And likewise of course, there’s that situation where you’re not particularly expecting a momentous evening and yet somehow it turns out to be one of those cracking nights out where everyone seems to have a whale of a time.
Guess where we're going today?
Quite why I’d thought this particular venture would be a damp squib I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps it was because key people from Payroll were still sunning on southern hemisphere weather and gorging themselves on New Zealand wine and Lord of Rings landscapes and perhaps it was because the IT department put in an appalling showing of personnel with only 3 fighting gladiators stepping forward. In many respects this should have always been viewed as a potential successful night because it was another tour that would take place very close to the office and that didn’t require a tube journey to get us to the first pub.
Could be near here........
The only complication was again around the actual leaving of the office but the wait for the Payroll sluggards, i.e. Brenda and Lucie, was made easier by retirement of the rest of us to the awful Slug & Lettuce beneath the office block for a pint of Freedom Organic Lager from the Freedom brewery.
If you look very carefully you can see the spikey hair of Spikey Haired Ed.
Half an hour later with everyone finally gathered together it was a gentle evening’s stroll in the cool spring sunshine down Upper Thames Street to the first pub, a Nicholson’s emporium called The Walrus and Carpenter. The pub features the Lewis Carroll dining room which just goes to prove that you really can take a theme just that little bit too far.
The Walrus and Carpenter. And Brenda's red coat.
In all reality though it’s actually a very nice pub in a rather identikit Nicholson’s brass and etched glass kind of way. There was a fair old crowd both in and outside the pub but we squeezed in and managed to lay claim to a corner table underneath the wall mounted TV which was playing a European football match that no-one was watching.
Mags steals some Oatmeal Stout and then goes back to wine.
The beer selection was good, much better in fact that the selection of the beer drinkers, as it was only Brenda and me who were partaking of the ales this evening. First on the line for us was the Oatmeal Stout from Broughton Brewery, which although smooth and tasty could have done with a bit more pep in it. The rest of the night’s tourist were making do with a variety of lagers, (Spikey Haired Ed & Phil) vodka fun drinks (Natasha and Kevin) and white wine (Lucie and Mags).
After a little while and a little detour to the wrong pub, love’s young dreams turned up after lining their stomachs at a well known chain of burger joints. If one was counting these things, one might say this is coming a bit of a habit. James joined the lager drinkers and Lisa joined those sipping the white wine.
You can smell the chicken nuggets from here.
Their late arrival meant that our departure from the pub was slightly disjointed but with a set of good directions and promises of meeting up with us in a short while, 6 of use set off for the journey to the underground promise of the Porter’s Lodge.
Yes, I know I said 6, but I'm taking a phone call and Mag's is taking a phone call.
I’d stumbled on this place during a lunchtime break and unless you were looking for the place you’d probably miss the single A-board sign outside and the short flight of stairs down to the bar. The pub does seem to be quite well known on the darts scene though, with 8 professional boards dotted around the room. The obvious advantage of such a lesser known place of course is the amount of people in there, and there were only a couple of handfuls of darts teams on the various boards which meant we could easy get served at the bar.
Brenda and I had pints of Greene Kings London Glory and when this tasted better than the Oatmeal Stout you know how out of condition the former beer must have been. Lucie had another white wine which she described as “rough” and Kevin chose a pint of some standard cider or other (which apparently was also pretty ropey) but the bar was well equipped enough to serve Mags’s Disaronno and cranberry (?) The young guns eventually arrived and made use of the electronic darts game which the bar was generous enough to allow people to play for free.
Finally once Jocky Wilson (Ed) and Eric Bristow (James) had finished it was then time for the night’s educational piece and we made our way up Martin Lane to the blue plaque that denotes where the church once stood. The church of St Martin Orgar was the closest to the Great Fire of London and needless to say was therefore destroyed in the fire. The tower and bell did survive the blaze and for a while was used by French Huguenots as the rest of the parish was transferred to nearby St Clement's. The tower that can be seen today isn’t the original and has never been consecrated and used for religious purposes. Unfortunately the church gardens are also private and closed to the public which meant the best we could do was a gurning photo taken by the plaque.
