retiredmartin

“Enough of all this culture, give us a pub !”  says Mrs EthelHiggins, of American Samoa,my new star reader*.

Indeed I will.  How about the Marine in Hornsea, the lowest of lowkey East Coast resorts, somehow making Withernsea seem cutting-edge.

But it’s got a big lake with a café, and a big discount shopping centre with a café, so it gets thousands of gentlefolk visiting on daytrips from east Hull and Driffield, a key market segment.

Now I know you’ll think there are many worse things in life than a lunchtime by the English seaside with blue skies and temperatures so warm that Yorkshiremen only need to wear one jumper and one duffle coat.

But even if you live in Maidenhead, you may understand my slight disappointment at concluding a long trek eastwards with a modernised Greene King diner,

Despite the white walls suggesting one of those GK craft efforts, the 11am beer range was reassuringly old-school.

The service was beyond friendly, and the young barman took longer over the top-ups than I once observed with Guinness on the Falls Road.

So I had time to do the full tour with only a few cappuccino/Carling couples to bump into.

“Rocking All Over The World” was playing, last night’s Brazil match was on most of the tellies, and the games machines for children were the best since Sizzlin’ Blackpool.

 

OK, it probably looks like your worst nightmare if your idea of a pub is the Boar’s Head or Beermoth, with high tables, long tables, and GK IPA.

But it was clean, bright, cheery and catering to all age groups.  If the beer was good, it deserved its GBG place, surely ?

Sadly, the 11am half of IPA tasted like an 11am half of IPA, lacking in condition and aggressively cooled. 

But you’d already guess that, hadn’t you ?

 

*It’s true.