Avril and I felt that a trip to London was in order, so we set off nice and early to the Indigo at Aldgate where we had booked in to stay to drop off the car and our bags, and then go back into town to meet Richard Bradshaw for some central London ales. The Champion at Oxford Circus was chosen as an easily accessible, sensible and fairly quiet place to meet, and so we bought a couple of pints, settled into one of the booths, and soon enough Richard appeared. The Champion is a tried and trusted establishment and once again did exactly what it needed to. I opted for a pint of their weak lager for some reason which slipped down very easily.

Just around the corner is the Adam and Eve, which we have not been to before but is actually a very good pub, albeit a little more trendy than traditional, rather like an All Bar One, but without the arseholes. A bit pricey, but the toilets were very good, and they did have proper beer in the shape of Doom Bar and Young's Gold. A short walk into Soho followed, which brought us to the Shaston Arms. On the way, we encountered an extremely shitfaced Pete Burns, accompanied by some young male companion who was attempting to prevent him from falling over, and doing a reasonable job of it. We discussed the incident in depth in the Shaston, which sells Badger produced including Feisty Fox, Badger and Tanglefoot. It is a small pub, but fairly light inside, and it tries to pack in quite a lot, for example a number of areas including one with booths. We managed to get a booth, though the leg room was pretty restrictive. Still, not a bad place to stay for one or more.

An important football match involving Southampton was looming, and so we decided to walk to a pub to see it, via Carnaby Street and Savile Row. Eventually we reached the Sports Cafe on Haymarket. This was not as we had feared because we managed to get quite a good table and it was not full of tossers at that time of day. With the match over, we made a move to a more traditional pub, the Tom Cribb at nearby Piccadilly Circus. This is a small Shepherd Neame house, with a boxing theme, and was pretty busy when we got there. It is on a corner and the Gents' toilets are interestingly situated in the apex of the pub. Choice of beer was pretty good: Earlybird, Spitfire, Masterbrew, Kent's Best and Bishop's Finger. I would have been quite content to have stayed a bit longer, but time was pressing and so we moved to the Lyric, another small pub, although we weren't so happy with this one. True, they had some reasonable beer in the shape of Jack the Whippet, London Pride and Landlord, but the service was slow to the point where we almost gave up waiting.

Normal service was however resumed at the Duke of Argyle in Soho. This pub serves Samuel Smiths beers and has a pretty good selection although it is all on pissflow. The pub was quite busy and lively, but at least light and airy in a traditional style which offset that somewhat. In the end, we didn't stay that long, moving a short way down the road to another Sam Smiths pub, the Glasshouse Stores, which was of a completely different design. It has a small presence on the road, but a large basement with a bar and we managed to get a seat down there. Also quite busy and they don't make such good use of the space, but pleasant enough and as I recall, quite a long stay as I was beginning to labour over my pint.

Our final pub was the Ship in Soho, again not very far away. This is a small Fullers owned corner boozer in a very traditional style and although busy we managed to get ourselves a small table which by that point was most appreciated. Usual Fullers products were on sale, including London Pride, Bengal Lancer and ESB. Richard and Avril seemed to have quite a lot of spare capacity to launch onto a second pint. I was still trying to get mine down, even though it was nice, so sat out that round much to their amusement. The pub closed at 11 and rather than try for anywhere else, we wisely decided that we would part ways, and navigated successfully back to the Indigo where we were staying.