The End of A Long Road

It's party time on the tube lines this weekend. My two very good friends, Keith Lewis and Jamie West, finish their marathon of drinking a drink at the nearest drinking establishment to every station on the tube map.

This Saturday sees the boys drink their way to the finish line in Central London after a frantic whizz round on Thursday night to knock off a few straggling stations they have missed in their blurry travels. Their epic journey has been told through their excellent blog at Tracks of My Beers and there promises to be a good crowd to see them home as friends will gather to clap them in.

To get a feeling for the whole thing, just take a look at the tube map - there are some 270 stations on it and the lines extend out as far as Grange Hill and Epping to the North East and Amersham to the North West and many course through some fairly salubrious areas. Some stations did not have a pub or bar near them for miles while others had the most incredibly expensively priced drinks. The lads are hoping to produce a book of their travels as, if nothing else, they have recorded a great many of their views on the bars they have visited as well as the price of drinks. But pub banter is always at the heart of the matter and they have had great fun on the way, talking both rubbish and covering crucial matters like the Top Ten best songs in films or the World Rugby XV. Ladies Day, only a couple of weekends ago, took some of the conversations to a new low with such diverse topics of women discussing who would they would bed even though knew it was bad or silver foxes they would happily surrender themselves too. It made boy talk look positively prudish, to be frank.

There have been some 'guest appearances' along the way. I managed to keep up with the lads as a 'pacemaker' on the West Central Line, bailing out at Greenford having done my bit to warm them up. Many others have kept pace with them, not least Jamie's brother, Gareth and Keith's brother, spookily of the same name, as well as stalwarts like Liam, Pete The Pilot, Rhino and 'Shirt' Gray. They have also been followed by glamourous ladies too, not least their own lovely wives, Susan and Liz, but also Hazel and Siani (and the Ladies Day Team) who have all added a bit of class to what could have been a dour excuse for drinking most weekends for a year. As if any of us needed an excuse, frankly.

So well done Keith and Jamie on completing their journey - well done on a fabulous blog and I hope to see you there on Saturday to raise a glass to your fine achievement. To make sure we are all on the same page here, to our knowledge, this is the first time that such a marathon has been attempted or achieved - to drink a drink of English origin at the nearest bar or pub at EVERY station on the tube map.

Why? As a any climber would tell you, 'Because it was there.'

Good on you, boys.