retiredmartin

September 2023. Royal Tunbridge Wells.

I’ll let you into a secret. I’m much more likely to award coveted status if I can’t think of a title for a blog post, and the only one that sprang to mind was “RESERVED FOR THE DOG” (read on).

Monday night, after a day of doctors appointments and pill collection, saw Mrs RM take our 10k steps by a third trip to t’Wells, and a real classic.

Mrs RM, who spent her late teenage years flitting between Sussex and Kent to play the “longer closing hours game”, couldn’t place the Grove. And nor could I, having ticked it 15 years ago.

The cobbled Warwick Road is a gem, one of the town’s finest lanes.

A bit like Cambridge around the old Kite area, perhaps.

As I said before, there is no light to compare with the light from a backstreet pub at dusk.

It’s a working pub rather than a museum piece, packed with pub activity.

Cricket hat on the bar,

Harvey’s and Landlord and Marston’s on the bar.

No food, except for dogs who get special treatment, including from a girl in stretch pants who let the dog lick beer off her fingers she’d dipped in her beer. I make no comment.

Were we in the way of flying darts ? Not as much as these two gents.

Sixties soundtrack,

Two pints of sublime Harvey’s (3.5+) and a packet of crisps for a tenner,

Hard to beat, and I really fancied a pint of Landlord, but supper called.