Ninety Days...

Hi folks, it's Ben here – the founder of Pub2Pub Adventures.

You’ll no doubt have noticed that it’s December, and so is a time when it’s natural to look back and reflect on the year which has just passed.  For us here at Pub2Pub, it’s been our biggest year ever, with a solid eight of our European tours having taken place, along with Pubfall, our end-of-year Scottish get-together, which we ran last month.

Now, if you’ve been following Pub2Pub for a while, this likely won’t be a surprise to you.  In fact, you’ll no doubt have noticed that we’ve been gradually getting bigger with every passing year since our post-Covid relaunch in 2022 – a year in which we ran a grand total of three trips.  So, there’s been quite some progress since then, with Pub2Pub now being something like three times bigger than it was in those quieter times of just a three years ago.

Naturally, we’re not planning to rest on our laurels either, with 2026 shaping up to be yet another step change in the size of Pub2Pub.  In fact, for the first time, the number of trips we’ll be running is going to break into double figures.  And we couldn’t have done this without your support, so we’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has been part of the Pub2Pub story up to now – it’s greatly appreciated, so cheers, folks!

You won't be surprised to hear that this growth has dramatically changed life at Pub2Pub Adventures.  The background work required to make the tours happen has grown into something approaching a full-time desk job – planning trips, writing itineraries, managing bookings, negotiating with hotels and the general running the business requires plenty of hours each day, whether we’re on the road or not.

And we’re on the road a lot.

In the course of this year’s eight trips, we’ve spent 88 days on the roads of Europe, and that total is set to pass 100 in 2026 – a far cry from the 25 days we spent on the other side of the channel back in 2022.

And this presents us with a conundrum.

The regulations regarding spending time in Europe’s Schengen area are clear – in every 180-day period, us Brits can spend a maximum of 90 days in Europe.  So, clearly this upper limit is going to become a restriction in the coming years, if Pub2Pub continues on the same upward trajectory.

Now, I don’t want to disappoint people by restricting the number of trips we run, and so as I start to butt up against this time restriction, I find myself in need of some help running the tours.

Luckily, I know just the people.  And many of you will already know them, too - I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome Richard and Amanda Sails to the Pub2Pub team. 

However, they’ll need no introduction to many Pub2Pub regulars, as they’ve been enthusiastic supporters of - and participants in - what we do ever since the very first Pub2Pub Adventures event – the inaugural Eagle Rally, way back in 2018. I’ve personally known Richard and Amanda for longer than that, however.  Back in 2017, when I was getting things in place for the Pub2Pub Expedition – my 27,000-mile drive across the world in a TVR Chimaera, which provided the inspiration for the current business – Richard was chairman of the TVR Car Club.  And clearly, he knew a good opportunity for both the brand and the club when he saw it, and so got involved in helping to make the expedition a reality, and thus setting the ball rolling for one of the brands biggest-ever good-news stories (On it’s successful completion, the Pub2Pub Expedition was the second biggest story on the BBC News website, generated over 100 news articles worldwide, and showed TVR in the most positive light possible).  In short, Richard and Amanda have been part of the Pub2Pub story for over eight years now – we’re just making things a bit more official for 2026.

While I’ll still be leading the bulk of the 2026 tours, to help me not fall foul of the 90-day rule, Richard and Amanda will be leading some of our events next year too – and there can’t be many people out there who are better suited to the role.  For starters, Richard is just as capable when it comes to on-the-road repairs as I am, and his long-term ownership – and maintenance – of his TVR Griffith means Pub2Pub’s unrivalled tradition of on-the-road support will be maintained.  So, whether you have myself, or Richard and Amanda, running a trip, you can expect it to be business as usual as far as the customer experience is concerned.

So, there we go – our biggest piece of news for a while, and a development which makes it viable for us to grow further, and in doing so provide ever more interesting, exciting and far-flung tours for you to enjoy.  So, it's a win-win for all involved, really.

And if this news has left you curious about what trips we’ll be running in 2026, you can see most of them on the drives page of the website, here.  In addition to this list, there are three more tours which we’re provisionally looking to add to the calendar next year, if there’s enough interest.  These are as follows:

• The Pub2Pub Alpine Traverse – a trip through the Alps from Grenoble to the Grossglockner, winding our way up every high pass we find, and happening at the same time as the Beer Italia (27^th June to 06^th July) - details here

• The Spring Chateau Break – another of our famous chateau retreats, this one taking place in the Champagne/Ardennes region between the 02^nd and 09^th May

• And finally, Sandstorm – a drive down to Morocco, to cruise the Sahara Desert, taking

  place on the same dates as the Trafalgar Tour (09^th to 26^th October)

We’ll be releasing more info on these potential trips in the run up to Christmas, and will be running them if the interest is there.

And with that, it’s just left for us all to wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and we look forward to seeing you on the road in ’26…

Ben