The Firkin Ale Trail
In the 1990s, the Firkin chain ran an official passport challenge — the Firkin Ale Trail. Apply by post, get a passport mailed back, collect a stamp at each of the 12 original London pubs, earn a free Firkin T-shirt. The leaflet that listed them, plotted on a modern map, traced — deliberately — the outline of a dog's head. The pun was Dogbolter. This is the digital revival of that 1990s crawl: seven of the twelve are still pubs under other names; five are ghost stops, one demolished, four converted.
Perimeter traced from Bruce's 1990 leaflet. The dog faces west: the snout is the western projection of three pubs — Frog (12, top), Frigate (11, nose tip) and Ferret (10, lower jaw). Back of the neck extends east at Phantom (5, Balaam Street E13); the neck drops south to Fox (6, Lewisham) where it meets the body. The Pheasant (9) sits inside the silhouette as the droop of a downward-pointing ear flap — a triangle Bruce drew on the leaflet connecting Flounder (2), Flock (3) and Pheasant (9). The eye is separate: a coloured-in "62" atlas page-number drawn near The Pheasant on the page.
The ear flap and the eye
Eleven pubs form the perimeter of a west-facing dog. The Pheasant (Stop 9, now The Old Ivy House on Goswell Road) sits inside the silhouette as the droop of the dog's ear flap — Bruce drew a triangle on the 1990 leaflet connecting Flounder (Stop 2), Flock (Stop 3) and Pheasant into a downward V. The eye is something else: Bruce drew it by colouring in the "6" of the printed "62" atlas page-number, with the "0" as the eye socket. Pure pub-leaflet wit, not a pub. Walk all 12 to complete the trail.
Walk it in the app
Open PINtPOINT, tap the radar, then:
Create-a-Crawl → 🏆 Hall of Fame → The Firkin Ale Trail → tap "Start this crawl".
The app will walk you stop-to-stop with directions, mark off stops as you reach them, and show live tap-list info for the seven survivors so you know what's pouring before you walk in.
The story behind the route
Following the Firkin trail(s)… →Or walk Ale Trail II — the modern Firkin Brewery revival across 8 south London bars →
Part of the Firkin hub on PINtPOINT — article, three Ale Trails and ~40 pubs in one place.