LAUDED by the Lonely Planet guide as the best place to drink real ale in the world and by last year's Good Beer Guide as having "the perfect pub crawl", Derby has been crying out for someone to formalise a tour and make it a proper tourist attraction.

Anyway, someone has finally picked up on the idea that beer is up there with ghosts as a tourist attraction in the city.

I picked up a smart leaflet the other day offering real ale tours in Derby, starting in the New Year.

These will be in the evenings, twice a week if the demand is there, with up to 16 people at a time taken on a minibus tour of the best watering holes we've got.

Included in your £29 ticket is a quick tour round a microbrewery – looks like it will be Mr Grundy's, in Ashbourne Road, snacks along the way, including real ale sausages, and a half of your choice in each pub on the trip.

It's billed as a mystery tour so I'm not going to let on which pubs are included here – but what a good idea.

These tours would suit corporate nights out and birthday treats but, I rather suspect, you wouldn't have to be a visitor to the city to find them attractive.

So who's idea is it?

Well, when I rang the number on the leaflet, I found myself talking to Martin Roper, Derby's leading punk rocker in the seventies but, in recent years, one of our most enterprising ideas men, particularly in the fields of fashion and food.

"I'm a CAMRA member and a real ale drinker as well but I realised that I'd tended to drink in the same pubs, mostly the Exeter, over the years and missed out on a lot of other good ones," says Martin, who sits on the management team for the Cathedral Quarter.

"I reckon there must be a lot of others like me."

Martin spoke to hotels and the tourist information office, asking what visitors enquired about.

Beer and ghosts, was the answer, And Richard Felix has got the ghosts well covered…

Martin was planning a "dry" – or should that be "wet" – run this week to check the timings but the tours start on Thursday, January 5.

If you are interested in a tour there are more details on the website at www.realalederby.com