Meet the West Midlands man on a 'never-ending' pub crawl having visited nearly 170 London pubs

A West Midlands man and his friends are on a 'never-ending' pub crawl - visiting London on the same weekend every year to try and tick off as many boozers as they can. 

The 'Jolly Boys' began their annual outing nearly ten years ago and have so far supped in nearly 170 of the capital's best watering holes. 

Staffordshire-based Richard Moore, one of the six friends all aged in their fifties, revealed that it all started with a book on the Big Smoke's most historic pubs. But after visiting all the boozers in the book, they decided to up their game and branch out further.

Now, the friends - engineers Mr Moore, Karl Young and Dave Russell, along with hairdresser Jon Main, business owner Vaughan Williams and commercial manager Trevor Power - have the third weekend in September booked out no matter what, with their wives barred from making plans. 

Mr Moore, 58, said: "As a group of friends, we share a passion for London pubs. We had a book on historic London pubs and decided it would be a good idea to work our way through the 20 or 30 pubs in the book. 

"That was back in 2017. Now, we are expanding out to 500 in central London. So far, we are up to 169 - which is good going seeing as none of us live in London. 

"I'm based in Staffordshire, one's up in the Peak District, another is in Chesterfield and one is in North Wales, so we are spread out."

The group have completed eight trips to the capital so far - with the pandemic having scuppered one trip in the interim. 

They always begin at the Betjeman Arms in St Pancras station upon arrival on Friday, before mapping out the pubs for the rest of the weekend. Amongst their favourites so far are the Prospect of Whitby in Wapping, the Mayflower in Rotherhithe and Ye Olde Mitre in Holborn. 

Last September, the Jolly Boys ventured southwest to Wimbledon. 

Grandad of three Mr Moore said: “It's planned well in advance. We are already in the planning stage for next year's visit, which will take us to over 200 pubs. We will select a particular area to go to, pick out some pubs on the Friday and then head out on the Saturday."

Mr Moore added that the crawl being booked out for the same weekend each year meant there was less room for excuses and other plans getting in the way. 

He said: "It's the only way we can guarantee we are all going to be available. The third weekend in September is always booked out in our calendars. Wives can't plan anything for that weekend - it's our weekend."

The friends have used a Google map to plot all the pubs they've visited so far, adding around another 30 each year. However, Mr Moore does admit that it's not always easy to remember which pubs they have and haven't been to the deeper into the weekends they get. 

He said: "We're aiming to get to around 500, doing about 30 pubs each trip. We just enjoy it. We have a pint in every one, though sometimes we get carried away and have two. We usually stick to Guinness, because we've never had a bad pint of Guinness in London. And, if you stick to the same drink, you're usually better off. Obviously, some pubs don't serve Guinness, so we have to adapt."