KEY POINTS:
Pub crawls can be hard work, particularly for a lightweight drinker like me. Take London's infamous Circle Line pub crawl, for example, which entails a pint or half-pint - depending on rules or peer pressure - at each of the 27 stops of the Circle Line that surrounds
the inner city. It has defeated more than a few of the backpacking Kiwis who venture out each Waitangi Day.
A pub crawl across the North York Moors, however, is an altogether more pleasant experience.
It's still hard work, but not because of the 31 pubs along the way. In this instance, the hardest part is the crawl - 143km of hiking in a magnificent part of Yorkshire, over six days.
But this is still tramping British style. It is remote, by their standards, but there aren't towering mountains to walk over or around, and instead of DoC huts or campsites your accommodation is a welcoming old English pub.
Whether it be at lunchtime or as the afternoon light fades, the village pub is something of a beacon to a hill walker.
The landlord usually gives a greeting as warm as the fire burning away in the corner, the cook takes care of your grumbling stomach, and the smooth ales on tap can make the tales at the end of a day's walking even more profound. And with the pubs named things such as Black Sheep, Theatston, Copper Dragon and Timothy Taylor, you can bet they've been the subject of some legendary tales themselves.
The ales can be something of an acquired taste, but not trying them is like going to France and refusing to at least try snails.
The village pub has long been a part of the English heritage, stretching back to Roman times when establishments serving refreshments popped up as meeting houses. They are as quintessentially British as Yorkshire pudding, black cabs and Page 3 girls.
"The pub is the hub," says Mark Reid, who chucked in his brewery job of seven years to better combine his two loves - real ale and walking the hills - in the form of his company The Inn Way.
Through The Inn Way Reid has published 15 different guide books on walking in England, specialising in these six to seven-day pub-to-pub circuits.
Each book guides walkers over Reid's suggested route - usually a circular path that starts and ends at the same pub. In the case of the North York Moors walk, that spot is Helmsley, a picturesque market town in the southwest corner of the North York Moors National Park.
From there the walk stops overnight in pubs at Hutton-le-Hole, Levisham, Egton Bridge, Rosedale Abbey and Hawnby. But that's just five - there are 31 pubs to cover so there are also pub stops for lunch and at regular intervals each day.
Between ales, the landscapes you walk through are beautiful. It can get desolate and eerie up on the heather-clad moors as an enveloping mist rolls in and the wind whips up. With nowt to do but walk towards your next drink and admire your surroundings, dotted with relics from the past, it's easy for the imagination to wander to centuries gone by.
Most of the trails follow the old Roman roads, dating from as early as the 1st century, and well-trodden ruts, etched by horses and carts, can still be seen.
You also come across the distinctive white mounds of Bronze Age and Iron Age burial grounds.
But just as you find yourself really feeling the isolation and lack of civilisation on the moors, hey presto, there's another pub; another ale.
Over a full glass, Reid explains his love of the walks and the North York Moors. "The pubs are as much a part of the landscape as the moors," he says. "They are a fundamental part of the countryside and are often the heart of a village." But sadly for Reid and his fellow rural ale-lovers, small towns are getting ever smaller, with as many as six pubs closing in Britain every week.
Given there are about 60,000 pubs in Britain, there's still a way to go before the place runs dry, but the closures are usually in those small rural areas which can ill-afford to lose their main attraction.
When you come from young New Zealand it's a sobering thought that you are sipping your beer where farmers have gathered for generations.There are now even organisations set up to save traditional pubs.
And once you've walked the moors and stayed in a few of these pubs you appreciate just why they are worth saving.
Walking into an old pub is like walking into a museum - with ale. The Hawnby inn, where we tucked in to a great pub meal, was more than 200 years old - older than some of the stone walls keeping the neighbouring sheep under control.
When you come from young New Zealand it's a sobering thought that you are sipping your beer where farmers have gathered for generations. The Hawnby, where you spend your final night of the North Moors Inn Way walk, is as hospitable as grandma's living room. It's a short walk down off the moors and has great views down the lush valley.
Hawnby itself is a typically quaint village, home to about 50 people, including pub landlords Dave and Kathryn Young, a Canadian couple who moved to the area, because of its tranquillity, nine years ago. They are there to greet you at the end of the day and will send you packing on your next leg, the next morning.
Fortunately for them, the type of pub crawls their patrons like doesn't usually come to a messy end - if you don't count the mud on the walking boots.
* Michael Brown flew to Britain courtesy of Flight Centre.
