retiredmartin

I’ve spent the last three (3) days in Kent.

No, no, I don’t expect medals. Or sympathy. It was what you might call a minor family emergency involving Erith, e-mails and emergency calls.

Sadly, you don’t get a post on Erith this time (has there ever been a GBG pub there ?), but here’s a photo from nearby Crossness Pumping Station (it really is). Future brewery tap, surely ?

My first Kent tick of the competitive GBG22 season came in a rather smarter part of the South-East, in Westerham, just north of Winston Churchill’s home. I’d been to the eponymous brewery only 9 months ago, and the posh Brunning & Price even more recently.

It’s not a place where you’d expect a micropub, which is why I guess this chap was joining me in taking photos of pubs. I hope he got permission first.

Oh. He’s the landlord, cheerily serving me a pint of Larkins a minute later from a pleasingly local list (did I really just write that ?).

I’m softening to the charms of micros, particularly when they have proper seating, younger people,

and, of course, giant carrots. “What’s he called ?” I asked the table opposite. “Colin (of course, idiot)” came back the reply.

The Larkins was a lovely cool pint; that ramekin of scratchings a tad let down by the inclusion of pork crackling, which really ought to be outlawed. Unless scratchings have hairs on them, they have no right to that name.

In fairness, the Landlord had warned me at least thrice it was a “variety mix”, the way you’d warn someone a beer from Ely was “hazy”, but I waved his warning away. I get what I deserve, I really do.