Kurt certainly gets a round!

MAN TACKLES ULTIMATE PUB CRAWL BY TRYING EACH OF THE 501 BARS IN CITY CENTRE

ON Boxing Day in 2018, Kurt Stephens went into town with his wife and spotted a bar which he’d never seen before.

Despite living in Manchester for around 40 years, Kurt realised that he hadn’t been a very adventurous drinker.

So, the 44-year-old, from Sale, decided that from January 1, 2019, he’d set out and visit 100 different bars around Manchester city centre.

Filling out an Excel file on each bar he’d been to, what beer he’d drunk and how much it had cost, (alongside whether his wife, Jillian, was with him or not) Kurt set out to finish his target.

However, he quickly found he was capable of more than just 100.

“The intention was to spread it over an entire year but in reality, I think it was by the end of March or even February, I was up in the 80s already,” Kurt told the M.E.N.

“Every time I was going in a bar, I was putting it on a Facebook as the ‘100 pub challenge.’

“But once I got to 100, which was in Pop World, I got to the point where I thought, ‘this is going to be dead easy – why don’t we just see how many bars there are in town?’

“In spring the ‘100 pub challenge’ became the ‘never-ending pub crawl.’”

Kurt continued the challenge, but instead of drinking in just a couple of bars at the weekend, he would head into the city centre around four or five times a week.

“On Tuesday, I would finish work at 5pm, be in town by 6pm and get up to 8, potentially 9 pints in a night. Then I’d walk home,” he said.

Kurt added: “I did a hundred bars in 42 days.

“I went from 300 to 400 in a month and I was in town every night practically.

“I find it quite hard to get drunk now. I get very, very tired.”

Kurt used the Mancunian Way as a boundary to explore within but included bars on the border like Hatch, on Oxford Road. Establishments such as the Crown and Kettle in Ancoats, however, were on the wrong side of the ring road, so didn’t count.

“There were also some rules as to what counted as a bar and what didn’t,” Kurt said.

“It had to be free to get in and had to be somewhere that I could sit in and drink alcohol and not have to pay for food or anything like that.

“That introduced places like Selfridges, which has a cocktail bar, and Marks and Spencer’s have a cafe that will sell you Peroni.”

When asked what his favourite bar was, Kurt said it was 20 Stories in Spinningfields, because he enjoyed the ambiance. Kurt said: “I was out there with a load of friends – it was really clear skies, great 360 degree views of the city. It went dark while we were up there.”

He says his least favourite, however, was number 300 on his list – Sinclairs Oyster Bar, because the bouncer wouldn’t let him take a picture, due to a blanket ban on phones in all Sam Smith bars around the country.

“I started to dislike the Northern Quarter with a passion, because I’d appreciate the volume of bars up [there],” Kurt added.

“It’s absolutely phenomenal. I reckon there’s about 200-odd bars. I was just going back and back and back. I was so frustrated with thinking, ‘have I done this yet?’”

By the end of Kurt’s ‘never ending pub crawl,’ he found that the cheapest beer was in Waves, on Portland Street, for £1.85 a pint.

The most expensive drink, unsurprisingly, was in the Hilton hotel, where a bottle of Estrella was £8.25.

By the end of 2019, after 501 different bars, Kurt had spent a whopping £2,358.13. Discussing the social aspect of his year-long bar crawl, Kurt said: “The bar staff started to get really interested in it.

“As soon as I got to about 150/200 [bars], I started telling people what I was up to and one landlord was properly into it.

“Some of the barmaids were saying let’s do it in 2020 and all come along.”

“People were recognising me,” he added.

“It was genuinely quite emotional as it was getting towards the end.

“I’ll never forget the effort that went into to walking around town looking for stuff. I still look back at it now, thinking ‘bloody hell, I wish I could do that again.

“It was quite emotional. I nailed the last pint in one go, and I thought, that’s it now, that’s the end.

“I joked with my wife that it’s the biggest achievement I’ve ever had in my life.

“But the effort and time and cost of the whole thing over an entire year was enormous.

“It was the most pointless thing I’ve ever done, but it does feel like an achievement!”