This is a look at the ten most Yortle pubs we have visited since the crew formed in the late 90s. They have been judged and ranked on four criteria.
This pub just had to make the list. This was basically the birthplace of Trek in London, it being where Marcus ran tournaments as early as 1996. The pub is decent enough, although it would be a stretch to call it great but it exists in the memories of some as the place where it all began. When I think back to Ben Janes attempting a first turn red-shirt with Talus, I picture him at the Cheshire Cheese. Since 1998 we haven’t really revisited this pub much, hence its low position on this list. It now doesn’t open at weekends and has changed a lot.
This was the Star Trek CCG tournament venue of choice between 2001 and 2002. I’m not going to pretend this pub was great, but it does have some good memories. We spent a good many hours in the big dark function room below, which was always short of light bulbs and decent tables. The pub served decent food though, and had a jazz band whose members sometimes outnumbered the patrons in the bar. Of course, the greatest thing that ever happened in this pub was watching David Beckham score the free kick that put England into the 2002 World Cup finals.
For over two years, this was "the local" for myself, Bowdy and Noddy. Being a Wetherspoons, it had very cheap beer of course, which was nice. It wasn’t somewhere to go to have a mad night out, pull or get wasted, but it was a great place to go when you wanted a quiet couple of drinks and chat to your mates. Fittingly, one such visit by myself, Noddy and Ringo resulted in the creation of The Tube Challenge. In the summer, the beer garden was a great place to do this, providing you weren’t corrupted by 15-year-old girls in low-cut tops. Also I can’t finish this paragraph without a special mention for "Curry Club," which is just about the best £4 you can spend.
For people such as myself, Noddy, Neil, Punchline and Sarah, this is Mecca as far as bars are concerned. However, the rest of the gang have had some good times there too. Who can forget Bowdy getting into a fight with one of the locals and getting put into hospital or Ringo and Bowdy sleeping in The Cooler? One of the destinations on the 2002 UK Pro-Tour.
When myself, Snap, Shanny and Tobes lived in Walthamstow, this wasn’t exactly our local but it was our favourite pub. A great place to watch football, especially when you had to talk the landlord into opening especially for it. Had a couple of pool tables to keep bored drinkers happy and some fruit machines to keep Mike happy. Played a part in all three Victoria Line Challenges, even though the only part it played in the first one was refusing to let us in. Of course, the greatest thing about this pub is that it is at the top of a hill in Walthamstow market opposite Sainsbury’s which makes it a great place for trolley racing. [Also the place where "Getting Dumped Bingo" was created - see Ruling Britannia XIV for details - cheers, Ringo]
After a bit of thought, I decided to include these two as one entry due to their being closely related. Of the two only the King Eddy probably deserves inclusion in its own right. It was the venue of the Games Club up until 2001 when it moved to The Swan before moving out of Stratford altogether. The Games Club itself was decent enough I suppose, but above all it was a great place to meet and drink, even at other times. The King Eddy was the pub used for Stratford on the first Jubilee Line Challenge and was the site of a certain "dancing in the rain" incident. It was also the backdrop to a number of Trouble with Trekkies cards and it was outside this very pub that Kelly dumped Tobes. If you need more, the Trek CCG club was formed in here and it was the meting point for the infamous millennium party. On the way back from here, the song Blame Roleplayers was written.
There aren’t many places that it is worth travelling as far as Scotland for, but The Cathouse is an exception. It’s full of Goths, which is more funny than annoying and the music (while a bit heavy for some tastes) can be good. For a long time, it was also one of the only places you could buy Red, that lovely caffeine based alcopop, which many of us had become addicted to at Warwick. The greatest night here was probably the debut night of James’ stag party, but the Glasgow leg of the Pro-Tour was also held here and completely kicked ass.
Holds a huge longevity record in that we first visited this pub in 1999 (Ringo before that) and still go there regularly. It is your stereotypical "decent pub" with reasonable prices, a dartboard and a big screen to watch the football. It is also right next to a tube station making it handy to get to and from. It was home of tons of Trek tournaments back in the day, in fact its upstairs function room was basically the home of UK ST: CCG between 1999 and 2000, where as many as 32 people at once played in tournaments. If you had to say something bad about this pub it’s that it’s not the kind of place where things actually happen. In the Trek years it was somewhere you played a tournament and moved on to somewhere fun (usually Pages,) and now it’s somewhere you go for a quiet beer or two, not an eventful evening. In fact the most memorable event to take place here was probably Craig puking after drinking 20 pints here on New Years Eve 2004. Of course, this was the pub for London Bridge on the Jubilee Line Challenge.
Ah Pages Bar, what can we say about this place? It was the Yang to the Ying of the OKH in the same period. I think Ringo said it best when in 2000 he said:
"It’s not that (Pages) is our entire social life or anything but... well..., it is."
The things that Pages had going for it were numerous. It showed episodes of Star Trek, Buffy and stuff like that which we quite liked. It also had a cool sci-fi theme to it, including doors that made a cool noise when they opened. It was also the kind of place where you could sing and dance around and basically act like a twat and nobody cared. Lots of things happened here, including Tobes getting together with Kelly, meeting Danielle, Marina Sirtis night, numerous birthdays, the piss-up the night before the 2000 regional, the Marshy "I am a virgin" incident, the writing of The James Farmer Blues (Part 1), Westminster on the Jubilee Line Challenge and the night before D-Con 2000. Basically pretty much anything that happened in the UK Trek scene between 1999 and 2000 happened here, so it would be a crime if it didn’t make at least number two in this list. It fails to be number one because of a number of bad things. The management are bitchy, they stopped doing a lot of the sci-fi nights, they stopped us singing, and at the end of the day the place was pretty geeky. We still go back there occasionally but mainly for nostalgia reasons.
After the demise of Pages, we were looking for somewhere to fill the void and the Turtle took on the role of our spiritual home. Four years later, many would say it is still our spiritual home. It is a goth/rock/metal/weird place that for some reason is very endearing to us despite our fitting into none of those groups. The drinks aren’t cheap, but they do have every single drink imaginable, leading to some fantastic cocktails such as the enigmatic "Orange Shit." It is also a very well laid out place with loads of quiet places where you can go to play drinking games or more risqué games with ice. We have had some fantastic nights here down the years, some after tournaments, some as celebrations and some just as nights out. The Week from Hell in January 2003 saw two great nights here, as did the end of the pro-tour, Snap's birthday 2001, GenCon 2001 and 2002, Ringo’s birthday 2004, the Northern Line Challenge and many more. In fact, think of any great night out in the last four years and there is a fair chance it was at the Turtle. Therefore it wins my coveted award as the most Yortle pub of our time!
Ian Taylor, 22-Apr-2005