It took 34 months to reach the 100,000 mark and 12½ more months to reach 200,000 visits. I’ve tracked this several ways, and this is the most conservative estimate (one tracker that both counts the same IP if it hits multiple times per day and is really slack about counting spam-trolls has the count over 300,000). This is truly more evidence that the web is evil and that society is crumbling beneath the unbearable weight of our detritus. Thanks for visiting.
“You’ll have to excuse me, I’m not at my best.
I’ve been gone for a week, I’ve been drunk since I left.
These so-called vacations will soon be my death.
I’m so sick from the drink, I need home for a rest.”
_____from Home For A Rest by Mann and Kelly_____
My favourite pub (and the first British pub I ever visited), the Canny Man’s in Edinburgh, is not written up in this blog nor are dozens of others that predate our term of residence in this spectacular nation. They were visited during one of several trips for job interviews, work, conferences, or vacations and this sort of self-indulgent, public diary would never have crossed my mind back then.
This collection remains here to entertain myself and a small number of friends and if any of it offends then it probably isn’t for you. Every now and then, someone takes great offence at my reports on what I experience and demand I edit to suit their desires (and often threaten bodily harm). I doubt that any of the few hundred people per day that visit one or another of these posts makes a decision about patronising a bar based on my poor prose or snarky observations; any that do are as deluded as those would-be Ministry of Truth officers.
For me, the 1000th was always going to be just another pub, and an annoying one, at that. When I exceeded 100, most people acted as though they thought it was bullshit until the number got out of the 100′s; the same thing happened with 500, with incredulity only waning as I approached 600. These doubts usually are stated as, “oh, and you keep a count of these, do you?” Fuck me, I write a blog post for each one and the metadata is logged in an Excel spreadsheet…welcome to the 21st century support for functional alcoholics. Here are some of the sorts of details I can access.
Milestones:
19 January 2009: commence British residence
19 January 2010: 1 year, 293 pubs so far
19 January 2011: 2 years, 531 pubs so far
19 January 2012: 3 years, 811 pubs so far
Pub #1: Red Lion, Stretham, Cambridgeshire, 19 January 2009
Pub #100: The Red Lion, Granchester, Cambridgeshire, 29 May 2009
Pub #200: Cherry Tree, Newmarket, Suffolk, 31 July 2009
Pub #300: White Horse, Witcham, Cambridgeshire, 31 January 2010
Pub #400: SportsBar in Marylebone Station, St John’s Wood, London, 30 May 2010
Pub #500: Wetherspoons, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, 10 September 2010
Pub #600: Boundary House, Swindon, Wiltshire, 28 May 2011
Pub #700: The Commercial Rooms, Bristol, Somerset, 11 September 2011
Pub #800: Wheatsheaf, Lower Woodford, Wiltshire, 8 January 2012
Pub #900: Plough, Clanfield, Oxfordshire, 4 May 2012
Pub #1000: Red Lion, East Chisenbury, Wiltshire, 9 September 2012
Most visited pub names:
The Red Lion – 36 (includes 1 “Ye Olde Red Lion”)
The Crown – 16
The Plough – 16
The White Hart – 15
The King’s Arms – 12
The White Horse – 12
The Black Horse – 11
The Swan – 11
The Wheatsheaf – 11
The Prince of Wales – 10
I remember a surprisingly large number (most in fact) of the pubs I have visited due to the exercise of writing up something about the occasion, even if it has nothing to do with the pub itself nor, even, reality. Some of my personal favourite write-ups (not all are pubs) include:
The Baron of Beef, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, 06 February 2009 (makes me laugh)
The Chequers, Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, 08 March 2009 (aerosols and discarded pants)
The Prince Regent, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, 11 March 2009 (oh, the hangover….)
