Revisiting 2011 Goals

As mentioned in my previous post, there was a bit of a goal to achieve by the end of the year. The Oxford Ale Trail from Brakspear involved 19 pubs dotted around Oxford, whereby one had to drink a pint in each one to receive a stamp in the booklet. Once 10 stamps were collected you are given a t-shirt, and once all have been visited you get a tour around the brewery in Witney.

When you start on this quest (booklets are given out in October) you have all the time in the world. Three months to get 19 pubs done, easy !
Of course, as you get further on in time, you realise you don't actually have many free nights when you can go to some of the out-of-the-way pubs.

As December looms, you start to panic, with still 10 pubs left and needing to do your Christmas shopping, you can't seem to find the time to collect any more stamps. This is when the logic thinking comes into play, and you ascertain that you will have to do a good few pubs in one night.

So on December 30th we set off to visit the Cape of Good Hope, Hobgoblin, Chester Arms and finished at the Royal Oak. Despite the weather trying to put us off, the fact that the Chester Arms was well hidden, and that we'd heard many a story about the Hobgoblin, we actually made it to all of them, having the last pint at the Royal Oak just before closing time.

What a great end to the year, and I'm sure we'll revisit many of these pubs again as we did not have chance to taste all the different ales, nor the food that we often saw being served whilst drinking our pints.

So 2012 allows us to prepare ourselves for completing this trail with more time to spare hopefully.


Cheers !