Obviously, the English have a different attitude about alcohol consumption than Americans. They drink so much more and it very open, but there is not as much over the top behavior. A much more civilized approach.
Why do they drink so much beer? Because the tap water is so awful. Good lord, the stuff is rank! It tastes like it’s been filtered through someone’s old shirt.
Our first meal of the trip was at Chequers, deep in an alley in Oxford. This pub was eight hundred years old. Eight hundred years! (You don’t get used to the age of things. I’m from some of the oldest places in America, and those are only a few hundred years old, and none are still used. Borough Market was celebrating it’s 1,000th year.) Myth has it that Henry VIII’s soldiers chased a group of monks to the tunnels beneath the pub and sealed the tunnel. “On quiet nights, you can still hear them scream…” The boy was mesmerized.
I had the best beer of my life- Nicholson’s Pale Ale. It tasted great and went down so easily. I am not a hard drinker by any stretch, but I inhaled two glasses in two minutes, easily a personal record. I had Nicholson’s everywhere I could find it. Get it to America already!
English pubs use a mechanical tap system that involves frequent pumping of the tap as the beer is poured. I’m convinced that has something to do with the superior taste throughotu.
We also went to Dicken’s pub, founded by Charles Dickens. Many pubs are named after very famous people and often have a direct connection. America doesn’t have anything to rival kings, Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, etc. We get Kenny Rogers Roasters instead. Barbarians, the lot of us.