Many journeys begin and end at airports so it was perhaps fitting that a trek-of-a-lifetime was completed at Gatwick’s South Terminal this week, as a 60-year-old from Derbyshire completed a highly impressive four-year expedition.

The tour, however, didn’t involve traversing continents or making dangerous border crossings, but it did include 876 destinations, every one of them a Wetherspoons pub.

David Bingham completed the feat of visiting every Wetherspoons establishment in the UK and Ireland, but he did have to go that extra mile to reach his final spot, forced to buy a cheap air ticket to Ireland so he could gain access to The Flying Horse, departure side at Gatwick Airport, the last to tick off his list.

The mission started when the retired fork-lift truck driver’s partner, Una Cooper, bought him a pubs’ directory, which began with him visiting every Wetherspoons in his home county, before extending on to the neighbouring counties, with David estimating the adventure has probably cost him around £30,000 in total.

“It started with all the pubs in Derbyshire, then all the pubs in Staffordshire, then I just kept going really. I travel about a lot following Burton Albion [local football team] and to do my trainspotting, and every time I get to somewhere new, I search out the Wetherspoons. There are so many interesting ones. I mainly travel by public transport so I’ve been able to have a pint in most of them.

“I don’t know how much I’ve spent. We don’t just go to the pub, we visit other things and we stay over when we travel, so maybe £30,000?”

His journey only began in 2019 and, despite the Covid pandemic shutting the pub industry down for extended periods, David completed his goal in just four years.

Wetherspoons confirmed only a select few had matched David’s feat, with spokesman for the firm, Eddie Gershon, saying: “He has obviously put in a lot of time and effort into achieving his goal and we thank him for his dedication to our pubs.”