Interesting Facts

Cathy Price, is a 53 year old mother of one, and what makes her interesting is she is on the longest pub crawl ever, visiting every pub in the UK called the Red Lion, allegedly the most common name for a pub. (Her goal is to visit all 724 Red Lion pubs in Britain.  At each pub she visits, she poses for a photo and drinks half a pint of beer. Her longest trip to date was from her home in Preston to the Red Lion at Penzance, Cornwall - a 750-mile round trip, and so far she has clocked up 7,000 miles. Unfortunately some of the pubs she wanted to visit have already closed for business, about 10%, she calls them Dead Lions and crosses them off her list. Once she has conquered the UK she intends to continue her tour abroad; she has already visited a Red Lion in Dubai and New York.) You can follow her on Facebook .

As we informed you a long time ago, The Red Lion is the most common pub name in the UK, now here are the top 10 in England:- The Red Lion 518  The Crown 436  The Royal Oak 434  The White Hart 320  The White Horse 300  The Swan 270  The New Inn 267  The Rose & Crown 252  The Kings Head 240  The Bell 238  I am happy to say I have visited at least one pub with these names, but I haven't done what tomorrow's interesting person has done.)

The Pack O' Cards is an inn in Devon.  It has  52 windows spread over 4 floors (think suits), each with 13 doors. ( According to locals, the inn was built during the 18th century with the proceeds of the winnings of a card game. It even looks like a house of cards, with the four floors stacked on top of one another in a higgledy piggledy way.) Photo by  Ian Roberts

21st January 2014 - Britain's first motorway pub opened.

Pub chain J D Wetherspoon are set to open the first motorway pub in the UK. (After spending more than £1.1 million, they are opening the Hope and Champion pub, at junction 2 of the M40 in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. They will be open from 4 am to 1 am, seven days a week. As you can imagine road safety campaigners are livid.  What people should really be asking is, if I had tried to do this, would I have been allowed to?)

According to the British Beer and Pub Association, in the UK pubs are closing at the rate of 52 per week. (Posh, upmarket, cafe style bars are opening at a rate of 2 per week.  I think I need to go home to rectify this situation.)

British pubs can only serve beer in pints, half pints and a third of a pint. (You won't often see a third of a pint in pubs but it's popular at beer festivals where drinkers try lots of different ales. This may change if proposed changes to the law on weights and measures are approved.)

25 places in the UK claim to have the most pubs. (The claimants include Glasgow, Glastonbury, Bewdley, Bollington, Weymouth, Witney, Saffron Walden and St Albans. If any of these places wish to hire me to resolve this dispute, I'd be more than willing.)

According to Mark Hastings, of the British Beer and Pub Association, more than 15 million people visit a pub each week. (What a great job Mark Hastings has. Counting the number of people in pubs, I'd do that for nothing.)

According to Mark Hastings, of the British Beer and Pub Association, there are 57,500 pubs in the UK. (Somehow that doesn't seem enough for a population of nearly 61 million.)

In the UK the most popular name for a pub is the Red Lion. (There are 756 "Red Lions" in the UK. So if you arrange to meet anyone at the pub, make sure you know which pub you're talking about.)

Britain has its first booze free Islamic pub. The Halal Inn, formerly the Westwood Inn in Oldham, has a juice bar, snooker tables and darts board - along with a prayer room and a steam room. (I wish them all the best, but I'll stick to the beer thanks.)