IF you fancy a pint in 25,000 pubs around Britain, then Portland is the best place to start… With Weymouth the best place to finish.

That’s according to research by mathematicians at a Canadian university anyway.

The mathematics faculty at The University of Waterloo in Ontario has calculated the shortest possible walking tour to visit the 24,727 pubs in Pubs Galore- The UK Pub Guide.

What the mathematicians worked out, amongst many other things is that the best way to do the walk is circular and that happened to be starting in Portland and finishing in Weymouth.

The first pub on the list is the Green Shutters, in Castletown on Portland with the last The Rodwell in Weymouth.

Starting with the Green Shutters and finishing up the Rodwell with the small matter of 24,275 pubs in between involves travelling 45,495km and probably a fair few beers as well.

The work took a whole two years for the mathematicians, lead by Professor William Cook, across the Atlantic to work out.

Professor Cook has described it as by far the largest road distance travelling salesman problem ever solved.

The travelling salesman problems focuses on a salesman who must travel between a set number of cities but the order does not matter, only that he visit each one during his trip.

The salesman wants to keep both the travel costs and the distance travelled as low as possible.

The UK pubs tour calculation is said to have more than 100 times more stops than any road-distance example solved previously by other research groups.

The team used Google Maps to calculate the distance from pub-to-pub to come up with the list with many more Dorset pubs featuring.

Manager at The Rodwell, Nick Roberts, said: “Initially my reaction was really? Is that for real?

“It puts us on the map. It’s something we can live on for a little bit.

“The likelihood of it having an impact on trade is minimal but I suppose if it creates a bit of notoriety for the pub that’s a good thing.”

For a full list and a map of the pubs go to www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/pubs/