It wasn’t your average Waitangi Day – no protests, no mud-slinging, no wall-to-wall media coverage, no debates about the flag. It was different. It was a day of joy, of happiness, of good times, of Kiwis in a faraway place getting together over a beer (or five). It was the real spirit of New Zealand coming out in force on the streets of London.
On Saturday we headed out for our first Waitangi Day Pub Crawl. Over the years we’ve seen on TV people having great fun and hearing stories about what an awesome day it is. We’ve also heard stories from many years ago about how messy it has been and how out of control it gets. I even talked to my siblings who have lived in London, and they said they’ve steered clear of it. So naturally, we decided to give it a go!
It’s one of those situations where you hear all of the stories, but you really have to give it a go and judge it for yourself.
We banded together with a group of about 15 Kiwis for the day, and decided on a theme – Shortland Street (just in case you couldn’t guess). Our mates Saz and Jas were extremely organised when it came to this, making sure we all had characters, making sure our scrubs matched our role in the hospital and that we all had the same type of scrubs, printing name tags, etc. It was like we were getting costumes ready for the Sevens back when it was a massive party.
On Saturday we rocked up to Paddington Station for a spot of breakfast at 9:30am – certainly a lot earlier than we’d usually be up - before catching the tube to Notting Hill Gate to start a few pubs in. It was at the tube station we met a friendly cop who asked us if we were part of the pub crawl or the junior doctors protest. It was quite a funny moment considering we were joking about it minutes earlier, not knowing there was an actual protest happening at Westminster just before we were due to be there.
Anyway, we started a few pubs in at Notting Hill Gate. Now when we say pubs, we never actually made it into any pubs. It was more of a sidewalk crawl. With thousands of New Zealanders on the route, there’s logistically no way to get everyone inside a pub so everyone goes to the local off-licence, grabs a few cans of beer or spirits, and every has a friendly drink on the footpath outside the pub.
We trekked all the way from there to High Street Kensington outside the Prince of Wales, down the main road for a quick stop outside the entrance of Kensington Gardens for a bit of a singalong of some Kiwi folk songs (the Shortland Street theme, Suzy Cato’s “Seeya Seeya later”, etc.). We then trekked down Gloucester Rd to the pub outside the tube station where we had a few beers outside the local KFC. Before you ask, it’s not as good as it is back home!
After that, we went towards South Kensington station, stopping outside the Zetland Arms in a little street that was closed off just for us, before heading to the tube station to get to Westminster in time for the haka outside parliament. Unfortunately, we missed it but it looked amazing when we saw the video of so many Kiwis congregating for a mass haka 18,000km away from home.
What made the whole experience really great was to see heaps of people that I hadn’t seen in years. Old classmates from school and university were on the trail, with time for a quick catch up before each of us had to find our respective groups again.
The other great thing was that the police officers charged with keeping order and making sure things didn’t get out of control were all good humoured and looked like they were (mostly) enjoying the day. We introduced a few to the wonder that is the classic Pineapple Lump (they loved it), and we shared jokes and had a good chat with a few others down the trail. On top of that, 99.9% of us were well behaved – something I’m sure they appreciated.
The only downside? The pub crawl really does highlight how few rubbish bins and public toilets there are in London. Probably the less said about that the better.
Overall, it was an awesome day out and surpassed my expectations and all the horror stories I’ve heard from the past. Would we do it again? Potentially… yeah, of course we would!