21. Haydon's Road and Collier's Wood [again], Saturday 28th December 2002

Exactly one year to the day after doing this crawl, myself and Richard Bradshaw attempted to recreate the experience, aided this time by Matthew Oliver. Earlier in the afternoon though, I had been with my dad to see Croydon Municipal Officers' FC lose 2-1 at home to Netherne FC and I had a swift can of John Smiths in their rather plush bar. Then we nipped to Tooting and Mitcham United FC to catch the last few minutes of their home defeat to Corinthian Casuals and downed a swift John Smiths in their bar, though this was a horribly stripey and breeze-blocked affair.

After leaving home, we went to Haydon's Road by train and as last time our first establishment was Bar China which had pleasant enough lager although no bitter in any form. The next stop was the Horse and Groom on Haydon's Road which had an incredibly dappy French woman behind the bar who had to be told our order 4 times. The Whitbread Best was dire - I should have opted for the Boddies or Flowers IPA on pissflow. There was however an interesting self service carousel of self-service bar snacks. The last pub on Haydon's Road is the Marquis of Lorne which has been renovated a bit since last time and is a bit less gay. Keg John Smiths was the order of the day here.

The first pub which did hand-pumped ales was the Sultan on the corner of Norman and Deburgh Roads. It's quite a nice place doing Hopback products (Entire Stout, GFB, Summer Lightning and some seasonal thing), though our lager drinkers were not that impressed. Quite good bar snacks though the atmosphere was a little sedated. Working our way through to GJ's which I couldn't remember last time ... and with good reason as it wasn't that good, sparsely populated with poncey sorts and only keg beer available. The nearby Royal Standard was a more cosy local's boozer which did modestly priced keg Abbot served by B-list barmaids.

It all went off in the Victory, the next pub near Collier's Wood Tube, which was quite a high ceilinged and slightly soulless feeling place. Yet again keg bitter was the 'best' choice. A rough pissed middle-aged shit tried to drag some woman round the other side of the pub with the words 'Get round here you slag' which provoked some tasty scenes of intervention by other punters. We bottled intervention for fear of being bottled - in any case we'd just finished our halves. One of last year's pubs, the morgue-like Royal Six Bells, was boarded up so we popped over to the plastic Kiss Me Hardy, which at least did a reasonable half of Flowers IPA. No marks for the toilet though as it was closed and we were directed upstairs. I for one could not be arsed with all that sort of nonsense.

Bladders bursting, we hastened to the Nelson Arms. This was the Richie Rich Xmas Present round, so we necked a shot of Green Aftershock each [foregoing keg bitters] and then left. Next stop the Princess Royal; a horseshoe shaped bar greeted us with Courage Best and Abbot on. Quite good for a quiet pint. Just round the corner is the long, thin, spartan Trafalgar, an almost exclusively [old] man's pub, but don't go for a shit there because there's no cubicle in the gents'. A girl behind the bar served us reasonable halves of Hancock's HB, London Pride and HSB.

The penultimate watering hole on this trip was the Kilkenny Tavern where we have before experienced lock-ins as they normally have bands on Saturdays. A young (probably underage!) girl behind the bar served us standard keg fayre. Finally we rounded off in the Grove Tavern, a reasonably good pub, though no Real Ale on. A band was playing here and Richard requested Sweet Home Chicago which was duly played. Leaving at 1am and getting the N155 back to Sutton, we hatched our next tour, a visit to Kingston on 3rd January, which hopefully will be a little more fruitful with regards to real ales. An N213 will allow late consumption if necessary - three cheers for Red Ken!


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Dan Lovegrove
dan@doctor-lovegrove.com

Last updated 2nd January 2003.