The Goat Tavern, Kensington, London, 19 March 2009 (Chicago Cubs references)
The Cock, Hemigford Grey, Cambridgeshire, 30 May 2009 (first birthday here)
Snowdonia Marathon, 24 October 2009 (several pub stops, awesome run)
The Dog and Duck, Linton, Cambridgeshire, 06 January 2010 (puzzle and last night out in Cambridgeshire)
London Underround Birthday Pub Crawl, 30 May 2010 (ludicrous, but good birthday out in London)
The Crown, Penzance, Cornwall, 31 December 2010 (our 25th Anniversary)
The Langley Tap, Langley Burrell, Wiltshire, 11 September 2011 (landlord had pint waiting for me during Chippenham Half Marathon)
London Marathon, 22 April 2012 (a high point of sorts, 5 pubs and more)
What a bunch of dicks (I’m probably not welcome at alumni golf tournament anymore)
Florence religious tourism (from Florence Marathon trip, I should grow up someday)
and, any of the ones tagged “Made Me Laugh”
After this present vacation ends next week, I predict the pace falling off dramatically for a while. Maybe, at least, the writing will get better when I have a new one to report.
On to 1500! It might even coincide with my citizenship/naturalisation application….
Nominations are open for the 1000th pub of this blog. It doesn’t have to be an interesting or old pub, nor inhabited by odd individuals or have management at all tolerant of foreigners. It should be within 5 miles of a train station via some paths amenable to a runner. I would prefer the trainline passes through Swindon and that the journey is less than two hours, but for a spectacular suggestion I would happily travel further afield. It must not already (or in the intervening days) appear on this map: http://tiny.cc/yjhyy .
I don’t have an accurate method for predicting the date this will transpire and haven’t given it that much thought (I actually don’t take this very seriously); but, since a couple of people said they would like to go to the 1000th (although nothing is planned other than downing a pint and maybe a pickled egg) I will post the most likely location by 31st August 2012 and I will cease visiting new venues after pub #999 and post the approximate hour of this non-event with at least 24 hours notice.
I believe strongly that the 1000th will occur between 4th and 18th September while I take my remaining annual leave for this year (new year starts 1st October). The plan is to run 10-15 miles per day over unfamiliar terrain stopping at 4-5 pubs on each run which would easily finish the remaining triple-digit houses.
Alternatively, and perhaps more realistically, a look at ‘past performance’ on this pub quest yields a slightly later date. As of this note, I have visited 941 pubs for a pub-per-day average of 0.729 (a new pub every 33 hours since 19 January 2009)…a rate that would suggest a finish date of 22nd October 2012.
Thanks, in advance, to anyone that suggests a decent site and even more sincere thanks to anyone that just takes the piss [for you are the one's that make this venture worthwhile].
Sir Humphry Davy...Google him, he's cooler than Faraday (or as the wife refers to him, "That Dishy Faraday")
It couldn’t last forever, but my work colleagues have discovered the blog…shit, or shite as it were. Now I have to watch my language, cut down on the gratuitous nudity (on here, but don’t worry, ladies and selected gentlemen, these vestments ain’t sewn on), and stop slagging everybody off so much. Fucking internet, there’s no privacy anymore.
Update: decided to delete the ClustrMap...here it is at 60 days usage, though
Awaiting the bus, I find I’ve got WIFI access (University offices nearby, I reckon). I got a nice nod from a Brit in New York yesterday (PR guy and he’s on painkillers right now, so take it with a grain; still, he is responsible for projecting a half-naked Gail Porter onto Parliament awhile back so he’s doing something right) and it prompted me to have a look at the visitor logs. Most are incomprehensible lists of IP addresses, but the little map that used to live down at the bottom of the left side column (see above) scored a visit every time someone checked out the site with an IP that hadn’t been seen by it since the map’s previous update (or, daily, that is). Here, then, is the United Nations of the Endless British Pub Crawl since 30 December 2011 (last 60 days):
So, the things I find interesting are:
I started this blog with the intention of putting up photos and occasionally humourous stories for friends in the US, an intended readership of 20-30 folks in Arizona, 40-50 in Georgia, and some random jackasses in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Illinois, Ohio, Florida, DC, and Tennessee…maybe a hundred wretched souls all told, and even then I only reckoned on a visit from each of them, on average, every three or four months. For the most part, that’s what I seem to get from the Arizona and Georgia contingent, if that; but the rest of the US, especially Cali, Iowa and Texas have been a real surprise:
Brits, on the other hand, have really seemed to embraced this foolishness visiting at a rate of 4.6-to-1 versus the US (or 4.8-to-1 for the entire Commonwealth). God Save the Queen.
And, if you take California out of the equation then the EU out-visits the US 1147-to-936 (like most UK residents, I try not to include this holy soil in any equation involving Brussels).
