The Scales brothers share their thoughts about Bob

Rob Scales writes

I met Bob for the first time in 1979 at Wallington Boys' Grammar School (as it was then) where he taught geography and I taught English. The school's priorities were academic, but it tried hard to engage the boys' extra-curricular interests and skills. Bob looked after the chess team (he had represented  Southampton University at chess), and helped the school develop hockey, with surprising success, given how little he'd played himself.

He was never happier than when leading groups of boys to walk in places that he loved. (Not that the results were always instantaneous; he recalled one youth, after a brisk turn across the Pennines, standing in front of a mirror and saying 'Oh shit; I'm still fat.')

Bob was too energetic to be fat. In due course he became a democratic Head of Department. Various of his underlings  became personal friends. He played his part in the life of the Common Room, knocking in goals for the Staff football team. Somehow while teaching a full timetable, he found time to stand as Green Party candidate in, I think, both local and national elections.

But he was always, by his own admission, a man somewhat apart. He  could not at once live a teacher's life and be all the different things he wanted to be, and he sought a way out. In about 1987, I led him, and various other Wallington staff on a beer trip to the West Midlands. In years that followed, he led loads of such trips; to Manchester, Liverpool, Yorkshire, Norwich, Kent, Sussex, the Potteries, Glasgow, Edinburgh, the North-East, Bristol, Hampshire, Amsterdam, Lille, Antwerp and Ghent, all wonderfully researched, and where possible, with beautiful walks. These attracted the interest of CAMRA, and he persuaded them to commission a series of books of beer walks, all very clear, concise and beautifully illustrated with photos he took himself. The choice of pubs and routes was always, as he would have put it, 'pukka'. My twin and I helped him on some of his research trips. These books were updated as beer geography is constantly changing.

While CAMRA warmly encouraged this project, he was paid little to research, it being hoped he might make some money from book sales. To keep himself solvent he founded AleTrails, a firm which organised beer walks, personally led. This firm attracted steady interest from various parts of Europe, and particularly the United States. The out-of-town trips he led himself, but he often subcontracted the trips in London to my twin or myself. Though they were based as ever on his impeccable research, I have vivid recollections of such trips. We all had so much fun I had to pinch myself so that I could remember I was doing it for a job and being paid for it. And Bob made it possible. It was very sad when it became one more spinning plate than he could keep in the air.

By this time, though, he was writing the definitive historical and geographical guide to the Wandle, with the naturalist Dr Derek Coleman. To keep solvent he was doing short-term teaching contracts at schools like UCS, Fettes and Cheltenham College. He was also helping his father through the latter's long terminal decline.

He was political to the end, giving active support to Extinction Rebellion. We had little in common in politics, and had many lively differences on the subject, but the purpose of his politics was never personal, always the betterment - as he saw it - of the world. If one asked him to justify his position on an issue, local or general, he would always do this on the basis of convincing current research, as long as the issue was geographical. He never took the step of barring from discussion or friendship those who were off his message; he was too much of a scholar for that. And he had the tact to know when to change the subject to the many things we had in common.

The local was paramount to Bob, sometimes almost claustrophobically so. He chose to centre his life, while I knew him, on the streets of the St Helier estate, where I think he was born. Discussing transport strikes, he sometimes seemed not to see why it was important for people to be able to move from one place to another. For him, bike was always an option. At the heart of his locality was his local, the Hope in Carshalton, and if you drank with him there, you had to share him with everyone else in the pub, always a lot, who had business with him. He volunteered whenever asked, however menial the job.

Though he self-consciously foreswore any trappings of distinction, yet distinguished was what he was. You could not mention the smallest settlement in England or Scotland but he was familiar with it, and knew what its pub was like.

He was good company and a loyal friend. He will be enormously missed.

Rob Scales

Anthony adds

It is worth recording that he invented the “Bob Steel Rip-off Measure”. This was a calibrated thing like a ruler made either out of wood or folded paper. If you were not served a full pint, you could place the measure against the glass and quickly work out, depending on the price of the pint, the exact value of the beer you were being deprived of. I have seen him use it and shame bar staff in pubs many times.

My brother and I were thinking of anecdotes about Bob, but in spite of his campaigning lifestyle he was in many circumstances quiet and polite. I remember the last time I went to Belgium with him we boarded the Eurostar, found ourselves sitting opposite a respectable couple even older than us. Offering to put their bags in the luggage rack, I found the space to be partly taken up by some mystery object. I showed it to Bob. 'What's that?' he asked. 'Looks like a willy-warmer to me,' I said, and asked the couple 'Is this willy warmer part of your luggage?' Bob just looked as if he didn't want to be there.

I also remember an amazing walk through a high part of Derbyshire. Cloud or fog came down and visibility was literally something like 5 yards. It was something you don't often get in this country but Bob was completely oblivious as he was arguing with his mobile phone company about their contract, a call which must have lasted two hours.

I remember researching the real ale pubs of Edinburgh and Glasgow with him. I went to one pub and we were served some ghastly vinegary pint. It was clear that no Scotsman  there had touched a pint of it and it had just gone off in the pipes. When we got out, I said 'You can't put this pub in the Guide!' He said 'If nobody tries the beer there, it'll never get any better.' Whether it ended up in the Guide I don't know, but I know the real ale scene there is better than it was, so more people are at least trying it.

Lastly I remember that to celebrate his 50th birthday I wrote a poem about him and the fact he knew every village in the UK because he had camped, cycled or drunk there. I no longer have it or can remember a line of it, but I know he was very taken with it 

All the best,

Anthony Scales