A man carrying out a challenge to visit all 875 Wetherspoon pubs in the UK has bought a plane ticket to complete his challenge.
Beer lover David Bingham has spent four years enjoying the “longest pub crawl in history”, but will need a plane ticket for his final visit as the pub is airside at Gatwick Airport.
David often travels thousands of miles every month and estimates he has spent around £30,000, including travel fares, drinks and overnight stays.
He will celebrate the end of his challenge when he arrives at The Flying Horse on Wednesday. The pub is past the security barrier at Gatwick, so David will need a valid ticket to access the boozer, reports Nottinghamshire Live.
David, a retired forklift driver, said: "The cheapest air ticket I could get was to Shannon in Ireland which doesn’t have any Wetherspoons but that doesn’t matter because I’ll have completed the challenge before I get there.
“It’s been a wonderful journey across Britain and I’ve visited so many places which I would never have gone to if I’d not been checking off the pubs. I call myself a pub-spotter because I like to go down my directory of pubs and cross them off one by one.
“I daresay it’ll be strange to finally finish the challenge but I’m keen to revisit some of the early ones I went to in the early days.”
David's partner, Una Cooper, 63, bought him a £3 Wetherspoon directory off eBay. The couple took it to their local branch, The Observatory, in nearby Ilkeston, and David decided to visit every single one on the list and his challenge was born.
During a four-day trip to Scotland, David managed to tick off 46 pubs. His favourite Spoons are the Royal Victoria Pavilion in Ramsgate, Kent; The Corn Exchange in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk; the Winter Gardens in Harrogate; and the Caley Picture House in Edinburgh.
David and Una take public transport to the pubs, using a hovercraft to reach the Man in the Moon pub on the Isle of Wight.
Grandfather-of-one David said: “I love going in Wetherspoon pubs because they are all different buildings. Many of them are old fire stations, post offices, churches and other beautiful sites. I call them boxes of fun because you never know where they’ll be."
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