Most people choose to go to the seaside when the sun is out. Being slightly contrary folk, we decided the best time to for the Pub Challenge’s first visit to Portobello was on a freezing day in mid-January, when it was pishing it down. We were accompanied by the flying duo of Adrian and John, John having (intentionally?) missed his flight that morning (excuse: drunk the night before, slept in) and decided that the best way to spend another day up north was to hit a few pubs. Fair enough.
The Plough Inn (Portobello High Street, 15/21/26/42/49) was the first place we saw after getting off the bus and visiting the ATM. I’m a bit of a fascist when it comes to lager, preferring good imported stuff to a lot of the crap you find in most pubs – and also on a freezing day you can hardly taste the stuff. During the winter I like to drink heavies or pale ales – and the Plough Inn had none of the above. A pint of Guinness it was. Nick had the same – “This is going to be a really slow pints”, he had stressed on the bus out to Porty, before necking it in ten minutes. Just to rub salt into the wound from the previous night, they were reshowing the Spurs/Arsenal game, and this pleased John no end.
Stumbling out of the Plough Inn we noticed that we had gone past a pub called The Galleon (Portobello High Street, 15/21/26/42/49), which looked ropey from the outside. The view from the outside, however, was nothing compared to what we saw when we got in. The back room called itself “The Black Chicken Lounge”, and the clientele consisted of one woman (who had a strange likeness to Grandma from Thunderbirds) and her dog, which kept trying to hump Nick’s leg. Nick doesn’t like dogs. Tom Jones was blasting on the jukebox as we entered, and was swiftly followed by The Carpenters. There were a couple of other 60s love songs, The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen (things were going well) - and then we were shocked with Bon Bloody Jovi. Now if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s Bon Jovi, and so there was only one viable option: put money in the jukebox and stay for another pint, much to Nick’s disgust. Given that the jukebox consisted of 60s standards and country and western (plus the obligatory power ballads compilation – hence the Bon Jovi) , myself and John took over the controls. This is what we came up with:
GLENN CAMPBELL – WICHITA LINEMAN
DON McLEAN – CRYING
BUDDY HOLLY – THINK IT OVER
ROD STEWART – YOU WEAR IT WELL
THE EAGLES – NEW KID IN TOWN
THE CARPENTERS – HURTING EACH OTHER
THE ZOMBIES – SHE’S NOT THERE (interestingly listed by our resident statistician as “The Way She Does”)
ELVIS PRESSLEY – SUSPICIOUS MINDS
DEL SHANNON – HATS OFF TO LARRY
THE SHIRELLES – WILL YOU LOVE ME TOMORROW
THE SMALL FACES – ITCHYCOO PARK
Brilliant stuff. As much as we were tempted to stay on, the old wifey had returned to the jukebox and was queuing up at least £10’s worth of requests. A quick visit next door provided some extremely fresh tasting haddock (and not so fresh tasting chips), and then it was along to the Forresters Arms (Portobello High Street, 15/21/26/42/49), bigger than either of the other pubs and slightly less downmarket. There was a beer garden out the back, but we didn’t fancy sitting our there in the sleet, and so we watched some of the African Cup of Nations instead.
People had things to be doing, and so we headed back into Leith for our final pub of the evening. The Volunteer Arms (Leith Walk, 7/10/12/14/16/22/25/49) is famous for being the pub in Trainspotting in which Begbie is playing a game of pool with a killing hangover before a local hardman enters…you know the rest. Sadly there was no such action during our brief stay, just a pint of Caley 80 -/- and a packet of bacon fries. Worth a visit though.
UNTIL THE NEXT TIME….
CUMULATIVE PUB COUNT: 73
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