I like Canterbury. If it’s good enough for my niece Emily (4th year at Uni and still no trip to Thanet) it’s good enough for me.
This was my first visit since 2014, when I stayed in the Premier Inn on opening night for £29. Same room next Saturday is £115.50. Premier Inn have lost the plot.
Still a beautiful city, but arguably hit as hard by 1960s town planners as by the Luftwaffe in the Baedecker raids of 1942.
In the relative quiet (only 3 million French schoolchildren) before the Easter rush, it looked beguiling this week.
I got lost in Cathedral Green, which takes some doing, and had to squeeze through the unofficial exit onto Palace Street. Probably broke some 1479 law in the process.
One of these days I’ll be soft enough to cough up the £12.50 (that’s 17.37 of your US dollars) to actually enter the Cathedral.
Meanwhile, £3.60 will buy you entry and the beer of the month into the Thomas Tallis.
WhatPub* cautiously says “micropub-style ale house“, which means it doesn’t have to comply with Ye Ancient Laws of Herne, though it probably does. I didn’t hear Ed Sheeran or see a fruit machine, put it that way. But they will probably eviscerate you if you take a mobile phone call. If they do, blog about it.
Three rooms, all rather gorgeous and quirky (in a good way).
The snug looked a classic, but was taken (not by Mrs RM either), so it was the high tables for me.
More table service, of course, which I’m not keen on but if you haven’t got a bar it’s hard to stand at it.
This is the new keg world. 30 beers including the cans and bottles, 3 of them cask. Vote carefully next month, folks.
Three is plenty, and I can only applaud any pub that leads with Gadd’s majestic No.5, a BBB to match the very best.
And this was magnificent. Cool, foamy, rich. NBSS 4+. Beer of the month, so far.
Apart from the beer, the smell of the fire is enough to make you come in here. Quite how it would feel at 8pm on Friday with everyone standing up, I dunno.
But Canterbury’s first new GBG pub for what seems like centuries is an instant classic.
retiredmartin 
I paid that £12.50 to enter the cathedral. I have to say well worth it. One of the nicest cathedrals I have visited. And yes that seems like a lot of money compared to other cathedrals. They must really make a lot of money on entry fees.
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I’m sure you’re right Dave, I’m just grumpy Old Man.
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I’m grumpy when I’m paying it; Not so grumpy when in the cathedral.
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I always find Canterbury to be a surprisingly small-scale and intimate place apart from the Cathedral. Possibly because it was never the county town of Kent. Rather like Bayeux in that respect.
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Love the Thomas Tallis -went in as a party of 6 & had a game of Jenga in front of the fire -being the last pub on a reasonably sized crawl we were the customers from hell -very noisy.Bet everyone was glad when we left.(ps -we are also too tight to pay to see the cathedral )
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Not tight, Pauline. Discerning. Do folk from Maidstone need special permission to enter the gates ?
NB I this is a great pub for a small group.
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“It’ll look good when it’s finished”
But then they’d have to stop charging £12.50 to get in. 🙂
” Gadd’s majestic No.5, a BBB to match the very best.”
That would have been my pick.
And the three (quirky) rooms sounds luverly.
Cheers
PS – for some reason that OS map reminded me of Terry Pratchett’s Anhk-Morpork. 🙂
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Very safety conscious there – ‘hot fire’ (is there any other kind) and ‘mind your head’……perhaps the landlord is ex-elf an’ safety?
To be fair people don’t automatically assume that the outside of the stove will be seriously hot…especially after a few Gadds… and I thought ‘Don’t be a twat’ showed an enhanced level of concern for customers…
Mind you they missed the stool safety message – ‘may be seriously uncomfortable and you may fall off’…
…presumably if you did they’d just look at you writhing in agony on the floor and point out what a twat you were…
…be careful…it’s a litigious world out there…
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This one got me thinking, if there are 3 cask ales on, and one of them is a stout, I almost would feel there are “2 cask ales and one cask stout”– i.e. I view stout as a very different drinking experience from ale, whether it’s cask or not. I wonder if any other real ale fans share this sort of mental dividing line that I have, when it comes to the difference between stout and the “classic BBB”?
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I think so, Mark. Quite a few folk I’ve met wouldn’t drink dark beers (Mrs RM included). Same would apply to a heavily spiced beer or wheat beer. I’ll drink anything, mind 😉
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I tried getting in for nowt by telling them I was attending Mass. The tight wads said they hadn’t had a Mass since 1534?
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