While many people have chosen to abstain from alcohol for Dry January, a Nottingham couple is set to reach their 1,000th pub, as they aim to visit all the venues across the county.
Dale Harvey, 37, and Holly Booth, 31, have started the ‘Great Nottinghamshire Pub Crawl’ on March 16, 2022.
The pair aims to have visited all 1,800 pubs in the county, according to Google, by Christmas this year.
“LET’S GO SEE WHAT ELSE IS OUT THERE.” – DALE HARVEY
Dale, who is self-employed, said: “We started it because I was bored of going to the same four pubs all the time.
“Every single time we’d go out we would always go somewhere we knew, somewhere we felt safe, somewhere we thought we’d bump into people we might like or know and never venture out to see what anywhere else was like.
“I just thought ‘let’s go and see what else is out there’.”
The couple, who visits five or six pubs every day from Thursday to Sunday, is set to reach their millennial milestone on Saturday, January 28.
Their 1,000th visit will be celebrated at the Mist Rolling Inn on Derby Road, Nottingham city centre, with a Facebook live and a toast of champagne or prosecco.
Reflecting on their journey so far, Dale said: “It doesn’t feel like we’ve done 1,000.
“I keep saying to Holly ‘this is number 950’ but it only feels like we’ve done 200 or 300 maybe.
“But how can you get bored of visiting interesting places, meeting new people and drinking wonderful beers?
“You can’t.”
The couple, who has just smashed their daily record of visited pubs on Saturday, January 21, reaching 22 venues, admitted to this being an ‘expensive adventure’.
“If I say a figure, Holly will probably slap me with something.
“It’s been a very expensive adventure,” said Dale.
The pair’s favourite pub in Nottingham city centre so far is the Ned Ludd on Friar Lane, which was the 250th pub they visited on May 24, 2022.
Dale said: “It’s a really good pub.
“We really like the Tap and Tumbler but that’s a rock pub so you only really get rock people in there, whereas the Ned Ludd is a mixture of everybody.
“There’s no set music or genre that they play in there, no certain type of people.”
Writing to an audience of almost 3,000 people on their Facebook page, ‘The Great Nottinghamshire Pub Crawl’, Dale said: “The Ned is just a proper run boozer, good beer, good vibes, good food, good people and it is incredibly dog friendly so it seemed only right to take Madi and Bear along for the celebrations as there is a lovely jar of treats on the bar for all of your four legged friends.
“The pub has TV screens, an outside terrace and some great decor but what maybe sets it aside from its competition is that it also has a function room for hire upstairs… but not just any old function room… they have a fabulous ‘Peaky Blinders’ themed function room which is well worth checking out.
“Great pub, great hospitality and huge thanks to Adam and his staff for the honour of making them our next major milestone on the crawl…”
The couple said they are happy for people to join them on nights out, as well as to provide pub crawl guides for different areas of Nottinghamshire.
“We’re going to go back to visit the little towns and take people on what would be a great night out to do in certain areas.
“If you don’t know where to go for a night out in Hucknall for example, we’ll go back to Hucknall and do a six-pub pub crawl and we’ll film it all for our YouTube channel to show people what the best places are.”
You can follow Dale and Holly’s journey here.
Lead image: The Great Nottinghamshire Pub Crawl