retiredmartin

Some of you might think I pick on Mrs RM on this site, but you’d be wrong.  I applaud her decision to leave her handbag under the chair in the Waggon at Wix,  as it enables me to ask The Question.

WHY CAN’T WOMEN WEAR CLOTHES WITH DEEP POCKETS  LIKE MEN DO, INSTEAD OF CARRYING AROUND HANDBAGS ?

That question would be in larger text if I knew how to do it.

Never mind, the kindly people at the Waggon had kept Mrs RM’s collection of sweet wrappers and political tracts safe (for 2 weeks), and it gave us another chance to explore the Tendring peninsula in the fog. Never has a village been better named than Mistley, with its row of coloured houses by the quay.

The view across the estuary is best described as restricted,

but the towers of the old church were spellbinding.

Mistley is one of the numerous gems of estuary Essex, a part of the world cruelly overlooked in favour of coastal Suffolk. If anyone can explain the big legal dispute over the quay in less than 10,000 words I’d be grateful.

Big brother Manningtree has the disadvantage of traffic, but in a town of Greene King locals the Beer Guide pub is safely tucked up the hill away from the fumes.  My middle-class readers will want to know the Wholefood Store stocks the best caramel peanuts and sourdough in East Anglia.

I know we’d visited the Red Lion before; my enormous GBG spreadsheet says so. But this is a transformed pub, a rare example of a middle-class drinking pub without food.  That’s very rare these days, perhaps the Fountain in Ely comes closest.

A freehouse that gets its supplies from Adnams but offers a local beer works for me, and the Colchester Stout would have been close to Beer of December if I’d been bothered to have one (NBSS 4).  I was a bit surprised how good it was, given I only saw Spindrift, Amstel and lemonade sold while I was there.

Simon would have enjoyed the chat about pregnant drivers and holiday excesses of Suzy and Tom, discernible over polite jazz.  It felt like a place smart people come to chat and booze, which is a good and rare thing.  You can bring your chips and curry in too, which I’ve rarely seen in a pub this posh.

The toilets will be featuring in a dedicated pub loos post.

Tomorrow, I get onto Dick and Dave.