The Claret Run

History

The Claret Run is a pub crawl in York that follows the route of the number 10 or 'Claret Line' bus. The Claret Run begins in the village of Upper Poppleton, heads through the centre of York and then on to the villages of Dunnington and Gate Helmsley before finishing in Stamford Bridge. The Claret Run is an alternative to the established pub crawl routes of the Otley Run and the Micklegate Run.

Route

The following is a rough guide to the order of pubs on the Claret Run and is only included as an example. This can be changed to include whichever pubs you want providing there are 18 in total and they follow the route of the Claret Line bus without deviation. The only rule that is non changable is that you must start in either Upper Poppleton or Stamford Bridge and finish at a pub at the other end of the line!

Transport

This pub crawl involves some bus travel as well as walking however you are not on a bus for very long at any time. Pubs can be walked to apart from:

(2) The White Horse (Poppleton) & (3) The Fox (Holgate) - 10 min bus ride

(4) The Crystal Palace (Holgate) & (5) The Spread Eagle (Walmgate) - 10 min bus ride / could be walked in 15 min

(11) The Wagon and Horses (Lawrence Street) & (12)The Cross Keys (Dunnington) - 15 min bus ride

(13) The Greyhound (Dunnington) & (14) The Duke of York (Gate Helmsley) - 5 min bus ride

NB: A bus could be taken from Gate Helmsley to Stamford Bridge but this is only a ten minute walk.

The best thing to do is buy a Day Rover ticket for First York Buses which will cost £3.90 for unlimited all day travel allowing you to hop on and off the buses at any point. The last First bus back to York from Stamford Bridge is 20:00 however York Pullman operate a number of later services with the final service at 23:00 allowing you to continue drinking in York or head home.

Rules

The rules of the Claret Run are based on a points system. For every drink you imbibe you score and different drinks score a different number of points, according to the list below:

The person with the lowest overall score buys the final round in the last pub.

Participants should try to consume a pint in each pub. This can be either bitter, lager or cider but not shandy or soft drink. Each drinker can have 4 spirit breaks whereby they can forgo a pint if they are feeling a bit bloated so these should be used wisely! Also 2 bottle breaks are allowed and can be taken at any time. At the start of the event each drinker randomly selects a number from a hat, this will corrospond to a number of a pub on the route. When a person arrives at the pub with their number they must have a shot (chosen collectively by the rest of the group) alongside their other drink. This is known as the 'Golden Shot'.

The following excuses for being more drunk than other people are the only ones acceptable: "I have been drinking more (This excuse must be validated by 2 other people)." or "I am a pansy lightweight." If you need to vomit, you may do so on the conditions that nobody else sees, and you replace the lost alcohol forthwith.

A strict 30 min per pub rule is in place so in order to ensure that people have the maximum amount of time to drink their chosen beverages, the order for ordering at the bar is as follows: STOUT - REAL ALE - LAGER, CIDER, BITTER - SHORTS (& MIXER) - WINE (if you're gay)

The weekly alcohol intake limit, as set by the NHS, is 28 units for men, 21 units for women. Therefore women can drink ¾ that of men. Therefore drinking "halves" all day cannot constitute an equal completion of the Pub crawl unless "doubling-up" occurs in half the pubs.

The final rule is that only 2 of each brand can be drunk, for example if you were drinking lager then you could only have 2 pints of Fosters before having to move onto Carling / Stella etc...

Links

First York Timetable 1

York Pullman Timetable 2