home swiftly and I could race back to central London on a regular commuter line? Of course I did, and I feel great about it.

Two hundred down. Ninety three to go.

I live in south London, which if a popular football chant is to be believed, is wonderful. I certainly think so. It does, however, make my aim of visiting every Greater London pub in the 2026 Good Beer Guide slightly complicated.

There’s 293 pubs to get stuck into, and while I’ve pretty much done everything in the middle and the south, the west of London remains very much unvisited. I have no reason to go there, apart from this, so it was time to remedy that and see away some of the furthest fringes.

My Dad (we’ll call him Alan, because that’s his name) offered to use some of his retirement to provide taxi service for some pubs I’d otherwise be unable to hit up without a lot of silly bother. So on a rainy winter afternoon, we made our way to the far reaches of Hayes and Harlington, and first on the agenda was the most westerly pub in the 2026 guide - The White Hart, Harlington (195/293).

It’s a Fullers pub, barn-esque, brick and old wood everywhere. It was lunchtime and busier than I was expecting - more than a few family meals, a mess of builders, I believe a party broke out at one point - and had a nice atmosphere.

I had a half of Pride and it wasn’t very nice. Despite this beer being the absolute apogee of my cask drinking career - the pint of Pride I had at The Dove in Hammersmith remains the best thing I’ve ever drunk - it can sometimes be a bit rough, even in Fullers pubs where you think they’d know better.

Grade II listed, is this place - you wouldn’t guess from the huge amounts of brick inside, I think it’s been altered substantially over the years. I wouldn’t dwell too long here but it’s serving a purpose and somewhere has to be the most westerly tick. May as well be here.

Things were only going to get more easterly from here, and that has to be seen as progress.

Next we bravely headed to The Plough Inn, Norwood Green (196/293). Well, I did at any rate. Al stayed in the car. There’s only so many Peroni 0’s a man can drink.

It felt a world away from Harlington - we passed the titular green on the way and instantly you got a village-y sense of the place.

Lads, this place was absolutely low beam o’clock. Did I hit my head more than once during the brief time I was in the pub? It’s not for me to say.

I liked that they had a fire going, and that there was a niche filled with records and a record player. I did not like hitting my head.

Next on the agenda was The Red Lion in Isleworth, which I had a weird sixth sense about as we approached that something wasn’t right.

And so it proved to be.

Shut pub alert! A shame - it’s in the backstreets of Isleworth with not much else around, which was why I’d included it on the day’s plan. Alas, you don’t always get what you want when you’re daytime pub ticking, and so it proved to be here.

I particularly enjoyed Alan trying to see if any other houses on the street were suffering from this so-called power cut, though what he was suggesting I do with that information I’m still not sure.

The fourth pub, and third tick of the day, was at the first of two Spoons on the plan. Good luck everybody, we’re going to The Moon Under Water, Hounslow (197/293).

This is a proper, old school Spoons. I believe it is also in the top ten least pleasant pubs I’ve ever been in.

A very tired and very busy interior. Quite mucky. A lot of people and a lot of mess. The ale, such as it was, was fine, but the energy was aggy and I didn’t care for the place at all. This isn’t a general sneer at all Wetherspoons - I think some of them are fantastic, and the fact that they’re accessible to so many levels of society is a good thing. This one just didn’t feel great.

Toilets easy to access, carpet mediocre and grubby. Would not recommend.

Still, a tick is a tick. Three down in the west and three more to go when we come back for part two.

Absolutely a new one on me.

After doing a couple of pubs in Ealing, there was time and inclination to stop in Hanwell and knock off a few more Good Beer Guide pubs. There’s actually three here in the 2026 guide, but as micropubs are wont to do, The Dodo keeps later hours than my visit permitted so I’ll have to come back for that one.

As it was, I headed down to The Fox (193/293), which was auspicious in that it left 100 pubs to tick off in this year’s guide. This is usually as far as I get every year, so it it will be interesting to see if this blog gives a bit more motivation.

You wouldn’t know it from the photo but we’re just a short walk from the Grand Union canal, and this handsome building stands in the middle of copious housing. I think you’d be delighted if this was your local.

