World record breaker is the best – bar none!

A Clifden barman believes he has broken the Guinness Book of World Records by visiting a whopping 85 pubs in 24 hours – raising over €6,000 for charity along the way.

Abiding by the strict rules set down by the keeper of records, Damien Ryan had to go by foot, public transport or taxi between all the watering holes.

He started off in O’Connor’s in Salthill at 3pm last Friday before visiting all pubs in the seaside resort then heading to bars in University of Galway and surrounding Newcastle before hitting the lively pubs in Woodquay, Bohermore and Foster Street.

It was pit stops in the Dean Hotel, Western Hotel and the Galmont Hotel before a stop-off in the Docks and then onto the pedestrianised spine of the city with his group of ten shaking buckets and capturing his epic voyage on video for the adjudicators.

They had a pit stop for dinner between 8 and 9pm and kept at it until finishing the first leg at 1.10am in the Dáil Bar on Cross Street, which was pub No. 70.

Damien coughed up €170 for a taxi to Clifden and had a few hours sleep before taking up an invitation for a breakfast beverage in his old employer, Ballynahinch Castle, at 10.30am.

There was a great celebration in Tom Kings Bar and Snug in Clifden, pub No. 79 and where the record was unofficially broken. The most pubs visited in 24 hours by an individual was 78, a record set by South African Heinrich de Villiers in February last year in Melbourne, Australia.

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