Welcome to The Euro Pub Crawlers
Continually searching the globe for the perfect pub....(hey, why not?).
Continually searching the globe for the perfect pub....(hey, why not?).
The very first pub crawl, all laid out for us by the New York Times in 1986, in the Travel Section, within the cover article entitled, "The Drinking Writer's Guide to the Best Pubs of Great Britain".
How could we go wrong?
And off we went, in January of 1987, (during Super Bowl Weekend), to Great Britain, in an attempt to visit all 9 pubs mentioned in the article in the span of a week.
The next paragraph is a synopsis of the article.
Nine Poets, Novelists and critics name their favorite pubs in Britain & Ireland. Some are urban retreats, others village snugs; some raffish, others genteel.
The author's criteria are various. Edna O'Brien likes a pub where the people are "friendly without being too friendly" and the atmosphere is homey; Piers Paul Read points out that "one of the points of pubs is to meet people you might not want to see in your home," and selects a local with doors on two different streets for fast exits. Kingsley Amis's pub is Victorian, Rosemary Dunnage's was founded in 1110. Sarah Caudwell chooses a 17th-century coffeehouse that now serves wine and spirits to financiers, while Fitzroy Maclean honors is Highland origins in an Inveraray Inn whose landlord wears the kilt. Hammond Innes and John Wain both choose waterside establishments, and Richard Adams praises a landlord the likes of which will not be seen again soon.
However, the people we met, the places we were able to visit, and the situations we often found ourselves in, motivated us enough to make it an annual event.
....and here we are, 34 years later.
Cover photo: Pirates Pub BVI's '91, quite possibly the best pub on the planet at the time.
top: The Skirrid Mountain Inn, one of our 1st pubs on tour and mentioned in the article 1987.
middle: Tommy, (the Border Collie), helped us on our search on the Orkney Islands in 2008.
bottom: Thomas Stapleton's Pub, Leuven Belgium, 2016, and a happy pub owner shows off his official EPCA scarf.