Today I went to London to meet up with Psymon for a few drinks. T’was a very enjoyable day, despite my initial reluctance to leave my room and face daylight. I took along my copy of London Pub Walks by Bob Steel — an amazing book which I highly recommend — so that we could check out a few of the recommendations along the way.
We started in The Chandos, on St Martin’s lane. Not a pub featured in the book (what a glaring oversight!) but one of our favourites, and indeed a favourite of a number of our mutual friends. After a drink and some lunch with Psymon’s sister we all took a brief walk up to Leicester Square, then Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street via the Virgin Megastore near the Trocadero, at which point said sister left.
As we were both planning to leave London from Waterloo we decided to take the Waterloo-Tower Bridge walk in reverse. A short(ish!) journey to Tower Bridge had us at our first1 port of call on the walk, the Bridge House, a lovely café cum bar. Interestingly they’re tied to Adnams (somewhat of a rarity to see) so four lines of various Adnams were on offer. It was a nice enough place but not a huge amount of atmosphere, though the staff were very interested to see their establishment featured in a book! Psymon didn’t take too kindly to the decor, either.
We decided to skip a couple of the featured pubs on the walk as time was pressing, and had we visited every establishment we would undoubtedly have been rather inebriated before our return to Waterloo, so next up for us was the Horniman at Hays. The Horniman has a wonderful riverside terrace overlooking the HMS Belfast, though for a converted warehouse the interior seemed somewhat cramped. The beers were unremarkable — neither excellent nor poor — but the single thing that caught my eye most (as the pedant that I am) was the atrocious spelling on some of the chalkboards. OK, OK, not the first thing to detract from a pub’s graces, but still the overriding memory I have of the place!
After skipping another pub we came to our final resting place, the exquisite Anchor. The Anchor quickly seduced me with a chalkboard on the backbar reading "Try our pie of the day!". Any pub with a pie of the day wins for me! Chicken and Bacon, with a nice selection of veg, mash & gravy. It was rather busy, but I suspect the proximity to Tate Modern had a lot to do with that.
1I should point out that our actual first stop was the above mentioned Shipwrights Arms, but we did not stay for a drink as it smelled of stale beer and sweat in there…