It’s a big, buzzy pub that has Bass on tap and Rihanna on the speakers. Great combo. It’s also got a lot of rugby energy, my visit coinciding with Six Nations season, but the jeans and shoes crowd weren’t out in force for which I was very thankful.

You won’t be surprised to learn it’s on CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors - originally it was divided into four separate bars but in the style of now, it’s one big room plus a copious covered outdoor areas which I reckon you can thank COVID for. A lovely pub and if you happen to be passing I’d strongly recommend popping in.

It was then time to head to The Viaduct (194/293) which had a slightly less picturesque approach.

We are very much on the Uxbridge Road here, team. Once you battle through traffic and into the pub it’s a decent shack. Not super busy, but nice enough in the way that Fuller’s pubs often are. The London Pride was okay, I’ve had better, and something about the atmosphere didn’t make me want to linger.

I did enjoy the curved end to the bar, though.

It might come alive when it’s busier - it’s certainly well located and there’s ample parking. You might need to pick your moment.

Next up - the most westerly pub in the Good Beer Guide 2026. One for the compass fans out there.

As I suspected, my bid to visit every Greater London pub in the Good Beer Guide was going to have to lead me to west London. Not somewhere I have ever called home, or spend any of my free time, but I am nothing if not adaptable.

As such, I found myself heading to Ealing, ahead of a day of ticking off as many westerly pubs as possible. More on that to follow on subsequent posts, but have this as a teaser - one of them is in Feltham.

Ealing has got three pubs in the GBG - I was able to take a good look at two of them, but the third is the The Questors Theatre bar. This is one of the few oddities in the guide - you get the occasional social club, accessible to CAMRA members and usually the general public for a fee. The Questors, on the other hand, is the bar to a theatre which I presume does a decent drop of cask ale. At any rate they’re not open until seven in the evening which means I’ll have to swing by another time, and hopefullt take in some interpretive dance.

First then was The Sir Michael Balcon (191/293 in the GBG 2026), the first Wetherspoons we’ve encountered so far.

I’ll probably have to have a think about how I write about Spoons going forward, as there’s no shortage of them in the guide and they very much run to a template, but this was a relatively pleasant one. Quiet when I arrived but started filling up with the usual mix of people who frequent these pubs - old boys, families, people in high vis. It was a good group.

The toilets were relatively easy to find (just the one flight of stairs) and the carpet was respectable if not scintillating.

We then moved on to an altogether different beast, The Drayton Court Hotel (192/293).

Look at the size of it!

Of course, it transpires that this is a hotel with a “pub” attached, which of course means it’s a hotel bar rather than a pub.

This one is run by our good friends at Fullers which usually means a decent/limited beer supply, and minimal vibes in the space itself. And so it proved to be.

A perfectly respectful hotel bar but nothing to write home about. They did have an open fire in one corner, which was a nice touch, and there was a hotel cat, a ginger tom that welcomed you as you came in, but other than that it wasn’t super memorable.

That’s Ealing, for now. Next up for Guide ticking it’s Hanwell. No, me either.

I’m attempting to visit every Greater London pub in the Good Beer Guide. This is pub 189/293 in the 2026 edition.

A rainy February evening in south London, and with time on my hands before going to see Allie X at Brixton Academy, I decided to break my bus journey and hit up Knowles of Norwood.

I live in South Norwood, which geographically isn’t that far from West Norwood, but there’s plenty in the way to stop me visiting this particular pub since it emerged in the guide this year.

It used to be a hardware place - a hardware palace, more like, when you consider the size of it. Antic could only dream of such a space, and in fact it’s got some shared spirit from that frequently in-administration pub chain. The chairs and tables are much nicer, you’d have to say.

Service was leisurely to the point of horizonal - the cry of “oh, a queue!” when there were three of us waiting to be served suggested that weekday evenings are not the busiest time in this place. I suspect the Sunday roast brings them all in, mind you.

It’s just on the edge of pub themed restaurant - it avoids that dubious honour by not having cutlery already on the table, and there being plenty of standing room.

