A booze-loving couple are just four days away from the end of a two-and-a-half year mission to visit every Red Lion pub in Britain.
Dental worker Kayleigh Snell, 30, and her plumber fiancé Paul Tyack, 31, from Woodstock, Oxfordshire, set out on their colossal pub crawl in September 2015 and are now one stop short visiting all 632 British pubs that hold the Red Lion name.
They have clocked up 20,500 miles between them and consumed countless drinks while raising £1,900 for charity.
Their final stop is this Friday, at the Red Lion in Boldre, Hampshire.
Dental worker Kayleigh Snell, 30, and her plumber fiancé Paul Tyack, 31, outside the Red Lion in Crich, Derbyshire
The benevolent couple will donate the money they’ve raised during their pub crawl to Pulmonary Hypertension UK, a lung disease that Paul’s seven-year-old niece Emily suffers from.
So far the sponsorship money that’s been pledged totals almost £2,000 but it grows every day.
Admitting they’ve lost count of how many drinks they have downed, Kayleigh described the experience as ‘amazing’.
‘We’ve been to so many places and met so many interesting people and everyone’s been really generous’ she said.
The couple began their 31-month pub crawl in September 2015 after a routine visit to their nearest Red Lion, in Northmoor, Oxfordshire.
Chatting to locals, they discovered it’s the most popular and common name for a pub in Britain and they hatched their plan, which was just for fun to start with.
Kayleigh said: ‘After we’d been to about 200 hundred Red Lions, someone said to us why didn’t we do it for charity, so we decided to raise money.’
Military-style, they had to plan an exhausting series of road and rail trips, and even booked planes to places like Inverness in Scotland.
They made sure to have at least one drink in each Red Lion, with plenty of photos to prove it.
The couple are set to visit all 632 British pubs that hold the Red Lion name. Here they are pictured outside the Salisbury pub
Kayleigh said ‘We wanted to raise money for a charity that maybe isn’t that well known and because Paul’s niece has Pulmonary Hypertension we thought why not do it for that?
‘His family has been very supportive and Emily totally gets what we’re doing, so they are really pleased.’
Despite sharing a title, Kayleigh said some of the Red Lions could not be more different in décor and atmosphere.
They went to one Red Lion in a working men’s club after the original village pub was closed down.
Another Red Lion was moved from its former location in Stoke-on-Trent and rebuilt brick by brick at the Tramway village museum in Crich.
The couple began their trip two and a half years ago and have travelled all over the UK. Here they are pictured at the Red Lion in Preston
Kayleigh added ‘There were five or six that were so welcoming.
She said the Red Lion in Heolgerrig, Merthyr Tydfil, south Wales were ‘fantastic’ and brought the couple ‘food and free drinks’ when they found out they were doing the epic pub crawl ‘it was fantastic’ she said.
‘And St Osyth in Essex, the locals and the owners were so warm and welcoming.’
Recalling how their mammoth pub crawl began, she said ‘The first Red Lion we went to was in Northmoor. It was coincidental. We were driving to Paul’s office and there was traffic so we took the long way back and found the pub.
‘It’s the ones that are just a little bit different that are best. You get chain ones which are nice enough but they are all the same.
‘We try and visit about eight in one day. One of us will have a half pint and the other will have an orange juice, as one of us will be driving. We don’t go too mad.’
Kayleigh, who has been dating Paul since 2012, added ‘Pubs are closing all the time so its hard to know when it will end.’
They had to make special plans for the Red Lions in Scotland, where there are only about ten, so they tried to work out a route so they didn’t have to make repeated visits.
Kayleigh (right) said some of the Red Lions could not be more different in décor and atmosphere. Pictured with fiance Paul at the Red Lion in Bredwardine, Herefordshire
The furthest Red Lion from their home is in Inverness, more than 500 miles away from their Oxfordshire home, but they are not fazed by all the travelling.
‘It’s nice because we get to see a lot of the country, so we are getting some benefits.
‘We went to the Peak District and neither of us had been there before. It was lovely. We definitely said we would go back.’
Their favourite of the hundreds of pubs were both in their home county of Oxfordshire. Kayleigh sid the Red Lion in Old Marston, had ‘fantastic food but also a pub vibe to it’ and the Chalgrove Red Lion ‘one of the prettiest from the outside, warm and cosy inside’.
The couple who have visited every Red Lion in the country, outside the pub that holds the popular moniker in Osyth, Essex
Now, having spent almost three years propping up the bar at nearly 650 pubs, Kayleigh feels she knows the vital ingredient that makes a special drinking den.
‘It’s the people in them – the locals and the staff, that’s what makes any pub a great pub.’
They originally set out to raise £1,000 but look set to at least double that by the time they call last orders when they visit their final Red Lion in Hampshire on Friday.
In 2015, Cathy Price from Preston, Lancashire, completed a five-year journey across all the Red Lions in the UK
The couple will be ordering more drinks – champagne this time – when they get married in May.
In 2015, Cathy Price from Preston, Lancashire, completed a five-year journey across all the Red Lions in the UK, raising more than £16,000 criss-crossing the country.
Then there were 656 drinking spots that share the nation’s most common pub name.
She travelled a staggering 90,000 miles in her yellow Saab, on a journey that took her from the beaches of Cornwall to the Highlands of Scotland.
Miss Price, from Preston, Lancashire, said she was ‘thrilled’ when she reached the final stop on her pub crawl, the Red Lion in Northmoor, Oxfordshire.