Rail Ale Ramble

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Two double-decker buses with special destination blinds carried passengers to the Knights Templar pub in central London as part of a celebration of 30 years of Rail Ale Rambles in 1977

A ticket for the first Rail Ale Ramble on 1st October, 1977

Sometimes now used as a generic expression in the United Kingdom for a day tour of pubs and/or breweries by train, in search of "real ale" (cask-conditioned beer), the marketing name "Rail Ale Ramble" was originally conceived by Gerald Daniels, who runs an English tour company, Crookham Travel. In 1977 he ran the first "RAR", a chartered train with 598 passengers from London to Bath, Somerset and Oxford. At that time traditional cask-conditioned beer was rare in London, but the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) was beginning to have more impact in regional centres where there was a greater range of traditional breweries still supplying this "living" beer. Thirty years later Crookham Travel still run Rail Ale Rambles and longer trips to explore surviving regional and local breweries and the great number of microbreweries throughout Britain and beyond. Meanwhile, the term Rail Ale has been adopted by organisations such as the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership, who promote rural train routes in the English West Country as Rail Ale Trails.