Meet In the Old Victoria from 5.30pm, then on for a Simber's mystery tour!!
Chap and Sim were first to arrive shortly before 5.30pm. Beers in hand we were joined by Louise, Phil and Ian for some quiet chat and a couple of jars.
Sim had arranged an alternative pub crawl around the back streets of Broad Street and the next pub was the Craven Arms. Well this has changed since Chap & Dave frequented the joint about 30 years ago, nice boozer with a fine selection of beers for the connoisseurs (unfortunately Smoothy-bollox does not come in to this category!!). Dave bust a gut to get to town before we moved on as he wanted to visit the pubs of the past. Steve Holly also joined us at the CA. Plenty of ale, scratchings and good chat were had including topics on DWP benefits and the JS enquiry again. A good pub which we must return to again.
We continued the Colonel's route march to the Tap and Spile, but this turned out only to be a quick visit with no beer being consumed, Chap and Phil had a quick piss whilst the others abandoned ship so to speak, this one has gone down hill.
A quick change to the Colonel's itinerary led us to another blast from the past as we ended up in the Brass House. Again somewhat of a change compared to it's hey-day as there were no queues and the place was sparsely populated to how it used to be. They did have some reasonable ales on so we stayed for a quick jar before moving on.
The Prince of Wales behind the ICC was the next pub on the list, again this was unusually quiet, may have been the chilly weather or is it the current economic climate?. A good range of beers though and a meeting of the WATN committee deciding to give Nigel a yellow card for his recent lack of attendance. Another box was ticked on the Colonel's Ale trail card.
Final pub was the Shakespeare, not been here for a while but they always have a reasonable selection of beer> the chaps settled down for the last beers of the night. The DD's (Dorridge Dozers) heading of for the 10.47 train leaving Chap, Dave & Phil to sidle out after last orders to get their respective last buses.