Tagged along with the Croydon booze-cruisers for a pub crawl in Portsmouth. This is the group of a friend from the Inn Doors, they do these occasional days out to a different city, this time they chose Portsmouth and I was invited along. I had met most of the at a party over the summer, and met some of them a few times in the pub. A great day, started quite early though. I got picked up from here at 7:30, then a fast drive to Southsea. Did it in about two hours. To the Holiday Inn to drop off the car, then to the Spinnaker Cafe for a cooked breakfast. A slight mix up, I said vegan, she heard medium, but sorted quickly. It is a good cafe actually, though will it have to change its name when it loses its view of the Spinnaker Tower? There are new houses and flats being built between... Now the pubbing actually starts just after 11am.
First to The Bridge, I'd not been there before though have often walked near it. There's always been a stretch of harbour between it and me. Nice Fullers pub, good beer. Then to The Dolphin, supposedly oldest pub in Portsmouth, have been to that one before. Then The Pembroke, a traditional boozer. Then The Barley Mow which I had enjoyed on a previous pub crawl with the Fareham boys. Then we split slightly, a few wanted food and a few did not so I dragged them into Pie And Vinyl, and it was a great success. I had The Great Pretender, with mash, and a coffee to slow it down a bit.
We were meant to be meeting up again at the Hole In The Wall, but the others had moved on to the next pub by this point, so just four of us went in there for a half. The next pub was the Eldon Arms but they were coming out as we headed towards it, so we were back together by this point, though we had technically missed a pub. On to The Vaults, and we sat outside on the roof terrace. Starting to get a bit hazy by this point though I think I paced it pretty nicely.
We ate a fairly good curry in the Akash, also the ending point of other lads trips. Then some had to head back to London on the train, I think my directions and estimates of timings back to the station were a bit off, hope they were all OK. Then from here I went back to The Vaults to catch up with one who'd decided to stay there and meet up with his son, who was at uni in Portsmouth. I did not find him, o headed out again and bunped into him in the street. He'd failed to meet his son, bit confusing, but we worked it out between us and headed first to that weird furniture shop with a bar in it. It's now all bar, no shop, but similarly styled. It did not look ale-ish enough for my friend, so we tried the V&A (what was the Fuzz And Firkin). In theory it had ales, but they'd run out of everything. We settled for bottles, and made that the last stop of the night.
I was in an Uber back to mum and dad's by 9:30, pretty sensible going. A great day out.
Equally fast drive back so I was home again by midday Sunday. A proper flying visit.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe in the deep South. Wed + dad to two, I'm a full stack web engineer, + I do js / Node, some ruby, python, php etc. I like pubs, running, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.