Viral Welsh Wetherspoons tour sells out for second time

A coach company in Wales has gone viral after launching a 13-hour tour to six Wetherspoons pubs, with tickets selling out in days as hundreds rushed to join the ultimate pub crawl.

Lloyds Coaches announced the ‘Spoons Pilgrimage’ at the start of May and were “absolutely blown away” after the Facebook post was viewed more than 267,000 times.

The 250-mile round trip promised “a legendary day out without the ‘who’s driving?’ debate”, setting off from Dolgellau at 9.15am on Saturday 27 June and hitting six Wetherspoons across north Wales.

The £20 ticket includes pick-up from nine locations before the coach calls at The Wilfred Owen in Oswestry, The Castle Hotel in Ruthin, The Picture House in Colwyn Bay, The Palladium in Llandudno (often touted as Wales’ best Spoons), Tafarn y Porth in Caernarfon and The Pen Cob in Pwllheli.

With the coach scheduled to make it to the first stop by midday, passengers will then have 45 minutes at each location to eat, drink and make merry before concluding at 7.30pm in Pwllheli and being ferried home.

However, “Only passengers picked up at stops between Dolgellau and Cemmaes Road will be taken home at the end of the tour,” according to the coach company, meaning working out who’s driving might be necessary after all.

Following the Spoons safari’s viral success, which included articles in Wales Online and The Mirror, as well as a shoutout on Capital Radio, the tour quickly sold out and Lloyds Coaches began gauging interest for a second coach to follow an hour behind the first.

With so much interest across social media and elsewhere online, it took just two days for the second coach to sell out on 14 May.

Lloyds Coaches wrote: “JUST WOW! We are absolutely speechless! A massive Diolch to the 110 of you who have already booked onto the Wetherspoons Tour! The response has been incredible.”

It doesn’t seem there are any plans to add a third coach, though the Liverpool Echo speculated that the pilgrimage may become a recurring fixture in the company’s tour calendar.

Lloyds Coaches offers various day trips including a Barry Island Gavin & Stacey Tour, and a ride across the border to the Black Country Living Museum and Dudley Zoo.

The family-owned business employs over 100 people and operates local bus services on behalf of Ceredigion, Gwynedd, Powys and Denbighshire Councils, as well as running some T2 and T3 services for the Welsh Government.

For more information about the Lloyds Coaches day trips, visit their site here.