Chillinghamsters Abroad!: A Pub Older Than Our Country

Somehow the sleep we got on the two plane trips over and the subsequent small slumber we had the night previous adjusted us to the London timezone… FANTASTIC!

Gaz and I made our way out of our hotel and down to the Earl’s Court Underground Tube Station. We met up with the Sullivan’s, Keith and Al, and delved into the depths of the London Underground. As lacklustre as the trains themselves are, you really can’t beat them for the service they provide. There’s a train running every 30 seconds to 5 minutes depending on the station…. Try getting that in Brisbane… HAH!

Hopping off in Camden Town we were on the way to Belushi’s (one of the only Australian oriented pubs in the area that survived COVID), where they were playing the State Of Origin! The rest of the crew decided to start with £5-7 pints of beer, whereas I made the very smart financial decision to start visiting the cocktail menu at 11am…. £5 cocktails all day on Wednesday’s at Belushi’s if anyone’s interested. The whole pub was roaring throughout the entire game, felt like being back home which was wonderful. Halftime came and went, some nail-biting moments and then QLD pulled ahead with some sensational runs, and admittedly some lacklustre conversions. By the end of the game, I was halfway through the cocktail menu and everyone else decided it was time we jumped ship to wander around Camden Markets for a feed and a few more pubs.

It had apparently changed markedly since Gaz was there last about a decade ago, but we still had a ball walking around and grabbing some grub. After bellies were full we decided to take the tube into Central London and go full tourist.

Rolling out of Charring Cross station we walked up the stairs and across Millennium bridge, remarking at the fact that the Thames was still clearer than Brisbane River, but was still probably not a good idea to grab a drink from it. We wandered down from the bridge and walked across the boardwalk, taking in the sights of the impossibly slow moving London Eye (and the 40 minute lineup to get onto it), Big Ben and Westminster Palace, and Westminster bridge across the Thames. I wandered off to take a few pictures from the group and when I returned Rhonda handed me a coffee cup with a half pint of Pier Pressure Lager… Can’t say no to Pier Pressure I guess…

Walking along the boardwalk we reached the Westminster bridge, and I had a secret mission… You see I have a vendetta against Vinnie’s. During the 2022 floods I bought a $4 1000 piece puzzle of Big Ben, Westminster Palace, and the Thames. I put that puzzle together only to find out that there was 996 pieces in that puzzle, thus ruining my satisfaction upon completing it. Zero quality control at the volunteer run organisation, someone should have put that puzzle together to check it… Anyway I digress. So my secret mission was to wander down to the riverbank, to FINALLY see just what that completed puzzle looked like, because with just 4 pieces missing it was completely indiscernible. Mission success, I saw it, and got the snap!

I rejoined the others across the bridge, down towards St. Paul’s Cathedral and we hopped on a double decker red London bus…. Which only took us about a km up the road before they reached the end of the line, a km saved is ~0.7 miles earned! We wandered on foot around Picadilly Circus for a while before zeroing in on a quaint little pub down a side street.

The St. James Tavern was built in 1733, originally called The Catherine’s Wheel until 1896 when it was rebuilt and renamed the St. James Tavern. It hosted PM’s, many members of the royal family, and even Charles Dickens! (Who was reported to sit in a corner quietly with a pint and scribble away, working on his novels). I don’t know just how it would have been able to host the bustling metropolis back in the day because it only accommodated about 50 people at the max, and we were already at capacity when we walked in with standing room only. A couple more pints of local lager were had to wet our whistle whilst we came up with a plan to finish off our day. We could either brave the tube in peak hour, or we could shift a couple stops and have dinner before we made our trek back.

I don’t remember how the consensus was reached but I’m glad a sensible decision was made and we wandered off in search of the tube station to take us a little further afield to Marble Arch. I don’t really know what I was expecting, maybe something more on the scale of the Arc De Driomphe but I enjoyed seeing the sight nonetheless. Gaz mentioned we were in Little Lebanon so we toddled off down the street in search of a Lebanese restaurant. Great feed, good service, and a very cool server who was really trying to work on his English…. So we gave him a bum steer and taught him some Australian.

With bellies full we waddled off towards the tube station again and hopped on some fairly empty trains, crossed some lines, traversed many stairs, and finally ended up back at Earl’s Court. A few quick after dinner pints at the Blackbird Tavern yet again before going our seperate ways to our hotels and at that point our big day out was completed. I tell ya, the hot shower at the end of the night was the highlight, cos as soon as I was in my jammies and lying down in my bed, I was out like a light.

- Herb

P.S Apologies for the sporadic posts, I’m pretty useless :)