There are 45 stops on the Docklands Light Railway Service in London.  On moving to one of these stops (Elverson Road) in February 2012, myself and Tindall decided to have a beer at every station.  Initially the plan was simple; visit each destination, find a pub as nearby as possible, sit in it and drink a beer.  Move on and repeat.  But this was too simple.  This method was lacking something.  It was lacking a purpose.  All we’d be doing is ticking boxes.  No, for this to work, and to be worth our while spending time on, we needed to come up with a system.  Why just visit every station?  Why not grade each destination?   So before long the challenge had evolved:  The aim?  To decide which station on the DLR is the best place to go for a pint.

To do this, we’d need strict criteria to follow.  This way each new station would be treated as equally as the last. 

After much deliberation (it took about 20 minutes to work out) the rules were agreed as follows:

-          For a pub to qualify it must be situated within a 5 minute walk from the DLR station (as demonstrated on the official DLR map)

-          Pubs that overlap into more than 1 radius will be entered into the statistics for each station

-          Each pub is rated out of 5, under 5 categories (FACES), before an average score is taken

-          Each station is then rated out of a further 5 marks based on the number of pubs in its designated area, and the surrounding area it inhabits.

The winner will be the station with the highest overall score out of 10.

The Scoring System (FACES)

Facilities – (includes toilets, general pub cleanliness and conditions, size of beer garden)

Atmosphere – (friendliness of bar-staff and clientele)

Cost – (price of alcohol/food)

Entertainment – (includes TV’s, pub games, quizzes, jukebox, fruit machines etc)

Selection – (variety of food and beer on offer)