London pub crawls

Vauxhall revisited

In September 2016, Rich took us back to Vauxhall, which we last visited in March.

We met at the Riverside, a smart newish Young’s pub on the riverside (unsurprisingly), very close to Vauxhall. This is a large modern place with a large and attractive outside seating area, with all the usual brands you’d expect at a Young’s.

Once we were all together we headed south, to the Cavendish Arms. Last time we were here the beer was off and there was a burnt curtain; this time the curtain had gone, but the beer was still poor, one of the two being off (Hullabaloo) and had to be returned and replaced with passable Black Sheep.

As we were leaving the heavens opened, and a last minute change of plans took us to the Priory Arms, a superb little pub which was Pub of the Crawl in March. The beer range is still very impressive for such a small pub, and we dried out in here for a while with some superb beer, including Siren Under Current,  Thornbridge Lord Marples and Brightside Best.

Once we were dry, and the shower had passed, we headed to the Surprise, fairly aptly named as it’s quite well hidden down a dead-end backstreet. It is a pretty small pub, and we sat in the small front bar with our Young’s pints before retracing our steps back towards Vaxuhall.

The next stop was the Canton Arms, one of Paul’s legendary closed pubs which we had tried to visit in March. This time it was certainly open and doing a thriving trade from its central servery, with some interesting beers on, and all in good condition.

We headed towards the Oval now via Albert Square (not the one on EastEnders, but the rather posher one that’s home to Joanna Lumley and was the childhood home of Roger Moore) to the Brown Derby. I’ve been here before after a match a the Oval; it’s a pretty good pub now and although I avoided the call of ‘Tony’s Cocktails’ the beers went down very well.

We continued north, retracing Paul’s steps from March again, to the Pilgrim. This was closed when we tried to visit in March but has since re-opened following that refurbishment, and was very comfortable.

The final stop stop of the crawl was the Rose, on the Embankment near the old London Fire Brigade headquarters , a fairly large and bright Victorian corner pub facing the Thames.

We managed to forget to agree on a Pub of the Crawl on the night, but afterwards agreed that the Brown Derby was a deserved winner – congratulations!