retiredmartin

June 2024. Gosport.

It’s amazing how quickly you can fall behind on this blog; I’m still on Monday a week ago (is that how say it ?), so let’s get on to the trad boozers Gosport is famous, perhaps world-beating, for.

Blackpoool Jane raved about Gosport recently, highlighting the craft in Katie’s, 33 Green Bottles, Powder Monkey, Four Ale Taproom and Seafire, and she’d only just missed Fallen Acorn‘s Tap (RIP).

But she’d also noted one other feature of practically all the boozers;

“what’s with the obsession with meat raffles down here? I swear every single pub had one“.

After their exertions in Old Portsmouth I left the in-laws and Mrs RM and headed into town via a Leisure Centre bus stop to do Katie’s and Powder Monkey.

The broken glass from last night had been swept up, but sadly the buses themselves had fallen foul of something called “rubbish bus syndrome”, and I ended up on the e2 to Fareham rather than the e1 to the centre,

so a quick change of plans (no-one wants to end up in Fareham, let me assure you), and hopped off at the cemetery without a clear plan. Just as I like it.

I almost popped in the Foresters,

one of 63 Gosport corner pubs, and looking at its Facebook page now I see I missed out on a pub with defibrillator training for children, meat raffles (duh), darts and tapas;

Oh, and a classic interior.

That’s what I could have had. This is what I actually got;

One of only two (2) Guide entries, the Junction charmed me a decade ago (2014 was a heady ticking year) and wowed me even more now with its welcome, tight head on the Langham First Swallow,

top soundtrack,

and classic bench seating in the local Pub of the Year.

Best Langham outside their own tap, cool and rich and swallowed in 10 minutes while I watch the locals practise darts and pretend to read “Brews News“, a little newsletter about meat raffles in Gosport.

Anyone who’s met me will know I’m always keen for a chat in a new pub, it’s why we go in them rather than staying on our sofa in our underpants drinking kettle sours, as I noted to Si yesterday.

"Bloke who helps me with WiFi password (ironically 'just talk to each other') is off to York to pick up a rare American cat from France 🐈"

This is why we go to pubs, @StymieSi https://t.co/kgnLPcskop

— retiredmartin (@NHS_Martin) June 12, 2024

But how to make that first contact in a new pub ? The landlady resolved the issue as she came over;

“Are you spying on our darts team for our next opponents then ?“.

I assured Deana I wasn’t the next Luke Littler, and we had a nice chat about pub life, her 30 years at the Junction as barmaid and landlady, and, er, microbreweries.

Deana is a legend, and you really need to get to Gosport NOW.