June 2023. Rye Harbour.
It’s a year since Mrs RM found her caravan down in Rye Harbour, and the most surprising thing is how many delights on our doorstep we haven’t #ticked yet.
Camber Castle (a 20 minute walk past aggressive sheep), the Rye mini-cinema (like a micro but with art films), and the delights of a Friday night in Camber Sands still await us.
The harbour itself has a Sheps pub, a closed pub I want a local brewery to re-open, a cafe that sells salt and pepper squid (up from £7 to £9 in a year), an excellent nature reserve, and a village store that will be familiar in style to fans of a certain turn-of-century BBC comedy set near Glossop.
The holiday park itself has a bar with bottles of Pedi and a Saturday disco, but what did the Social Club above the village hall have to offer.
And would it ever open, or let us in if it did. Mrs RM was determined that I find out.
No buzzer, and no-one at the top of the stairs, just a pleasant lady at the bar extolling the virtues of the £5 sub and the boules club out back.
We dithered on the first and declined the second.
I’m not sure it’s fair to say Mrs RM had false raised expectations, but I was a tad disappointed by a drinks range of one lager, one cider and Guinness out of the surge cans.
But they had bottles, the sort last seen in pubs in 1997.
Mrs RM had a bottle of Spitfire; expertly paired with mini cheddars the entire round came to about £5 6s 9d. I’ll enter my scores for the Courage Light on Untappd when I catch up with the blog.
The lady came across to chat about village life and turn the TV over, before heading back to sell more coke and cider and a bottle of wine that cost less than it would in Rye’s only supermarket.
I sort of liked it, the seating was superb, the artwork great, and I guess it’s my job to persuade the committee to add 8 handpumps with a rotating range of Locale beers from Beak and Three Legs.
But, well, I guess you can see the problem with cask.
retiredmartin 