retiredmartin

June 2024. The long, long, weekend entertaining octogenarians approached 8 hours of driving fun as we pulled into Gosport’s Premier Inn.

Wow. An awful lot going on in this Google Maps extract, to distract you from the sad reality that our hotel is nowhere near Portsmouth. Or even Gosport, come to that.

But it’s under £50 a night, has free parking,  near a bus stop, Lidl and lots of pubs with sexy green tiling.

Ah, Gosport. Time to look at the definitive work on Gos boozers, and what it says about the defiantly unsexy hotel pub.

Our Jane had been here, in this very Marston’s diner, last year, furious about the charge for the chip option with curry (pic : Jane).

Now I would never criticise Jane’s culinary choices, but Premier Inn’s adjacent pubs should never be your choice for breakfast, lunch or tea.

Unless your 86 year old father-in-law decides at 6pm he’s not walking another step and some macaroni cheese will do fine.

I don’t really want to go in, but Jane only had “pop” here in 2023 and I’m always intrigued by the potential quality of the Pedi.

It’s packed in the garden, half full inside with the carvery in full flow. Toby is tops for carvery.

I was waiting at the bar for 8 minutes and no-one bought any cask.

So a cool-ish, rich-ish, non-chewy-ish NBSS 3-  wasn’t a surprise.

But after a £5 macaroni cheese accompanied by a mandatory Barbecue sauce Mrs RM moaned about as if it was my fault, I picked my moment to escape to some good pubs.

Pleasingly, the glass at the Leisure Centre bus stop had already been smashed in. I knew I was in the South.