retiredmartin

August 2024. Kent.

Last Friday was typical of our current manic schedule, continuing a trip down from Waterbeach with an apparent attempt to visit all of Kent in a day.

Simon and Quinno will know how this feels.

Dartford isn’t quite Kent these days, despite 65% of the pubs being called “Man of Kent“, but we started in the breakfast (7/10) room of the Holiday Inn Express admiring a beer range that could have come out of any pub in the South-east, only lacking a turned-around Master Brew pump.

“It is TOO early for beer !” said the cheery lady with East European lilt as I admired the fonts. It may have been a question rather than an admonition.

There then followed a series of mad dashes, first to Currys at Maidstone to pick up a £135 fridge freezer unit to replace the ailing one in our caravan at Rye Harbour, then to Rye so Mrs RM could install the new unit before a new family from Ashford arrived at 3, and then across the border to dump the old fridge at New Romney recycling centre, where a council official was waiting to wave a contactless card reader at us to collect the £10 “cross-border” fee, like an internal Brexit.

Four pubs left to complete Kent for GBG24, starting with a return to Sandwich via the backroads of Folkestone and Dover, just out of the monstrous Operation Stack on the M20.

Actually, we didn’t quite make it all the way to Sandwich, with the road from just south of Mill Wall being dug up,

but the walk in gave me the chance to take the iconic “Sandwich in Sandwich” shot, and Mrs RM the chance to coo over this marvellous little Cinque Port which she’d clearly forgotten about since 2017.

Honestly, you could do a Sandwich Photo of the Day for a year on Instagram; perhaps someone does.

“Look there” I shout to Mrs RM. She looks the other way.

“Look up” I urge. She looks down.

“What do you think the population of Sandwich is ?” I ask, as we wander down a tenth street packed with cafes and, in stark contrast to most UK towns, busy shops.

“About twenty, twenty thousand ?“.

“Just under five“. Smaller than Waterbeach.

And there’s fifteen (15) entries on What Pub for those 4,985 souls and a few gentlefolk visitors.

So, is there enough trade for our new Guide entry…