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I'll be in North London next weekend so I'm hoping to hit a few decent real ale pubs. The CAMRA sites are useful but can sometimes be a bit out of date.

Last time I went to London was about 18 months ago, and I loved it. As Séan said, I had my bit of research done, so knew of one or two specific pubs I wanted to target - eg the Victoria near Paddington Station. A short stroll from thee hotel.
After that there was a little bit of trial and error, but you can usually tell by the look of a place.

There are a few good web guides too. I used <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="www.fancyapint.com">www.fancyapint.com , amongst others.

yeah a little research can be really useful, but a few years back i went on a day trip to london to the victoria and albert museum and just had a quick look in the time out guide in stanstead airport once i arrived, wrote down the names of a couple of pubs near the museum and found a cracker down a residential street that had about 6 different ales on tap, had a few pints there then off to the airport afterwards. i've found the local CAMRA secretaries very helpful on any trips i've made to the UK, if you drop them a line before you head over they'll usually get back pretty sharpish, they've helped me out in birmingham, cardiff and nottingham and haven't steered me wrong yet.

Yep. The CAMRA chaps are helpful in that way. Mind you, we'd do the same for anyone travelling to Ireland. We beer geeks have to stick together.

Séan

I emailed north london Camra( email address is on the web page), they will ask you for a specific post code and get back to you once you tell them. Their web site has pubs listed but some only have 1 ale. The guy pointed me to 4 or 5 places in kentish town and camden but I didnt get there as my friend lives near Highgate and there were 5-6 palces each with 5-6 ales all within 2 mon walk. Places like the Wrestlers ( rated as best pub in n london? by some poll). The flask cant remember the names of the others but they were all old style no loud music etc just the noise of the chat and banter. I woul recommend a little crawl if you are in that area. I also got in touch with cask-marque I think they are a pub certification crowd for real ale. their web site has a list of certified pubs.

that fancy a pint has the places....good site..