As a famous fictional rodent once remarked, “There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats”. Well, we find it hard to disagree. And if you can mess about in boats on the way to the pub, then it’s double the value.

Of course not everyone has access to one’s own yacht, but fortunately there’s a cost-effective alternative that everyone can use - TFL’s scheduled river services - running from Hampton Court all the way down to the Woolwich Arsenal.

We have now added The River Thames boat service stops to our database and these piers now appear in our stations section. So if you’re on your way to the pub and you’re tired of the tube or bored with buses you now have a refreshing, congestion-free alternative. Avast!

If your usual browser is Internet Explorer 6, please accept our apologies for the total cock-up we made of our site recently.

When we moved to our new hosting company, we had to make some technical changes and unbeknownst to us, these changes had a knock-on effect with some flavours of IE6.

We do test our pages on a number of browsers and our version of IE6 worked OK on the new site, but it turned out other versions didn’t work at all - especially on the crucial location and station pages. We were completely unaware of the problem until a few of you alerted us to it. And, to start with, we still couldn’t find any problems until we managed to source a different (non-working) version of the browser. We finally got to the bottom of the error a few days ago so normal service should be resumed for you. We know there are still a couple of stylesheet issues we need to look at, but at least you can now get around the site again.

Even if you’re not an IE6 user, you’ll still benefit from the work we did, as we fixed numerous little bugs as we worked our way through the problems.

With any luck it will be plainer sailing from now on. Thanks for your patience.

What do these pubs have in common?

The clue’s in the title of this item - they’re all pubs that have now closed. Some have moved, some have been demolished and some have found other uses for the premises, but for whatever reason these pubs are no longer with us.

We’ve seen too many pubs disappear, particularly over the last couple of years, and we think it’s about time we started doing something about it. So, we’re no longer deleting the closed down pubs, we’re keeping them on the map. You can see at a glance what’s happening.

We’d like you to contribute too. We’ve enhanced the comments, making room for information about what became of the pub, anecdotes about the pub’s history or any other related information - and you can read what we last said about it. And we won’t only show just the pubs we’ve visited, we will also list pubs we never managed to visit too.

Currently, our database has about 120 dead pubs previously reviewed and we’re putting these back on the site.  We’ve only reinstated a few right now, but we will be adding the rest over the next few days. head over to here to see the latest list of pubs. You’ll easily spot these deceased pubs on the maps as their markers have a black background.

Use the comments to let everyone know what you know about these passed-on pubs, or email us to tell us about places we haven’t yet included.

Cheers - the Fancyapint team

The Daily Candy reports today (25th April) that the Punch Bowl has re-opened after closing for a brief period for refurbishment (reported earlier here). According to the item, the celebrity owners have “…given the oldest watering hole in Mayfair (built in the 1750s) a thoroughly British makeover…”.

Let’s hope they have, but the  Hello-style publicity surrounding the pub over the last few weeks gives us cause for concern. We will, naturally, be reporting back to you in due course.

BTW, in case you’re interested, according to Pubs.com the oldest pub in Mayfair is actually the Guinea.

Not everyone enters Fancyapint.com through the home page, so it’s possible you might not have noticed it, but we launched a new home page design this weekend (19/04/2008).

With the launch of the new home page, the redesign of the site is nearly complete. Some of you might miss the reassuring dark blue of the old home page - it’s taken us a bit of time to get used to the new one, but for one reason or another, we felt we had to move on.

We’ve added a lot more to the home page, so you can see at a glance the latest news, updates and comments on the Fancyapint.com.

There’s still a lot more tidying up to do, so please bear with us as we trawl through the backlog and we’ll be adding some new features to the site very soon.

In the meantime. of course, if you have any comments, suggestions, observations or corrections, you know where to come. Email us at the usual address: editor@fancyapint.com.

Cheers!

According to the Guardian, today (9 April) nearly four pubs a day are closing:

“Almost four pubs a day are closing for business, taking down their swinging signs and their hanging baskets and boarding up their windows. It is the most powerful signal yet that one of Britain’s oldest, most resilient industries is in a dire state.”

Like farmers, publicans aren’t renowned for their optimistic outlook, but we feel it’s not always bad news. For instance, the pub pictured in the article - an old favourite, the Intrepid Fox - has reopened here and another recently-closed pub - the Crown (in Bow), reopens this weekend.

We’re not saying that the situation isn’t bad, we believe too many good pubs are closing for the wrong reasons, but we still feel the cataclysmic decline of the great British pub has been somewhat overstated.

Anyway, for more on the Graun thing, read here.

At Fancyapint.com we’re used to receiving all kinds of bizarre enquiries relating to all manner of pub-related matters, but one a few months ago seemed a bit more intriguing than most. Did we know – asked a TV researcher – of any pubs in London that didn’t serve food but had a kitchen?

Well, we put our heads together, came up with a few pubs, and passed on the details.

We were intrigued with the question though – what on earth did the researcher need this info for? We guessed it would be for some sort of reality TV thing, but that’s about as inspired as we got.

Now the penny’s dropped. The reason – we’ve suddenly realised – will reach your screens this Wednesday, when in episode 3 of the latest series of BBC’s The Apprentice, the two teams have to start up a food service, from scratch, in two different London pubs.

Will there be full blown gastro menu (courtesy Marks & Sparks?) or maybe a Thai Kitchen? Personally, we’re hoping for pies. We’ll just have to tune in to find out…

The debate about who really has bought one of our favourite pubs in Mayfair, the Punch Bowl continues.  There was a bit of a hoo-hah earlier this month after this story broke about a new owner, only to be strenuously denied by the purported new owner’s own PR people almost immediately after.

Our latest understanding (from yet another source) is that ownership lies somewhere between, with said Mr Ritchie purchasing half of the pub.

What difference any of this makes remains to be seen, will we ever see a familiar face behind the bar? We’ll just have to wait and see, as the question right now is somewhat moot - the pub is closing today for a couple of weeks for a spot of refurbishment.

We got a very nice plug at the weekend from the Sunday Times, who appear to like what we do, click on the image to see what they said about us in full. You can also read the article online here.

We’d love to know if the Hootananny’s Ceilidh Cafe Bar in Inverness gets more customers as a result of the article - we really hope so.

What is it about decent pubs in London that developers and breweries think - well, that’s a prime site for development!?! We’re saddened to hear from a related blog that yet another of our favourite pubs in London - and this one a brewpub with it’s own range of beers, at that - is due to be sold to Wells and Youngs.

If you haven’t guessed by now (from the photo) it’s the Cock and Hen in Fulham, which has been open less than a year. We liked it so much we gave it an award for Most Improved Pub in our awards last October. Having since spoken to Phil the landlord, he’s told us that it’s closing down on the 10th of March.

He also said that Capital Pubs got an offer for the property they could refuse, and while we understand that pubcos are in business to make money, rather than just provide us excellent places to drink, it’s a shame that good pubs and good people are affected like this, particularly when we’re losing so many pubs on a regular basis.

We understand the brewery fixtures are being stored until new premises for another brewpub are found, and that the beers are going to be available in three of their sister pubs, one of which is the Florence in Southeast London.

In the meantime, if you fancy a decent pint at an award-winning pub, make sure you get there soon.

STOP PRESS! The old Cock and Hen closed its doors on 7 March, in preparation for handover to the new owners. We’ll let you know what they do with it.