January 2024. New Haw. Addlestone.
From Buckingham we headed round the M25 to the in-laws, a decent journey enlivened by a quick stop in that odd area of scruffy Surrey below Heathrow,
You might not think it’s scruffy when a 2 bed Maisonette in Addlestone or Byfleet costs £2.8 million, but there’s not much sign of Surrey stockbroker wealth pulling into New Haw, which is fine,
just an unchanging old Courage pub,
where the highlights are “proper” Sunday lunches and slushies.
This is what it takes to get in the GBG in Runnymede.
Last year I visited the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes lodge just up the road where the beer of choice was Bombardier, here it’s Doom Bar.
Well, Mrs RM’s beer; I had a lime and soda. An improbable £7.90, which proves the streets are paved with gold in North Surrey.
Everything is “amazing”, apparently, except my debit card which fails to work so the charming barmaid pursues me to the seat and says “Mind your head on the beam” just as I bash my head on the beam.
I don’t actually see another pint of cask pulled on Sunday lunchtime, but Mrs RM’s Doom Bar is a cool, rich NBSS 3.5, so what do I know ? Top beer, Proper Pub.
It’s a bit chilly indoors, I presume that’s why folk are wearing jogging bottoms and woolly hats, so I head out to the garden on the banks of the River Wey, and admire the pink children’s slide.
I always assume these West London/Surrey pubs are strictly Chelsea, but there’s a “White Hart Lane N17” crest above the bar.
I thought you’d want to know this.
retiredmartin 
I used to live just down from there in Byfleet, but I don’t think I went in more than once or twice. Good situation by the river.
And yes, that part of Surrey around Byfleet, Addlestone, Chertsey and Egham isn’t posh at all, although the house prices are.
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It has the feel of a Medway town or Bolton suburb, and there’s not much sign of artisanal enterprise ! Pubs are always honest though, and beer quality decent.
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I always thought the RAOB was something you joined if you couldn’t get into the Masons but still fancied that kind of thing. I had an uncle who was in something similar, the Ancient Order of Foresters. Fair play to them, they paid out a few bob when he died.
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More a charitable society with cheap beer, I always thought. No-one in the Addlestone RAOB had ambitions for Masonry !
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I can remember going to that pub as a kid! I must have been well brought up.
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