Not content with sitting in a chilly pub garden, Liverymen quickly signed up to join a virtual London pub crawl on 29th April. With a drink in hand, Liveryman Roger Kelsey delights in recalling the night we all came together for a fascinating boozy, warm night in...
With enough revellers to fill a London double decker bus, the WCB virtual pub crawl got under way, led by Blue Badge tour guide Simon Whitehouse of the London Walk Company. Eight breakout rooms, available during and after the tour, promised an evening of fellowship and discovery too. There was something for everyone, in the comfort and warmth of their own surroundings - all without the risk of missing the bus and staggering home inebriated!
The Pub Crawl began South of the river at the Mayflower Hotel, overlooking the site of the Rotherhithe shipyard where the vessel that carried the Pilgrim Fathers to the Americas in 1620 was built, and the medieval George and other inns off Borough High Street, Southwark where other pilgrims lodged on their way to Canterbury.
Crossing the river, overlooking Execution Dock was the Prospect of Whitby, Wapping, regularly visited by Henry the Eighth, the artist William Turner and novelist Charles Dickens. After a dose of Dutch courage, we braved the East End and stopped at the Blind Beggar, where 60s gangster Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell dead, and the White Hart at the other end of Whitechapel High Street, just yards from where Jack the Ripper’s first victim was discovered in 1888.
Moving into the City we discovered smuggler vaults at the Olde Wine Shades in Martin Lane near Cannon Street, the popularity of gin at the City of London Distillery and Bar in Brides Lane, and Dr Johnson’s ‘local’, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese off Fleet Street. Female empowerment made legal history at El Vinos and exciting cocktails were made in the American Bar at the Savoy Hotel in the Strand. The Salisbury Tavern in St Martins Lane was popular amongst film and theatre goers, we learned.
However, on reaching the Coach and Horses in Greek Street, Soho and finding a vegan only menu, anyone on the charabanc could be forgiven, if feeling a bit peckish (in either the real or virtual world) for nipping back to the Truman Brewery and the curry houses in Brick Lane, Spitalfields.
A ‘normal’ pub crawl, ending with conversation slurred and memories blurred, is soon forgotten. But in a ‘virtual’ world, where we learned a lot and the pubs went down quicker than the drinks, the memories will linger on.
LIVERYMAN ROGER KELSEY