6 - The Drum and Monkey - 50 Miles

Whats the best day of the year to hit a 40 mile distance target? Did you guess “The Hottest Day of the Year”? No of course you didn’t, that would be stupid. Problem is, we’d already decided we were going out on Saturday way before Science or God or Michael Fish or whoever, decided to make Saturday the hottest day since the previous hottest day (which was ages ago).

So believing that setting off a bit earlier (10:30 or something I think) would save us from roasting, we departed for ‘The Drum and Monkey’ in Upton-Upon-Severn, selected for its bravery in taking 2 words you don’t really associate with pubs and putting them together in one brilliant name for a pub. I can guarantee that right now, you’re picturing a little monkey in a hat, banging a drum. That’s ok, we all are.

Journey there was a breeze, despite a minor accidental detour down a tiny bumpy path populated by swathes of stinging nettles. I lost Steve for a while at this point as I was trying to wobble along carefully without getting stung. You’ll be glad to know I caught up at the other end of the path though.

Andy: “How did you get through there so quickly without getting stung?”

Steve: “I didn’t…”

He suffers for his art.

At the pub, a couple of old lads asked where we’d cycled from and on hearing we’d come from Droitwich labelled us as “f**king mental”.

In a joking way I should point out, he wasn’t disgusted or anything. Impressed probably! Steve checked his distance measurement device (probably has a better name than that I think. Bikometer?) and it turned out we’d actually done 22 Miles.

So obviously the way back would take us to 44 miles, a whole extra 4! Problem is that 50 was going to be a good milestone, and doing 44 THEN 50 is a bit lame when all’s said and done. The only option was to detour a bit on the way home, and hit 50 on this very trip. Hey at least it wasn’t the hottest day of the year at this point and would soon be the hottest time of the day right!? Also worth reminding you at this point, that up until now the longest distance we’d done in one single go was 15 miles to get to the Camp Inn, so this was big boys school.


            

Best bit of the journey home was accidentally joining a triathlon I think. Bit inconsiderate of them to plan a triathlon route overlapping the Gears and Beers 50 mile route, but these triathlon organisers will do anything for a bit of extra exposure. The leg of the race that we actually joined was the running bit, the cyclists were all going the other direction, so we can only assume that any casual observer thought we were completely confused by the entire concept of the triathlon and hadn’t bothered getting off our bikes once the cycle part was done, possibly with the end goal of cycling straight into the River Severn.

And so we cycled home, and we cooked in the painful, baking, relentless heat and the last 5 miles made me want to give  up, dig a hole and crawl in it. Despite feeling basically OK upon arrival I nearly fainted when I got back to my cool, dark flat. Then I ate a lot of cake to recover so all-in-all a hugely successful trip!

5 - The Camp Inn - 30 Miles

30 Miles! To the Camp Inn which is a pub out in the countryside where there’s some peacocks and chickens knocking about. We got to ask directions from a proper traditional farmer about half a mile from the pub which was good. Not traditional in the sense of having some cows and not wanting strangers on his land, I didn’t ask about his personal life, but he SOUNDED traditional ( sort of like a flat-capped pirate) which was enough really. He might not have even been a farmer actually, I think we assumed he was cause he sounded like one and he was wandering about near some farms…but there’s no smoke without fire, I reckon he farms.

Here’s photo’s and a video! We really missed our cameraman for this one, the kit at our disposal wasn’t quite as advanced as Tom’s, nor was our camera work..

            

            

Oh and there was a peacock knocking about.

Steve took a road bike for this one as he needed the practice, which was fine but did mean we had to forfeit the nice flat canal route for HILL BASED HELL for the last few miles which pretty much did me in. I felt fine up til that point. Thanks Steve.

BONUS JOURNEY! 10 Miles - Honeybee inn

In which the previous days bike adventure catches up with us along with all the beer and sun and I take a bit of an odd turn while Steve looks confused and Tom discovers the zoom function on the camera.

 

Also we posed about a bit. Click to enlarge! Sorry we ruin the nice scenery.

4 - New Tardebigge - 22 Miles

At least I'm pretty sure it was 11. Making it a 22 mile round trip. I'll be honest, we did this one weeks ago and I never got round to posting about it so I can't remember anything that happened. Pretty sure I got sunstroke and by the time we recorded the video I was hallucinating.

Great day though! Here's photos! As usual we had stop off on the way, this time at the Gate Hangs Well in Hanbury. Try and spot what is unusual about the picture below..

Then beers at the destination pub, the New Tardebigge.

We're ramping up the distance tommorow and going for a 15 mile target, 30 miles total journey! Will have a much better blogpost for that one, definitely.

Oh and incase you didn't spot the unusual thing in photo 1, Tom has no seat.

3 - The Mug House - 17.8 Miles

Here we go then! 7.5 Miles!
Hang on a minute, whats the Steve? We've actually gone 8.9 miles?! Well alright then, that'll do just fine.
Destination was The Mug House in Claines, one of only two English pubs to reside in a graveyard!
It's also extremely old, a good 700 years. If you like reading about old pubs and stuff I'd recommend having a read here: http://themug.co.uk/history.html

It contains gems like this:

It is known that Puritans closed most of the ale houses locally because of the drunken and lewd behaviour of the populace at the time but the Mug survived. In 1638, the Constable of Claines had closed six filthy public houses in Claines, in an attempt to quell the plague, but again not the Mug House!

