After visiting 10,000 British pubs, one man needs a Spanish holiday before taking on thousands more

After four years and 10,000 pub visits across Britain, Dale Harvey is exhausted and heading to Fuerteventura for a break. But the Great British Pub Crawl is far from finished, and some of the locals still on his list may close before he gets a chance to walk through their doors.

How a Nottinghamshire hobby became a 10,000-pub mission

Most pub crawls are followed by a quiet morning and a promise never to repeat them ever again. Dale Harvey’s has lasted more than four years. 

On Monday, July 13, the former publican walked into Teuchters in Edinburgh’s west end and ordered a Pilot beer. It was the 10,000th venue logged during the Great British Pub Crawl, a project that began in March 2022 with the much smaller ambition of visiting every pub in Nottinghamshire.

Harvey completed that original county challenge with his partner, Holly Booth, before widening the route across England, Scotland and Wales. The journeys have since attracted more than 300,000 social media followers and millions of views.

Why Fuerteventura is the next stop after Edinburgh

Ten thousand stops have taken their toll. Speaking to the PA news agency after reaching his 10,000th pub in Edinburgh, Harvey admitted: “I’m tired. I’m going away on holiday to Fuerteventura for a little sit in the sun and relax.”

The Canary Island break will be a pause rather than an ending. Harvey said he intends to return to the road as soon as the holiday is over and remains fully committed to continuing the challenge. His determination has also become a family joke. Harvey said being told by his wife that he would never finish made him even more resolved to carry on.

The pubs closing before Dale Harvey can reach them

The difficult part is not simply the size of the list. Some pubs are disappearing while he works through it. Harvey uses an estimate of about 35,000 venues, based on his own Google research rather than a formal national total. By comparison, the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) reported 44,656 pubs across England, Scotland and Wales at the end of 2025.

The BBPA said 161 pubs closed during the first three months of 2026, almost two every day. It estimated that those closures cost more than 2,400 jobs, with the quarterly total 26 per cent higher than during the same period in 2025.

Those figures are already visible along Harvey’s route. He has acknowledged that some pubs will close before he reaches them, turning what began as a hobby into a moving record of places that may not survive.

Why the Great British Pub Crawl is about more than drinking

The title may sound like one endless binge, but Harvey describes it as an organised, multi-year campaign. He told Nottingham publication LeftLion that he normally orders halves and may visit around 20 venues during a crawl.

A former pub manager and now a member of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) national executive, Harvey says the project is intended to showcase pubs rather than rank them. CAMRA’s official board listing confirms his position on its National Executive.

In an earlier trade interview, he described pubs as social meeting places and said seeing old buildings closed or boarded up helped inspire the challenge. Some people he met regarded their local as their main source of regular social contact.

For brits living in Spain, this can hit close to home. A trip back to the UK can reveal that the place where relatives used to meet, birthdays were celebrated or neighbours chatted has changed hands or completely vanished. The loss is not only where someone got a drink, but where every-day contact happened.

Where the pub crawl goes after Spain

Harvey has not announced an end date, and the list will continue changing as pubs open and close. For now, the next stage begins after a few quiet days in Fuerteventura.  He marked the Edinburgh milestone with a toast to the next 10,000 and said he would keep travelling while there were pub-industry problems to highlight.