On Saturday 11 November 2000, the London Men’s Self-Help Pub Crawl Group convened for what was perhaps their most honest undertaking to date. By taking as our subject matter the new Croydon Tramlink, we were returning to the spirit of E2K, by investigating the newer additions to London’s public transport infrastructure.
What is the Tramlink? Where does it go to? Why did anyone bother building it? Where the hell is Therapia Lane? – these were just some of the fascinating questions we sought to address. These pages will provide the answers, without you bothering to actually have to go to Croydon and find out for yourself.
As you can see, the Tramlink system is pointlessly convoluted, and I can’t be bothered to explain it all here (check the Tramlink
website if you’re actually interested), but essentially we decided
to follow the route west from East Croydon to Wimbledon, missing out a couple
of stops to bring the number of pubs down to a manageable twelve. Judging from the
This time, the system of “forfeits” (see the L2K section of this site for a tiresome explanation of what these are) had a theme: The Movies. The original plan was that they would all be named after Alfred Hitchcock films. Initially, this seemed like a strong idea, until we realised that shoehorning ideas for novelty rounds into his film titles was actually rather tricky. As it was, we had to broaden the names to the titles of films in general, though we retained Foreign Correspondent and Jamaica Inn. Sadly this meant ditching Vertigo, in which I would have to repeatedly fall off a bar stool; The Birds, in which we would have to leer suggestively at passing women; and the classic Strangers on a Tram, in which one of us would have to bore a member of the travelling public about our exploits, following which the two parties would agree to murder each other’s respective spouses.
Naturally, the day’s events had to get under way at 11 a.m. sharp, so we arranged to meet at East Croydon railway station shortly before pub opening time. Personally I had deemed it necessary to line my stomach at Burger King at London Bridge station – curiously enough, somewhere I had managed to visit on both our previous pub crawls. This time, because it was early on in the day, I was denied the opportunity to order any kind of normal food, and was instead forced to eat some sort of egg-derived object in a bun. This was without a doubt one of the worst items of fast food I have ever encountered, and it was not an auspicious start to the proceedings. I then managed to board a train without remembering to buy a six-zone travelcard, and was somewhat irritated to find that East Croydon is fitted with ticket barriers. Therefore I had to crawl through the luggage flap, feeling like a cat, and then buy a six-zone travelcard, feeling like a sheep.
With latest recruit Simon “on board”, together with the usual suspects, we had now swelled to seven full-time members:
For T2K, in order to provide some slightly more reliable information about the pubs we visited, we made sure to give each establishment marks out of ten, which I wrote down on a piece of paper in a progressively illegible scrawl; in fact, I also took the trouble to make a note of what drinks everyone had. I can’t remember why I did this, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. You can read all these fascinating details as you visit each pub – but for those who prefer a little more statistical density, I have provided detailed breakdowns of our findings.
Surprisingly, we all managed to arrive at East Croydon on time – apart from Ian, who lived up to a shameful track record of “not being able to join you until later on in the day”-type excuses – so we took a couple of moments out of our hectic schedule to take a couple of almost identical pictures.
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Before
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After
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In order to avoid unnecessarily raising your hopes, I should warn you that the quality of the photographs gets steadily worse – these examples are as good as it gets. So if you’re looking for quality camerawork, go somewhere else.
Otherwise, join us at the Porter & Sorter for our first pint.
Let ’em load: if you have Internet Explorer or Opera and some speakers/headphones, there are a variety of “hilarious” background WAVs to enjoy while you surf. However, some of them might take ages a little while to load up, especially if you’re on a poxy 56k modem at home (like me). But don’t bother hanging around because I assure you that they’re utterly crap well worth the wait, especially the Queen one at Therapia Lane, which is especially half-arsed. [Bob – don’t forget to do “Accept/Reject Changes” before launch.]