A Melbourne man has set a Guinness World Record for visiting the most amount of pubs in a 24-hour period.
Heinrich de Villiers completed the task by hitting 78 bars in Melbourne alongside his younger brother Ruald de Villiers and mate Wessel Burger.
The Melbourne based South African told Broadsheet that their task started at 5 pm on the 10th of February and then men visited multiple establishments until midnight. They then picked up their mission again the next day from 12 pm to 5 pm.
Of course, because it’s the Guinness Book of Records, there were some rules that applied, the men couldn’t simply set foot in the pubs, but had to consume at least 125mls of any drink at the places they visited.
“I first applied … in November 2021, a time when Melbourne was just getting out of lockdown,” de Villiers told the publication. “I applied to attempt the record as a challenge – one that I thought we could actually break.
He added, “We all enjoy hitting the pub/bar on the weekend and since the bar scene was heavily affected during lockdown, I decided to dedicate our attempt to every bar/pub located in Melbourne.”
“It is important to note that, as per the Guinness World Record rules, we only had to consume 125 millilitres of any drink at each place we visited.”
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Speaking about what was the hardest about the challenge, de Villiers told the publication it was the uncertainty of wait time.
“You can plan as much as you want, but you can never know exactly what will happen. You don’t know which places will unexpectedly be busy or closed and where you will have to wait for longer than you thought you would’ve. This is ultimately why we had to stop at 78 … because we simply ran out of time.”
So that they could fit all of the watering holes into the schedule, the men made a game plan before heading out on the road.
We did our research on bars in Melbourne and planned out a route beforehand, along with making sure we had everything we needed in order to get our evidence during the attempt – i.e. GPS tracking,” de Villiers said.
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