How awesome is it having a drink at a pub that survived a plague-pub-cull!? And in the walls of a graveyard of all places!? But I digress!

We travelled here with a guest companion, Mr Tom Rogers who came down from Oswestry to join us on our quest! Thanks Tom!

Rattling along the canal in the opposite direction to the Eagle and Sun/Boat and Railway, we headed off first towards a pub that wasn't the actual destination. A quick stop-off at the 5 mile point at the Hadley Bowling Green for a refresher! As ever, click any photos on this blog that you'd like to see in full size for some reason.

Plowing on from there we headed towards The Mug House. Me and Tom did some awesome bike tricks but Steves bike-cam cut out just before it so you'll just have to imagine awesome bike tricks in your head and then imagine me and Tom being the ones doing em. Pretty awesome weren't they!?

Here's a video of the journey I've prepared for your amusement! Well when I say the journey, I mean a little bit of it between Hadley and the Mug House. Included are 2 poo-jumps from Tom and a kidney punch. Enjoy.




And so that leads us to our destination, The Mug House!


 

Here are the photo's we need to count this as hit number 3!

Hey who's that crept in the last photo!? Well on hearing of our journey, me dad joined us in his Capri!

Thanks Tom for biking with us and Dad for joining us for a lovely pint! 

Stay tuned as the distance increases and I gradually start to look more fatigued and confused. Not Steve though, Steve owns lycra.

2 - Boat and Railway - 10.2 Miles

As the Eagle and Sun was a repeat journey of the practice one, we hit up our second target immediately afterwards. Carrying on down the canal towpath brought us to the Boat and Railway!

Highlights included

-The fact we were actually supposed to go to a pub called The Bowling Green which Steve said was right by the canal and we'd see it. It wasn't so we couldn't
-I nearly fell in the Canal on the way back dodging some mud
-A dog chased us
-We ate flies

For this journey we had a camera mounted to the front of Steves bike! Pretty awesome idea we thought. Of course as the journeys will be fairly long we'll speed it up to whizz through the whole journey in a minute or so! Slowing back down for the interesting bits. Unfortunately the shaking of the bike made it almost impossible to watch and the SD card filled before we got to the pub. So consider that a work in progress. The camera will be back on a proper mount and a bigger SD card! As compensation, here are the 'highlights' from the footage. If you're after some video action thats remotely watchable, I'd skip to the other video at the end of this post, but if not then enjoy some of the worst documentary making skills ever and especially enjoy the 1:45 mark of the video which is a sort of preview as to what the footage might look like if Steve suddenly dies while we're biking home. Then it repeats for reasons I don't understand.

Sorry about that. Here are the photos to officially log the Boat and Railway as hit number 2!

Well done us on Hit number 2! Here's our official bit to the camera 

1 - Eagle and Sun - 5 Miles

Well we said we'd go back and log the Eagle and Sun properly which is exactly what we did! Photographic evidence below as defined in the mission statement. Steve, Andy, Beer, Bikes and Pub Sign.

That's hit number one down!

Map

This map will contain all of our progress - red dots are potential pubs, green are for the ones we've already visited. Click a dot to see our photo!


View Pub Map in a larger map

Test Drive - Eagle and Sun

Our first excursion on Tuesday 07/05/13

In celebration of me getting a bike today, we motored 2.5 miles down the canal from Droitwich to a pub called the 'Eagle and Sun'. Problem is no official rules were decided at the time, we don't have the photo's required to register this as a 'Hit' so consider it a test-run. Here's Steve enjoying a pint outside.

Looks like we'll have to go back and log this one properly! What a shame.

Mission Statement and Challenge Rules - Bike. Beer. Blog

Welcome to the latest project of myself (Andy) and my cohort (Steve). I can explain the purpose of this project with just two simple questions.

1) What's the best thing you can do with your buddy?
2) What's the best way to get to a location you can do that thing?

The answers are obvious.

1) Go to the pub
2) Bikes!

Now this is all well and good, but how do you take that to next level? How do you turn a fun activity into a project? How do you get a sense of achievement from it? How do you make it better?

Well that's why this blog exists along with the project 'Andy and Steves Bike and Beer Adventure'.

Myself and Steve will strive to bike to as many different pubs as possible, mark our excursions on an amazing map which has yet to be named and generally try to visit as many unique places as possible!

So why would you want to read this blog?

Well you might not. It might be boring. Maybe you've nothing better to do. Maybe you want to saddle up and join us on a quest as a guest-biker. Maybe you just want to learn (prepare to be disappointed)

How is a pub logged as 'complete'?

Photographic evidence of course! To log a pub, the photo's must include Andy, Steve, Bikes, Pint, Pub Sign. These can be in any combination, but all 4 must be covered.

Any other rules?

Yes actually! 3 criteria which much be met
1) The pub has to be at least 2 miles away from our houses
2) Only 1 pub per town. Multiple pubs in the same town would only count as one HIT
3) The pub must have a beer garden!

"But Steve and Andy, this all just sounds like an excuse for you to go whizzing off on your bikes and get drunk."

And to that I say "What? Don't judge us, this is important scientific experiment, bugger off, what have you ever done? Nothing, that's what. I'm getting on my bike.