Beer fan says Exeter's is best after visiting 12,000 pubs

A beer-lover is celebrating visiting his 12,000th boozer following an epic pub crawl across the UK lasting 55 YEARS - and has revealed that a pub in Devon is in his top six. Rob Cocker, 73, has been travelling across the country for more than five decades sampling ales in tens of thousands of pubs since 1969.

The dad-of-one decided to just "see what else was out there" after getting bored of visiting his local in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs., at the age of 18. Since then, he has caught buses and trains as well as hitched lifts with pals to have a "quick half" in pubs from Oban, Scotland to Land's End, in Cornwall.

Ale-fan Rob will sometimes cross off 14 pubs in one trip and toasted his 12,000th last week at Costello’s Bar in Warrington, Cheshire. He proudly boasts having drank in every city in England and has frequented every single boozer within 20 miles of his home. Rob's mammoth pub crawl has also seen him drink in 1,400 alehouses in London and in 471 Wetherspoon's nationwide.

Luckily, he says he has the full support of his wife of 37 years Lynn, 68, who often joins him on his ale-drinking odyssey, which isn't finished yet. Rob, a retired payroll officer, said: "It all started when I got a bit bored of visiting the same pub each weekend from when I was 18 and thought I'd see what else was out there.

"I just began travelling a bit further out and trying the different pubs in the area and then by 1971 I was making a note of them all on the back of a fag packet.

"It just spiralled from there and I began keeping diaries as I kept going further afield. I tied it in to going to watch Stoke City FC play and still do so today.

"We've got Sheffield United this weekend and I've got seven new pubs in Sheffield I'm going to try next. I started getting the CAMRA Guide around 1980 which I follow religiously and going to the pubs in there. I have been to 1,800 CAMRA pubs but there's around 4,500 in there, so I've done around 40 per cent. It will be impossible to do every pub in Britain but I've done what I can.

"People can't believe it when I tell them what I'm doing. There were two young ladies in a Newcastle bar who asked me what I was doing when I began taking notes about the ale I was drinking. They didn't believe me, so I said 'Google me' and then they were screaming in the pub 'Oh my God, this bloke has been to 10,000 pubs'.

"My son jokes that I'm famous for being a p**shead. But if I'm doing 10 pubs during a trip, I'll make sure I'll only have a half. I've just had my most recent health check and it all came back as clear. It's a lot of ale but I don't go over the top.

"I had to catch eight trains recently when I went to Melton Mowbray, Stamford, Grantham and Nottingham. You don't want to be sozzled when you're trying to catch eight trains home. But I've been known to do eight to 14 pubs in one go."

Rob has also crossed over hundreds of Wetherspoon's pub "without trying" and visited hundreds more across Scotland, Ireland and Wales. He added: "I've been to 471 Wetherspoon's too without trying to do Wetherspoon's pubs. They get a bad reputation sometimes but some of them are absolutely incredible inside and really historic buildings. The Imperial in Exeter springs to mind and there's one in Tewkesbury, which is still used as an opera house. The wife is a CAMRA member too so comes with me to a lot of them, so fortunately she's on board with it all. We'll go on a holiday and I'll incorporate in as many pubs as I can. We went on a historical trip around Chester the other week and I managed to find and cross off around eight more pubs.

"I don't count the ones abroad though - as they are never proper pubs, more like bars. But I've been to 84 countries too. I've also done hundreds across Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland - from Oban, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, plus Jersey and the Isle of Man too. I prefer the traditional-style local boozers but there's some really good microbreweries out there too these days. And it's always a real ale I'll have, never a lager, that's just scraping the barrel."

Rob says he can't chose a favourite pub or a favourite ale but lists The York Tap, in York, and The Imperial, in Exeter, Devon as among his top picks. He added: "I could list you about 20 or 30 different pubs which could be among my favourites to be honest. But I certainly remember the worst. It was in Dudley and had a sinkhole in the middle of the pub that people were queuing around to get to the bar. I've never seen anything like it. It was like something from a comedy sketch."

Rob's Top Six pubs:
York Tap, York, Yorkshire
The Imperial, Exeter, Devon
Rat Race Real Ale House, Hartlepool, County Durham
The Eight Bells, Alton, Hampshire
The Royal Hop Pole, Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire
The Cask Bar, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire

Rob's top six ales:
Tiny Rebel Stay Puft
Marstons Pedigree
Salopian
Cloudwater
Leather Britches
Bass