I’m typing this on the train to Box Hill Station, a pleasant walk from my penultimate Surrey tick in Mickleham.
Bet you thought I did all my blogging from a soundproofed room in Waterbeach, interrupted only by the butler bringing my cans of Four Pure on a silver platter. That’s BRAPA you’re getting mixed up with.
The new Dorking entry, the first for a while, is a rare drinkers pub, still maintaining a bit of Friary Meux signage rather than the usual Greene King or Brunning & Price.
It’s so close to the stations I walked past it twice. GBG station pubs without the words “Tap” or “Great” in them were actually banned in 2015.
You get three railway stations in Dorking, compared to none in Leek, which is in a nutshell why the North hates the South.
Mind, the drinkers in the Lincoln were all useful Southerners, tradesmen by the look of it, taking a break from “modernising” Fullers pubs, no doubt.
I presumed the pool posse arrived at 5pm.
I guess two local beers gets you in the Guide these days. I nearly had the Doom Bar to spite the CAMRAs, but panicked and stayed on the Pilgrim, my third in a row, and possibly the best, chunky glass and all.
Naff music, great service and a lively atmosphere with some of the best swearing this year. I’d like to say it was on both sides of the bar but obviously I can’t.
My notes also say “goldfish”. Possibly a pub pet, possibly a nickname, possibly a lunchtime snack.
I still don’t understand the Brexit sign though (DON’T explain it).
retiredmartin 
I didn’t realise it’s a tick, but I did have some excellent beer there recently.
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It’s a surprising but welcome new entry. Glad to get a second positive opinion, Ed.
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You were saying in your last post that Surrey towns aren’t up to much, but Dorking, at least around the High Street, is quite handsome. As most certainly is Farnham.
I think I’d prefer a pint of Friary Meux, tbh. Never went in that pub when I lived down there.
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I’ll give you Dorking, Mudgie And the castle at Reigate. Just been up Box Hill and it’s definitely the countryside that’s underrated.
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Reigate also has a handsome High Street, and a foot tunnel under the hill.
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Sounds good, but the photo of the ‘should have been reupholstered years ago’ buffet just condemns it to the naff category. Why should we put up with for quality fixtures and fittings in pubs? You see it time after time and, to me, it’s just not good enough. They can’t even be bothered to keep the fish tank properly topped up with water neither. Nil points (needs saying in a French accent).
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Ha Ha
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Yes, reupholstering wouldn’t be a bad idea but at least it’s a proper stool rather than an empty keg with a cushion on top of it.
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It was a great boozer. You’d have loved it, Richard wouldn’t.
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In a hundred years time people will be going in ‘heritage pubs’ and saying, ‘Oooh, look at those stools made out of old kegs! They don’t make ’em like that nowadays’.
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Yes, a hundred years from now historians will be fascinated by the astonishing variety of drinking establishments in 2019.
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The wonderful irony of a twatty note calling out BoJo for getting his sums wrong getting its sums wrong.
It was £350 million.
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I can’t see that sign going down well with your average Home Counties tradesman.
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Oh, l’d say that Pimlico Plumbing might run to a thumbs-up.
I trust that will go down better than the Clent eastward/Clint Eastwood pun did…
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I think I’m missing your puns. Perhaps I’ve installed a bad pun filter.
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“Working class man reckons someone called ‘Annunziata Rees-Mogg’ is on his side”
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Phew…I often hang my head in shame, being a Surrey based blog lurker…. but not only a good review from your excellent self, but a pub I have had a drink in recently as well. Shamefully I can’t remember what I drank, but it was beer and I hadn’t been in there before – ’twas a pleasing and friendly experience…
(btw – idea – best you jump in quick and become PPT’s agent for his much needed “How to detox gracefully” book….followed by the much more entertaining follow up “How to REtox in astonishing haste”)
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Yup,back up to speed.
We breakfasted on toast and a couple of bottles of Modelo beer.
Just enjoying a chilled bottle of Chilean Chardonnay with a spot of lunch in the shade of a blazing Mexican sun.
Later we plan a stroll to a cantina in a rather doubtful barrio of town where the ginger and tamarind margaritas are legendary.
Then watch the sun go down from one of the many rooftop bars that populate the delightful town of San Miguel de Allende.
Even the police wave cheerily at the gringos as they speed past in jeeps mounted with very large machine guns.
Dinner will be steaks and Malbec in a nice place owned a retired bull-fighter.
Unsurprisingly his gaff is one of the few here that don’t feel the need to employ fearsome looking bouncers at night.
However,I’m really just gearing up the liver for Thursday when we fly off to a coastal beach town with a real reputation for excess.
The Mexican Magaluf apparently…
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Hot chilli peppers in the blistering sun, dust on my face and on my cape…sorry, wrong thread.
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Right Dylan album, anyway.
To really wind Dave up, you need to add “his last good one” at this point.
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Street Legal has some fine points, surely?
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Er…
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Oh well. The dogs are barking and what’s done is done.
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Excellent idea. May decline due to my own “professional” commitments 😉
“it was beer, a pleasing and friendly experience”, is all you need say. Hard to convey in photos but you know it when you see it.
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All those train stations and all a fair trek to the main town where I have done all the pubs, but none of the outlying including this one. Must have a look sometime.
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Is Dorking the Whitwick of the south for swearing in pubs?
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This pub is the Three Horseshoes of the South.
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Sounds magnificent!!
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