Early Summer Tour-Crawl

This year’s early summer tour-crawl began as St Anne Limehouse, where nine of us fought our way through seemingly abandoned piles of music stands and instruments at the back of the church to find the tower entrance. 45 minutes later, with several touches from Bob Doubles to Bristol Major rung, a desperate thirst came upon the group. The East London natives among us lead the way to a local hostelry, complete with a delightful secret terrace garden. Our next stop was due to be Magnus, but the refreshments necessitated delaying this by 15 minutes… then 30 minutes… finally we agreed that we probably didn’t need to ring at Magnus at all. Apologies to Nick Brown, who had arrived at Magnus on time, and got a series of updates from the rest of us about when we would, or would not, arrive.

A quick train to Fenchurch St got us to The Windsor for lunch, and then our actual next tower, Hart St! A bit of mid-tour wedding ringing put some cash in everybody’s pockets ready for the ‘crawl’ part of the tour-crawl. Starting with The Dickens Inn on the docks, we then wandered back east via the Town of Ramsgate, Captain Kidd, Prospect of Whitby and the Grapes. Each of these pubs had river-view terraces, and each were full of people enjoying the sun, so we spent most of our drinking time indoors, with the notable exception of Rupert who snuck out to enjoy his pint on the pebble beach outside the Prospect of Whitby.

By now we were getting hungry again, and having established that none of the residents of Rupert’s Limehouse flat were at home, we headed there to enjoy some pizza (and a few more bottles) on their balcony, before heading home. Thanks to Rupert for organising a fun day.

Tom Nagel