A pensioner who supped his first pint more than six decades ago has visited 900 JD Wetherspoon pubs across the UK.  

John ‘Chester’ Hunt, 83, said that his hobby gets him ‘out of the house’ and into welcoming settings where he drinks pints of real ale.

John, from Southampton, has been as far north as Wick in Scotland in his tour of the pub chain’s venues, which he began in 2014. 

The pub-hopper, who paid 10p for his first pint as a teenager, uses public transport and printed listings to find new establishments on journeys that have also taken him to Kent, London, Yorkshire and Wales.

‘I’ve done dead-on 900 now,’ he said.

‘I like Wetherspoons pubs because they have nice people in them and the beer and food are very good. I drink real ale, Abbots is my favourite. 

‘I also like to get out of the house because I live on my own, I don’t want to sit indoors all day.’ 

The great-grandfather lists the Opera House in Tunbridge Wells and The Palladium in Llandudno as his favourites.

His local is The Bright Water Inn, nicknamed The Brighty, a few miles down the road in Shirley and he also enjoys curries, steaks and scampi and chips.   

The retired railway cleaner once met Wetherspoon chairman Tim Martin at another local, The Standing Order, where he recalled that they both drank Greene King tipple Abbot Ale.  

John looked full of cheer as he raised a glass and chatted to staff at the city centre venue yesterday.

He has been limited in his travels over the past two years due to Covid and rail strikes. But he plans to continue his epic pub-crawl as Wetherspoon opens up new premises. 

Asked what made trips of up to 700 miles worthwhile, John replied: ‘When I sit down and enjoy a nice pint of Abbott, it’s lovely.’

The widower, who has six surviving children, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren, was just 15 when he visited his first pub.  

‘It was 10p a pint back then,’ he said. ‘Ten old pennies. 

‘That was when it was 240 pennies to the pound.

‘The cost of living has made things more expensive but it doesn’t affect Wetherspoons, that’s why I go to the pubs.’ 

John got his nickname because of his resemblance to Chester Goode, a marshall’s assistant played by Dennis Weaver in the American radio and TV drama series Gunsmoke.  

The Western began in 1955, the year he made his first pub visit to The Coronation Arms in Hamble, Hampshire.

The loyal customer may now need to navigate the digital age after exhausting his printed list of Wetherspoon’s UK venues. The programme of new pubs is due to include The Scribbling Mill in Leeds and The London and North Western in Birmingham. 

There were 861 Wetherspoon pubs in the UK as of 2021, according to the Stastista information service, with John’s list reflecting licensed premises which have since closed or changed hands.

‘Because of Covid and the rail strikes I haven’t been getting out as much,’ he said. ‘But there are a lot of new pubs coming out. They are not in the directories I have been using to mark them off.  

‘If they’re not printing any new directories I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I want to keep on visiting the new ones he is opening.’ 

John won over staff at The Railway in Rainham, Kent, when he dropped in earlier this year.   

Shift manager Gemma Fields told Wetherspoon News: ‘I think he’s amazing.

‘He has been all over the country by public transport to visit everywhere from Wick in Scotland to Llandudno in Wales – everywhere – he had some lovely stories to tell.’ 

John followed up the visit by dropping into The Ledger Building in the London Docklands the following day.

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