Mark's Blog: The Annual Balmain Christmas Crawl 2012

This year saw some veterans from the last ABCC, alongside some newbies for this year's long anticipated event. Wayne, Pete, Paul, Simon and I were joined by Simon's brother James, Pete's dad Chris, Angelique's boyfriend Chris, and on the home-straight (The Town Hall), Grant, Jeremy (my Head of Dept) and all the way from Tonbridge in the UK, via Melbourne, Brookesey.

A few changes to this year's event saw the route reduced from 10 to 7 pubs concentrating on the best, and oldest, of Balmain's establishments (and also in light of the frankly unacceptable state Pete and I were in last year by pub no.10), and the introduction of a scorecard for participants to rate each venue in three categories: Location, Quality/Variety of Beer and 'The Vibe'.

Moving from The London to The Royal Oak (pubs 1 &2)

from left to right: Pete, Wayne, Chris, me, James, Simon and Chris

Paul joined us in The Royal Oak

A map of "Balmain from 1788" in Balmain's oldest pub, The Dry Dock (est. 1857)

Annual photo in front of the mural at the Sir William Wallace

Chris gets in a round at The Town Hall

....whilst Pete delivers a round of burgers

"this better not appear on facebook"

Grant rates The Exchange, but it's all too much for Pete

Pete poses with his new car, before waking up and realising it was a dream

It's all over for Jeremy as Monika does a drive-by (although not quite - he escaped to re-join us at The Three Weeds)

Please can we come in?

Guinness all round

Brookesey

Chris with Andrew, who came along for one at The Welcome

Grant does a Banksy

We met up with the girls at The Three Weeds (our old local in Rozelle) for dinner and a post-pub crawl drink or two, where Gill had organised a lunch for the girls.