Monopoly Board Pub Crawl

Pub crawls come in all shapes and sizes. There are those which start off as a swift pint and descend into an impromptu all day session. There are those which require someone to dress up in drag and make a tit of themselves for most of the day before shacking themselves legally to another human for the rest of their lives (or more likely until divorce if they’re so inclined to such lager based twattery). However there is a category of pub crawls which deserve accolades of legendary proportions; crawls which defy sense, reason and logic. These quests require planning and determination and participants with the constitutions of cast iron hippopotamuses. One such crawl is the London based Monopoly board crawl and this is finally something I can claim to have gotten under my belt.

The Mission

Well it shouldn’t really require explaining but the aim here is to make sure you have one alcoholic beverage in one pub from each street or station on the original London Monopoly Board. It doesn’t matter if that is a beer (halves or you’re clearly unhinged) or a Bailey’s but in order to claim a solid victory you must have a drink in each. Only myself and two of my other companions (of which there were around fifteen) were successful and I’d suggest not giving anyone too hard a time if they’re flagging – there are no get out of jail free cards and definitely no get out of ambulance free cards.

Planning

I was compared to a certain German dictator several times when doing this and honestly didn’t have much ground to disagree with that assessment of my military ruthlessness. You have strict 19 minutes per pub (I lied and told my party 15 to encourage swift drinking) and the travel times are tight so there is little room for dawdling. If you check out the order of play below you’ll also likely note that there is no time allocated for taking a piss or eating anything – that’s because there bloody isn’t any – if your mates can’t multitask then they can’t come.

Before you embark make sure you print out a few copies of the route and maybe a couple of maps of areas where there are a lot of pubs in a tight space. As best we can we’ve tried to plot this in a linear fashion which works well for the pubs in the East and North but in order to fit all the pubs in the West End it’s a bit nuts and an iPhone battery certainly isn’t capable of surviving all that navigation.

Admissions & Disclaimers

This isn’t in order. You might start at Old Kent Road but that’s as faithful to the order of the Monopoly board as it gets. If you want to do them in order then feel free to use the pubs we did but I warn you – you’ll die or worse; fail.
Some of these pubs are shit. As brilliant as London is and as much as it is teeming with great pubs some thoughtless bastard failed to think at any point ‘Hey, shall we make sure there’s a ruddy nice pub on every street and in every station on the original monopoly board just incase some mad gits want to do a pub crawl and not go in anywhere which looks like they might catch cholera from the door handles?’. There are some epic dives. There are also some incredible little gems you might be tempted to linger in or return to (no lingering!!!).
Don’t be a dick. Landlords hate pub crawls and there are many reasons why. You’re going to turn up and spend about £3 each on a half or something equally pathetic. You’re not going to get food or have another pint so essentially you’re not going to make him any money. In order to lessen the hate a landlord might feel towards you please be respectful or other bar patrons and of the staff themselves. If you wander in a massive cloud of ‘banter’ and over exuberant ‘fun’ you’ll draw attention to yourselves and piss everyone off. Don’t do it.
Try not to die. 26 halves is a lot of booze. Ok there’s a lot of walking (3.5 hours of foot work) to help balance it out but make sure you chug some water and if you’re really not up to it then quit and live to drink another day.

The Order of Play

There is a little bit of artistic license taken with the location of some of these pubs either for reasons of convenience or the simple fact that pubs don’t exist where ideally they would but we’ve tried to be as faithful as possible.

Next to each ‘Street’ there is a time stamp. This is the latest arrival time for each pub required to be on track for completion. If you’re under then you’re ahead of the game but if you’re over you’re running behind so you need to trot faster and crack the whip on dawdlers. Needless to say you start at 11 sharp.

Walking times have been calculated using google maps which seems to assume that the average person is an obese asthmatic with severe gout so you might make a bit of time up by being mildly swifter than an average Brit.

1. Old Kent Road – 11.00

The George, Tower Bridge Road, SE1 4TR

Next = 16 mins on bus number 42

2. Fenchurch Street – 11.35

The Fen, Fenchurch Street Station, EC3M 4AJ

Next = 4 MINUTE WALK

3. Vine Street – 11.58

The Chaberlain Hotel, The Minories. EC3N 1NU

Next 8 Min walk

3. Whitechapel Road – 12.27

The White Hart , 89 Whitechapel High Street

Next 15 MIN WALK