Rob remembered by Derek
I first met Bob when we played chess at school; Bob played for John Fisher and I for Whitgift, we only played once and Bob won. In 1979, we met again at Wallington and Carshalton Chess Club where Bob was already a member of the first team and I came to work in the area.
Bob was very welcoming, I knew few people having come to a new area to work, inviting me to join him with friends at the Sun. Our friendship grew and we hatched a plan to cycle from Land’s End to John o’ Groats. In August 1986, we set off with James Dean. It took us 16 days and it was an amazing trip with constantly changing scenery. On the whole, the weather was pretty good but I can remember two very wet days, we arrived at a pub for lunch and were presented with towels! We did not book ahead since we never knew how far we would travel each day. I had the only puncture and James broke a spoke but Bob had no mechanical issues. My puncture was at Tain on the east coast of Scotland, north of Inverness. Tain was the largest village in the area and we planned to stay there overnight so while I mended my puncture, Bob and James scoured the village for accommodation with no success. It was now about 9pm and we decided to set off and head for the next village but then the good Samaritan, who I had been talking to earlier in the evening, came back and offered us beds for the night!
The army base (including The Puff Inn) on St Kilda -
After that trip, we went on many trips, many to his beloved Peak District and Scotland. We visited St Kilda in August 1987 with a group of mountaineers, who wanted help to cover the cost of hiring a boat. We lived in tents and had to take all our food for the week. The boat trip took 24 hours and on the way most of us were sea-sick. We arrived in glorious sunshine with the sea calm but still with a heavy swell, it was surreal still being sick as we passed the outlying stacks with thousands of nesting gannets. The first day, we enjoyed amazing weather and decided to leave some of the island for the remaining days, which was a big mistake, since for the rest of the week, there were a series of storms and we did not venture further than Village Bay, home of the St Kildans before they were evacuated. We had not expected a pub, the Puff Inn, on the island but due to the presence of the army there was one. It was most welcome since it enabled us to eke out our food supplies with a beer and pie for £1. The only problem was that Bob was refused entry because he was wearing his CND badge so reluctantly had to remove it.
We often went away at Easter and undoubtedly the most memorable trip, which we talked about for years afterwards, was to the Ben Nevis area in 1988. That winter had seen a good snow fall and the hills were at their best enhanced by amazing weather, every day there was not a cloud to be seen, little wind and warm. You may remember the photo on his wall of Bob walking up a steep snow covered slope with a sea loch in the background that was from this trip. On all our Easter trips, we went up together but always returned alone, not because we had an altercation but because Bob left to attend the spring conference of the Green Party.
The Easter trip in 1991 was to cycle the Bealach na Ba, a winding single track road across the Applecross peninsula in the Scottish Highlands. It is one of the great cycling challenges that this country has to offer starting at sea level and rising to 2,050 feet in around five miles. We were apprehensive whether we would reach the top without resorting to walking but in the end it was easier than both of us imagined, however, that did not stop us celebrating with a bottle of London Pride at the top.
These Scottish trips led to us both developing a taste for single malt whisky. We would buy different malts and have tasting sessions when there was something to celebrate. We both enjoyed the peaty whiskies from Islay with Laphroig being a particular favourite.
There were a few overseas trips. A trip to the Picos de Europas in Spain in May 1992 was the only one we took our bicycles. There was a walking trip to the Stubai Alps in Austria in August 1995. We walked from hut to hut enjoying amazing scenery. Towards the end, there was an unseasonal snow fall and we could hear loud cracks that were avalanches setting off; that evening we were told in no uncertain terms that we must descend for our own safety. The next was to Mont Blanc in ????. We were a small party of seven, including several from my workplace, the Institute of Cancer Research. There were two huts on our route where we spent the night that were extremely crowded. You could not book in advance and they could hardly turn you away; four of us had to sleep on a double-bed! Sleep was not really the word since with the altitude none of us managed much. Bob and most of the others suffered badly from the altitude. Only Mike Ormerod, who was the oldest in our party, and I, managed to reach the top with the final stretch being along an arête where we roped up with another couple of Brits and if anyone fell then the person behind had to jump down the other side. Fortunately, it did not come to that but passing people going the other way was scary. The most memorable day on the trip was not on Mont Blanc but walking up the Mer de Glace, the largest glacier in France, with clear blue streams running through it sometimes exposed at other times beneath the ice. We had to walk much further than intended when trying to find somewhere to cross one of the streams. It was late in the day when we approached the hut we had planned to spend the night only to find boulders were hurtling down the mountainside. We had to abort and walk several miles to the next nearest hut. As we entered, we heard the radio calling all the huts in the area asking whether two Brits had arrived.
Bob made several other overseas trips, including to Norway with Jo Moran and organised trips to the Himalayas and mountain biking in the Atlas mountains in Morocco.
As well as cycling/walking trips, there were pub trips. In 1996, the Good Beer Guide published the first inventory of heritage pubs, that we called the 196 (the number of pubs listed). There were several trips to tick off pubs on the list. In December 2007, we arrived in Dundee at 5am on a very cold morning when everything was closed and joined the homeless for the rest of the night. By the evening, we were in Edinburgh having ticked off the three listed pubs in Dundee before visiting more heritage pubs. Bob visited more of the 196 than me and the only country in the United Kingdom where he visited them all was Northern Ireland, I have yet to go there. We both had favourites but both liked the unspoilt rural pubs: two that spring to mind were The Sun, near Ludlow and the Red Lion, near Cirencester. Neither pub had bars with the beer served direct from the barrel. The former was run by an elderly lady and the latter by an elderly gentleman, on their passing, the former was saved by the locals, a model for the Hope but the latter closed; I suspect that a lot more will close as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Bob was always an avid real beer drinker, member of CAMRA but also had an interest in the architecture of building. The 196 enabled him to combine both interests and culminated in writing regional Pub Walks for CAMRA. The first was London in 2006, followed by Peak District (2008), Edinburgh (2010), South East (2012), Lake District and Yorkshire. They entailed a lot of research and drinking but were very popular with several being revised; the London walk is now on the third edition.
Drinking was a feature of life in Carshalton with the ‘go-to’ pub changing over the years. Bob’s drinking haunt when I first met him was with Dennis at The Sun. On Dennis’s retirement, there was Kevin and Bridget in The Railway, back to The Sun when it was run by three Irish brothers, the Windsor Castle run by John Stott and further afield to the Beer Circus in Croydon (not necessarily in this order) and finally the Hope. All the pubs were chosen for their good beer and conviviality. They were not chosen for their smoke-free atmosphere; the smoke at the Beer Circus was particularly bad, looking back now, I do not know how we put up with it. Lock-ins were a feature at both The Railway and Sun; I remember Bridget announcing at mid-night either buy another drink or go home!
Another of Bob’s beer drinking exploits was the annual beer tour, which was open to any friend or friend of friend. It consisted of a few nights away with drinking sessions interspersed with walks. I only went on a few but Ant and Rob Scales were the stalwarts and I think they clocked up over twenty tours, including some on the continent.