Despite it being pretty empty - a couple of tables of friends, some post-work crowd working through KPIs - I quite liked the place. As befits a Portobello establishment the beer (Star, I think) was bang average - and also quite the warmest pint I’ve ever drunk. A notch or two above room temperature. It was like drinking bathwater.

Not the worst post-bus pre-gig drinking space. Allie X was sensational, by the way. She was supporting Magdalena Bay so I took two hours worth of buses for a thirty minute set. I regret nothing!

I’m attempting to visit every Greater London pub in the Good Beer Guide. This is pub 189/293 in the 2026 edition.

I’m not the biggest fan of a Fullers pub, generally. They’re absolutely fine but there’s something amongst all the brass and wood that I don’t find appealing. I hate to use the phrase - no, actually I don’t, I revel in it - but they can feel like a jumped up Wetherspoons.

It was with some trepidation that I crossed Vauxhall Bridge Road, just south of Victoria station, to enter The Jugged Hare. And yes, my sense is that the best thing about it is the name.

Scarcely feels believable that I haven’t been to this pub before, but it’s not exactly in a destination you’d spend much time in unless you had a reason. You’ve got great pubs and a village feel to Pimlico just a street or so away, or Victoria itself has all the chain restaurants and transport links you could ask for. So this pub isn’t really for me, I guess.

It’s the usual converted bank setup - high ceilings juxtaposed with massive paintings and TVs that feel a little more incongruous than elsewhere. Don’t get the ideas I don’t love TVs in pubs, I adore them for sport or another big reason, but when it’s back to back adverts on daytime television it gives it a feel more like a dentists waiting room than a pub.

Music was loud and broadly fine.

Overall the place was lively and friendly and everyone in seemed to be enjoying their lunch - they do a roaring trade in £20 pies, it seems - so I can’t be too down on the place.

I won’t be rushing back but it’s good to see a building with as much character as this being used properly.

I’m attempting to visit every Greater London pub in the Good Beer Guide. This is pub 188/293 in the 2026 edition.

Being a 6’5” white British man, it’s rare that I come across a pub where I feel like I shouldn’t belong. This is a massive level of privilege that I’m very aware of - it’s what allows me to think I can visit every pub in the Good Beer Guide and the only constraints I have are “how do I get there” and “is it a half or a pint”.

I’m exactly the kind of person who pubs are set up for. They cater for my tastes, my social status, my pocket and occasionally my height. So it’s rare to approach a pub and feel like this might not be the sort of place for me.

The Grenadier is pure Belgravia, hidden in Wilton Mews. Around the corner you’ve got Buckingham Palace and Hyde Park. This is not a pub you stumble upon, and as you pass chauffeurs waiting to pick up and “PRIVATE” signs, I can easily see how some people would be put off from exploring further.

Not me though because I’m an absolute ledge aren’t I.

I pressed on and found a very tidy gaff. There’s a small horseshoe bar with a few too many staff faffing behind it, a couple of blokes talking about some sort of deal well above my head, and a few rooms at the back which seem to be reserved for diners. It’s that sort of place.

There was no music but it didn’t feel any worse for it - the room had enough energy from the limit amount of conversation to fill it up. It hummed along by itself, which is the mark of a decent pub for me.

There’s also a load of money all over the ceiling.

The pub’s official website has this to say about it:

Legend has it that Grenadier is named after young Cedric, a soldier who was caught cheating at cards and punished by being beaten to death. No one knows exactly when this ghastly deed occurred, but it is thought to have been in September as that is when ghostly happenings are rife. Visitors hang money from the ceiling in an attempt to pay his debt, but poor Cedric seems to remain trapped on earth.

This is copper bottomed bollocks on two counts - firstly the story actually comes from an earlier tavern called the Horse Grenadier which stood north from here until the 1830s, and secondly there’s no such thing as ghosts.

Still it’s a nice gimmick and the cash has clearly got decent acoustic properties.

If you do go, make sure to take a stroll down the side alley - take the hanging baskets away and you’ve got a view of Victorian London, sans smog and top hats.