Welcome to the world of the Wimpy Crawl.
It goes a little something like this:
Sometime around 2000 I started to notice that there were still Wimpy bars dotted around the country.
So what, you might say. Well, to me at least, Wimpy bars were among those things that you remembered from your childhood but that didn’t exist any more. There used to be one near the Market Hall in Shrewsbury, for example, but it had long gone.
Anyway, it interested me that they seemed to be found in slightly out-of-the-way places – Crewe, Caerphilly, and suchlike.
And these were “proper” Wimpies – they still had table service, with cutlery and Wimpy crockery, not just cardboard boxes like their upstart American rivals.
And there it would have rested had It not been for a meeting with my old university friend Stu in 2002.
We sat in Liverpool’s glorious Philharmonic pub and over the course of an afternoon somehow came up with the embryonic idea that would change the world – the Wimpy Crawl.
This was the plan – we, along with various other student newspaper accomplices, would arrange a date for the crawl. But no venue.
The night before the crawl I would pick, at random, a Wimpy in the UK.
I would then phone all the Crawlers, tell them just a town and a time, and hang up. The next day there would be Wimpy fun.
In the end I refined it slightly to Wimpy restaurants in the North, as the idea of trekking to Penzance was perhaps too silly.
But what date to choose? Well, that took a trip to Hull Central library and a look at Who’s Who 1955 to find the significant dates of the directors of Lyons at the point when they created the Wimpy concept.
Eventually I found a date in February when Major Montague J Gluckstein was either born or died. Pathetically I can’t remember which, although remarkably I do remember that his telephone number was Ickfield 289.
So, research done, on the evening in question I presented a map of the North of England to one of the barmaids in Hull’s Spring Bank Tavern, who duly looked confused but agreed to close her eyes and stick a pin in the map.
The pin struck Keighley, the nearest Wimpy was Huddersfield, and the chase was on.
I made the calls – “Huddersfield, one o’clock” then hung up – and the next day five of us intrepid explorers met in Cloth Hall Street for our first Wimpy as a group.
We dared to dream, in those long-gone days. We planned regular crawls, even a website (we could have been pioneers!)
But it never quite happened, and all fell quiet. But in mine and Stu’s hearts the fire never died, and last year it was time for another trek – to then northernmost Wimpy in the UK.
A look at Wimpy’s website later and we were off – to Peterhead. Conveniently Andrew, one of the original crawlers, lived in Aberdeen so made the whole expedition considerably less ridiculous.
So we went, despite many ominous warnings about Peterhead, and it was very nice, thank you. As at Huddersfield, we had a picture taken, but this time it didn’t turn out – though thanks to the wonders of technology a ghostly image has been preserved (see above).
Again, there were plans for more treks. But soon came disturbing news – Wimpy had revamped its website and there was a Wimpy in Fraserburgh. Further north.
All was confusion. Or more accurately, all forgotten.
But then, in January, Stu visited me in Hull, and Wimpy came up again. And the pledge was made – we needed to visit to visit every proper Wimpy in Britain by the end of 2007.
We even signed a pledge on a serviette, just to make sure we took it seriously.
Cynics might point out it is now late March and we have so far visited none. But now it is time for Wimpy Crawl Part One – every Wimpy in Scotland!
