Team of drinkers finish 24-year pub crawl

A team of Black Country drinkers have completed a mammoth 24-year pub crawl, visiting 14,000 pubs across the UK and Ireland.

West Bromwich foursome Peter Hill and friends John Drew, a 45-year-old scaffolder, Karl Bradley, 45, who works as a welder and Peter's retired dad, Joe Hill, 77, known as the Black Country Ale Tairsters have spent thousands since 1984 travelling across the UK, enjoying a pint in every county in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

They came up with the idea after getting bored of drinking in the same pub, the Old Crown pub in Whitehall Road and made it their mission to visit every pub in Herefordshire and Worcestershire - over 250.

Engineer Peter, aged 52 from Stour Street in Greets Green, said: "At that time Banks's had just printed their pint and platter map of 300 pubs so we thought we would go and visit them all.

"When we finished the map had grown to 750 and it just evolved from there."

After travelling all of the Banks's pubs in the Midlands in their trademark beer mat waistcoats in 1986 they were presented with tankards from the brewery. In 1988 they visited 71 different pubs in 12 counties covering 1,016 miles from Kent to South Wales. On that occasion they raised cash for Sandwell Hospital, Moxley Hospital and the Wolverhampton Royal Hospital.

Flushed with their success they then made it their mission to visit every pub in every county in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, an achievement marked in the Guinness Book of World Records. Yesterday they called in at the Stags Leap in Wolseley Road, Rugeley, their 14,000th boozer. In the last three years alone, the Tairsters have raised over £5,000.

Peter said: "It feels great to have reached this milestone, especially as we were able to mark it with a pint in a Marston's pub in the Midlands, where it all began."

They have now set their sights on all the pubs in north Wales to raise money for Wrexham Children's Hospital.