With no local beer fests until next year, the winter months were looking a bit dry and barren - so to compensate, myself and Mr T decided to pop along to London to sup some beers on a pub crawl. We made a return to Camden Town, with it's bizarre-looking clientelle, and aimed to go round about 10 pubs, having a pint in each.

We started as we meant to carry on - with a pint of Adnam's Broadside each in the Halfway House - right opposite the station. A tiny place with huge windows for watching all the hussle and bussle of Camden Town outside. A very locally pub though - with the old geezers in there looking like they were part of the furniture. Good beer though.

Dan had printed a map of the area with all the pubs marked on it (about 30 of them....!), so we consulted that and went for a small cluster away from the high street. 10 minutes later, and somewhat lost, we stumbled across the Rat & Parrot , when we had some decidedly warm and unpleasant Youngs Bitter.

Escaping the chain pub, we made it to NW1 - were Spurs v Arsenal was being shown on about 10 different screens. No cask beer, so had to settle for a cold keg Courage Best, which wasn't too bad. Good atmosphere in the pub - very bright and clean looking, with plenty of seating and sofas to watch the footy from.

Having made the mistake of skipping breakfast, food was rapidly becoming an issue (except for Dan, who'd made the McD's pilgrimage earlier...). Fortunately the Hogshead across the road provided the solution, in the form of ham egg and chips - although from the time it took to get it, they may well have been slaughtering the pig themselves... Top grub though (unfortunately washed down with keg Boddington's).

Determined to get some ale, we headed over to the Spread Eagle - a nice big Youngs pub, where I had another Bitter, which was far better than the earlier pint. Spanked a few quid into the It box, and failed to win any money from the Monopoly game or Hangman.

3 hours into the crawl, we went to the Dublin Castle . They do a lot if live music, but at 2pm, we were the only customers. Chanced a tin of Victoria Bitter, which is usually loopy juice, despite only being about 4.5% - but with the alternative being NBA, I was going to chance it.

Next was one of the best pubs on the crawl - the Edinboro Castle . They had Deuchers IPA on, which is a firm favourite - and the place was really decked out well. Very chilled and comfortable.

It was around now that the beer was starting to take effect, which may partly explain why, when faced with no ale in the Crown and Goose , my instinct swayed me from Guiness, the usual safe option, and onto Strongbow. I should have realised that things were going to go downhill from here on and made an escape, but that's hindsight for you...!

With time marching on, we forced ourselves away from the cute barmaid, and had a quick pitstop in Liberties (where we tried to make up some time by going for shorts - again, possibly not the best move :-) )

With the goal of 10 pubs about to be complete, we moved into The Owl - a trendy bar with no proper beer. So we made do with Corona with lime in the neck. Feeling somewhat underdressed, pretentious and drunk, we made a swiftish exit (after losing more money in the It box)

Feeling quite pleased with ourselves for a crawl well done, we lurched into Tommy Flynn's Bar - which I think was an Irish pub, but that did phenominal Thai food. Here I filled up on hot Thai curry and a pint of Strongbow, and from then on things go a bit blurry.

Pub numbers 12 and 13 were the Cobdan Arms (with Greene King IPA) and Hope and Anchor (where a local oik took offense at us putting our name on the pool table list, and proceeded to hurl abuse and wave his fist at us a lot) Fortunately common sense was still working to an extent in our alcohol-infused brains, and we made a hasty exit.

From here on, I'm not sure which pubs we visited. There was a very big music venue place, where I lost a small fortune in the pool machine (the arcade version) - which I think may have been the Purple Turtle . All looked a bit goth as far as I can remember. There was also another pub with a pool table, which may have been The Crescent , where I managed to play appalling badly (not suprisingly given the state I was in by this point!), and kept trying to feed money into the hole where the white ball comes out.

Dan assures me that this was the last pub we went to, and he may well be right - either way, 15 pubs is more than enough for one day. Somehow we both managed to get home - although I have no recollection of leaving the pub, getting the tube and the train - and only briefly remember waking up just before Canterbury and wondering where I was and who'd shoved a badger into my mouth.

Mr T's trip was equally exciting it would seem - involving getting lost in a tube station for half an hour, falling over multiple times, and then falling asleep on the tube, waking up in a completely random station.

Given the way I've been feeling today, I think it's going to be a while before the next one (although I'm currently looking at the random pub crawl generator on www.beerintheevening.com for some ideas :-) )