retiredmartin

August 2024. Rainham. Kent.

“If you didn’t use the Good Beer Guide you’d never end up in weird places like Holbeach, and Rainham, and Paisley” wrote Retired Martin on his visit to yet another GBG debutant in yet another low key Derbyshire mining village last year, and it is indeed the visits to suburbs of Gillingham that make ticking a joy.

But I have to confess that Rainham and me have never got on, “a one street town of discount shops, vaping stores and micros, which means it knows its audience” I wrote in 2020, and although the Prince of Ales was undoubtedly a “good” micro I could find little to enthuse me.

But a combination of family brewer (Sheps) pub, micro and Spoons in the Guide and within a 5 minute walk is not to be sniffed at, better than Milton Keynes.

And the day I’m not quaking with anticipation as I enter a new Spoons is the day I give this pub lark up.

The reviews of the Railway are, um, “mixed”, but Kian likes the beer.

In honesty, it’s not the sort of cask line-up that a Spoons normally needs to get a Guide place, just one Cornish guest.

But that probably means the Doom Bar sells well, I summise.

“I’ve got a little token” I say.

The cheery barman inspects it with a magnifying glass.

“It’s out of date“.

I imagine the headline the next day in the Rainham Recorder;

“Northern Man summarily executed for attempted fraud in popular watering hole“.

Do the vouchers ever expire ? Anyhow, I flashed my gold card and he put the discount through anyway, and truth be told it was an exemplar Doom Bar, cool and chewy (3.5).

The pub felt like a creche, limiting my photos of Old Boys on Bud, so the best I can bring you is the iconic “Please Min The Step” sign.

“Minning” is, of course, only allowed on Thursday morning following the 1928 Minning Ban.

I would have liked to add Mrs RM’s portrait to the wall of ladies who have drunk a pint of real ale in Rainham Spoons,

but she was across the road, the motor running, ready for that long, painful, escape to the M20.