Places Features

Fear not - for help is on hand for would-be pub crawlers around St Albans, thanks to a man who has put the 70-odd hostelries in the city and surrounding villages on the map.

John Coats, aged 32, came up with the idea to put St Albans on the pub map while visiting his grandfather in the city.

He said: "I always thought St Albans was the ideal place for a Pub Stops design due to its high number of pubs and links with CAMRA."

John, a maths teacher by day, first came up with the idea for the Pub Stops design in 2004.

"St Albans was quite easy to do.  Although it does get rather crowded around the Garibaldi, White Hart Tap area!  I had to stretch that area out to allow more room because there are quite a few good pubs in that particular area around the centre of the City" said John.

The design is a schematic showing the pubs and main attractions in a 'tube map style' layout.

"I try to base the tube lines on the road network and then add the pubs as stations" explained John.

The poster is on its third edition due to its popularity and the range now contains designs for 18 different towns, cities and regions, with more planned for the future.

John, who works on the maps in his spare time, told us: "They usually take me a week of evenings to produce, after a fair bit of Internet based research of course!"

It has proved a hit with locals and visitors. His target audience included students and people looking for presents for male relatives.

The St Albans design is available in poster, mug, mouse mat, card and postcard formats from www.pubstops.co.uk.

Listen to the full interview here: