Maths team plots world’s longest pub crawl

An international team of mathematicians has spent two years plotting the shortest route between 25,000 UK pubs to create the longest pub crawl ever recorded.

The world’s longest pub crawl represents that largest solution to the so-called ‘travelling salesman problem’ to date

However, rather than wishing to promote a life of unmitigated itinerant boozing, the team undertook the project to tackle the so-called ‘travelling salesman problem’ – a commonly studied mathematical problem which aims to find the shortest possible route between multiple locations before returning to the starting point.

In the case of the longest pub crawl, the team plotted the co-ordinates of 24,727 UK pubs listed on the pub directory Pubs Galore before calculating the shortest possible route between them.

The project was used “as a means for developing and testing general-purpose optimisation methods, which have wide applications in science, industry and commerce”, team leader Professor William Cook told the Guardian.

“We did not set out to improve the lot of a wandering pub aficionado,” he added.

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The route the team plotted, which covers a distance of 45,495km – longer than the circumference of the Earth, has been recreated on an interactive Google Map.

The team’s route began at the The Green Shutters in Portland, Dorset, and ended at its neighbour, The Rodwell in Weymouth, a 6km walk away.

The average distance between each pub on the route is an hour, the Guardian reported, although there are some dry patches: the longest being a 435km, 50-hour trip, from the Sango Sands Oasis in Durness to the Bells But & Ben in Shetland.

The project represents the largest road-distance travelling salesman problem solved to date.

Commenting on the longest pub crawl feat, Tom Stainer, head of communications at Camra, said: “If nothing else, it proves that all those maths teachers telling us that what we were learning would be helpful to us some day were right! What better way to use applied maths.

“I suspect anyone embarking on this huge tour will soon discover the problem with most pub crawls – you’re bound to find a brilliant pub somewhere along the route which distracts you with its great beer and atmosphere and before you know it last orders are being called and you’ve got 24,996 pubs left to visit in 20 minutes.”