Beer lover Rob Cocker visits 12,000th pub during trip to Warrington

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 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 Scotland to Land's End, in Cornwall.

Ale-fan Rob will sometimes cross off 14 pubs in one trip, and toasted his 12,000th recently at Costello’s Bar in Warrington.

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, aged 68, who often joins him on his ale-drinking odyssey, which is not 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 I 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.

"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 play and still do so today.

"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 are 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.

Rob Cocker at Costello's Bar in Warrington. Picture: SWNS

"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.'

"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 visited 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 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."