But, speaking of Brussels…the Dutch speaking countries have showed up 407 times thanks in large part to visitors from Groningen (my favourite Dutch town, and as soon as I replace my turntable I’m making a trip to the record vendor at the market–simply the most amazing collection of vinyl you have ever seen).
As far as the once-known-as ‘Axis Of Evil,’ I have only a single visit from Iraq, and none from North Korea or Iran. This hurts, but I’m not sure how to reach out to them.
Sometime during the Swindon Half Marathon the 100,000th visit to this blog occurred. That’s really ridiculous: I have a couple of dozen acquaintances that should be interested in some of this stuff, and two or three friends that check in now-and-again but even spread out over nearly three years this is a surprising amount of traffic that has to be attributed to strangers or the strange. I can only imagine that it must be down to the subject matter because I know the prose isn’t grand; on the other hand, all the articles are short as befits the attention span of typical net users and there is always the threat of puerile humour and nudity so maybe this isn’t so surprising after all. Just because I don’t have a mature life doesn’t mean you can’t get one (I’m just saying…).
So it has come to this…1000 posts in less than 3 years (975 days, to be precise).
In that time we have come quite far together: 712 pub stops, 4025 miles running (1740 unique miles in the UK, at that), almost 96000 views of this blog (averaging about 200/day the last few months after slow beginnings) and tons of ridiculous shit that I should bring me disgrace. In that same time, I have only managed my way onto one proper publication (with acknowledgements in a few others, although another paper from the Cambridge work is almost finished) and one patent, and for that meager output I truly am ashamed; but, my big bag of guilt still has a bit of spandex left and, besides, I left plenty of tired, old impropriety across the Atlantic to make room for new experiences so let’s keep piling it in.
One of my favourite pub experiences was early on at the Chequers in Cottenham which I hope has reopened since we left the area. I have some favourite pubs in various places but no one favourite nationwide yet. The map, linked here and over to the left of the page gives you the names of pubs reviewed or otherwise used as a template for my blather in this document and makes a nearly comprehensive reference for planning a pub crawl in Oxford, Swindon, Cambridge, Ely, Faringdon, Kidlington and Bicester; many other areas are covered less extensively but it should continue to grow over the coming years.
Pub count by date...summer surge came late this year
Here are some of my favourite posts out of that ridiculous collection, if you are at all interested or just bored:
Picking on the deceased, especially one’s betters, is always worthy: Arthur Stanley Eddington plaque. Other times, the sciences offer jobs that are hard to resist (but the job has been filled and removed from the HR site since then). Never sure if it was an attractant or repellent, and still don’t understand what the dog had to do with it (unless it was a Cocker).
Many articles about running as tourism have been posted, but some are better than others. Place names tend to be the best for humour…like these here. Or this one. We actually drove about 10 miles out of our way one weekend trip for this hamlet, but the signs have been stolen so often they stopped putting them up. Claims to never having paid for it aside, this was a nice if mistaken sight. Deep in Cambridgeshire you find some good place names, and they seem to treat strangers well on Hills Road Cambridge. Our first trip to Wales resulted in disappointment with this highway’s promise.
The daily Haiku was a feature early on, before I realised just how many pubs were going to be reviewed. The best ones happened spontaneously like this one on a trip to London.
As I write this I am suffering stigmata…okay, I accidentally stabbed myself in the palm with a screwdriver this morning. Still, religion figures into the blog from time-to-time as it did about the ex-masturbators and the fisting-for-Jesus folks. In Italy, it is hard to escape the influence of the Church and so we gave into its temptations.
An eternal Dylan fan and no stranger to public nudity and substance abuse, I felt kinship with these guys. Other times the news is just ironic on its own. Romance is alive and well in Ireland, as this guy proves.
With luck running will continue and I’ll cover many more miles of virgin territory and review loads of worthy races (although my feelings have not changed for the ‘Finisher’s Medal’). Barely 1/10 of 1% into the stock of pubs to visit, I should be able to maintain this pace of coverage for awhile, as well. Best, to all, and here’s to 1000 more of this nonsense.
Logged off the pc with this many:
Back on for some coffee next morning with this:
Quarter of a million (plus a shitload of phishing hits); and, most of the posts have an intended audience of 7-10 people. The net is baffling.
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