Face Of Cheam

Went out "east" before the West Ham Saints game.  The Prospect Of Whitby pub above was a place for hanging in the 17th Century and still shows its gallows.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospect_of_Whitby

A nice sceneric walk the north side of the Thames took me to the next pub.

The Grapes near Limehouse is part owned by Sire Ian MacKellen who regularly participates in the Sunday pub Quiz here and happily poses for selfies if you search social media.   Oddly for a late lunchtime there were some very glamorous people in here.
Saints lost alas, but ended up in All Bar One and The Slug in Canary Wharf afterwards where the glamour continued.  I then headed West to Nells Blues Bar & Kitchen for a great gig by Romeo's Daughter.

The first pub in Longford accessed by the U3 and 423 was the Kings Arms.  I was the only customer and the barman or manager maybe, was watching the Pakistan Premier League T20 on a big screen.
Longford is the nearest place to Heathrow and on a better day you would have a clear view of planes taking off.

The other pub in this place, is The White Horse.  A very quaint place with a low ceiling, this was very charming with a rip roaring fire too.  In the summer would be a nice place to sit outside and watch the skies.
With the bus journeys reversed an U3 takes you to Harmondsworth.  The Five Bells and The Crown were a bit chavvy for me, but The Crown was showing Tipping Point and would be good for watching sports.
You have to walk from here to Sipson past a garden centre,  It is a good 15 minutes along a main road, but the Plough was a very nice place that looks like is specializes in Indian food too.
Next door to this was a large Holiday Inn.  This advertised a Terminal 6 bar, whcih was closed, but I was able to use the lobby bar, which had a few people around drinking.  Not too bad a price either £5.40 for a Moretti.

It turned out I was actually slightly north of Sipson so you walk over the M4 to get to the main village.
The King William was showing Sports building up to the detested Friday night premier league game.  This was the cheapest place as you would expect from a Greene King venue.
The final stop was the Three Magpies which is very near the tunnel to Heathrow itself and on a roundabout.  The planes were very loud here but as it was dark and cloudy, hardly visible.  Another bus took me back to Hatton Cross to change back onto the X26 back home.  An enjoyable day out and could easily be extended into a larger crawl if I fancied more hotel bars. (and started earlier)

Anyway from West Brompton getting there meant a walk through Brompton Cemetry.  Here you can see the final resting place of the ex Who manager Kit Lambert.  The gravestone was tidied up a couple of years ago by some Who fans, but it is a shame they only concentrated on Kit instead of the whole family including the composer Constance Lambert.
The Iconic Gallery was very welcoming and full of very expensive photos.  One classic image of Elton John at Dodger Stadium was priced at £15000.00 + VAT but without frame.  Reflections made it difficuly to take photos of photos and I am not sure that is even the done thing, but the below of Peter Sellers with Britt Eklund was nine grand.
A very nice little gallery it was too with other pictures including Katherine Hepburn and Bowie.  The Box Gallery was next down the road and really just a small room.  There was a nice collage of Roger Moore with the girl who was in the opening scene of Live & Let Die,  (magnet on zip) and a few posters.  Had a nice chat with the staff member too, who likes the Dalton films.  As that only took up ten minutes there was some time for pubs.

First stop the Angelsea Arms.  A couple of weird pictures here too and a pint of Estrella.

The Sporting Page was next where i was served by a friendly girl from Sweden. Another Estrella here too and as the name suggest it concentrates on TV Sport.
The Chelsea Ram had a model Ram by the bar and a bookshelf of old books which was interesting.
Finally I ventured to Lots Road.  In the nineties i had two separate fantastic nights here when it was called The Ferret and Firkin in the Balloon Up The Creek.  This was before the Imperial Wharf development was built on the creek, and had a car impounding lot opposite.  That surprisingly is still there but much smaller.  I did once return in the late 2000s when it was Lots Road Dining Rooms and that was hideously depressing.  Fortunately it has returned to more pub like in status with a good selection of beer and soem board games.  I doubt they have the guitar bands like the Firkins regularly used to have.  In nostalgic mood I found this very interesting page https://www.goodbeergoodpubs.co.uk/articles/what-happened-to-the-firkin-pubs/
and subsequently ascertained that out of the 55 London based pubs only 35 still exist in pub form.  One, the Fox & Firkin in Lewisham has even kept the Firkin name. At the time, we probably didn't appreciate the chain, but a range of pubs with cover band nights, reasonably priced beer is certainly missed.