How come Phil is always in the centre of these group shots?
The next pub was the one in terms of beer that I was most looking forward to. The Pelt Trader is one of the new breeds of “craft” beer pubs and although I object to this pointless term and everything that it denotes in terms of hipster faddishness, if they had an extensive and interesting beer range then what would I have to complain about?
Outside the Pelt Trader.
Well quite a lot as it turns out. Firstly, upon rounding the corner from Canon Street station we could see how full the place was, with crowds of young hipsters spilling onto the pavement outside the pub. I hope to dear God that they were attracted there by the beer and not the architectural merits of the pub which are zero. It’s almost like the owners have simply rented a large storage area from the station itself and then just plonked a horseshoe shaped bar inside. There’s no furniture to speak of and there’s not even really a proper bar as all the beers are served from taps jutting out of the back wall with slices of chalked slate to denote what particular brew is inside.
To be fair the beer range was substantive and very very reasonably priced but the pint of Grain Porter from Grain Brewery was limp to say the least. Again a good bit of conditioning wouldn’t have gone a miss and I wonder had this been served via hand pump would that have given it the life it sadly needed. The lager drinkers had the choice of the well known König Pils which we found out to James’s disgust, does not make a good shandy, or something more exciting like Ed who went for a Köstritzer Dark Lager. Even Kevin pushed the boat out with a real cider from Hogan's which he said was much better than the rough stuff in the Porter’s Lodge.
James enjoying his manly pint of "beer".
We took the drinks outside and tried to join the hip and trendy drinkers but perhaps my hip and trendy days are over as I for one found myself missing a table and chair and perhaps a picture of fox hunting or a busty barmaid. Even Brenda didn’t finish her pint of Adnams and we all agreed that for our purposes anyway this sort of pub isn’t what the doctor ordered.
The final point was now in sight being just the other side of Upper Thames Street down to the banks of the Thames. This was The Banker from Fuller’s and once again we had the lovely advantage of some free vouchers from the Fuller’s website. The pub was busy but not overcrowded and our lovely barmaid, later discovered to be named Daisy, bravely took the wide variety of orders along with the vouchers. Brenda and I had a pint of the sickly sweet Fruli strawberry beer and to be honest the rest of the orders are now forgotten apart from Mags who wanted some boneless chicken (?) – Look, I don’t make this up you know.
We were then introduced to Justina, the bar manager whose name appeared on the bottom of each and every voucher. She jokingly claimed that she’d personally signed every one and sent the emails out herself earlier in the day.
A few of us took our drinks outside and although it was dark and chilly now, the patio heater did a fine job of letting us sit on the banks of the Thames enjoying the fine night. Because of the vouchers the tour whip allowed for the purchase of a second round and I finished the evening with a pint of Fuller’s Spring Sprinter whilst Brenda and another half of the Fruli, again what the others were on by this time of a ever more increasing hazy night was anyone’s guess, but whatever they were drinking it seemed to do the trick as I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many of the tour so worse for drink as on this night.
But in a way that’s the wrong way to describe it because everyone wasn’t worse for drink, they were better for it as the talk became looser and personalities become more open. At least half a dozen time someone said something that had me cracked up in laughter and I must have said “I’ll remember that for the blog” on more than one occasions and yet I’ve gone and forgotten nearly everything……….nearly, Lisa, not quite everything ;-)
So all in all it ended up being a right old cracking evening and the warm welcome from Justina and the rest of the Banker crew made it a fitting end. And I guess that’s the secret of pubs and why they’ll never completely go out of fashion. Places like the Pelt Trader can come and no doubt after making the best of whatever fashion they’re taking advantage of, they’ll go again, but traditional pubs, like the Banker will be around for quite considerably longer.
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