Paul Heaton Cycling Pub Music Tour

Half way through the tour

Paul Heaton set off to do around 1000 miles cycling around the UK, with total of 16 gigs in pubs to help support them and encourage new customers to visit and existing ones to visit more often, putting some of the old live music life back into them.

There was a feature on BBC TV today where he explained that he'd been a lifelong cyclist and also loved the British pub, while unfortunately seeing them shutting down at the rate of at least 50 a week, as reported last year.

He is already half way through the venture, but for those of you cyclists who fancy a ride to any of the pubs left on the tour, we've put a list below.

Of course they don't have to be local, as we know some of you are quite capable of doing 20 miles in just over an hour !

Remaining Gigs

Here's the list. You can get tickets from his website link at the bottom of this page, or of course from the pub.

15 May The Bulls Head St. Neots, Cambs
16 May The White Hart - Ufford, Lincs
17 May The Unicorn - Gunthorpe, Notts
18 May The Rockingham Arms - Rotherham, Yorks
20 May The White Horse - Hutton Cranswick, Yorks
21 May The Original Oak - Headingley, Yorks
22 May The Royal Hotel - Great Harwood, Lancs
23 May The Southern - Chorlton, Gtr Manchester

How many musical cyclists are there ?

One of the presenters asked Paul whether he thought other well known musicians might follow his lead, or whether they are all too 'big' to do that sort of thing.

Well, obviously Madonna isn't going to get on a bike around the UK, despite being a fitness fanatic and presumably we won't be seeing any of the X factor winners either.

But, we know that some of the 'older' musicians already do occasional charity gigs, quietly, often in their local area and a lucky group of music lovers get a real treat.

Mature cyclists will support mature bands

Now how can we put this delicately ? Oh never mind, lets just state the facts. There are a huge number of cyclists over say 40 years old and that ties up exactly with the age of many, many famous bands and musicians who are now not so well known, or at least not regularly in the public eye.

At the risk of offending a few people, these are PROPER musicians as well.

So would we get excited at the prospect of seeing a few of them on regular pub gigs - you bet. Would any of the girls mob them for autographs ?
Well ask Paul Heaton.

If you want to read more, visit his MySpace page here: Paul Heaton at MySpace

Get your tickets at the pub or here: Paul Heaton's website