retiredmartin

August 2024. Ramsgate.

Let’s bring Kent to a conclusion, so I can tell you about how I got my 86 year old Father-in-Law to drink two pints of cider (not CAMRA approved) in Southampton micros.

If I run out of blog material I might return to Ramsgate’s hidden charms, like the gorgeous Addington Street,

but I said that about Sunderland, and I still owe you “Half A Dozen Pubs….” in Scotland, so I doubt it.

My final Kent tick was to be the confusingly named “Pub” (what’s wrong with proper pub names like the Thirsty Giraffe ?), but the note on the door saying 4pm had gone and now opening was at 5, family emergency, so we had an hour by the beach at Dumpton.

Thanet has rather great beaches, I think,

but it has even better pubs, and 5pm saw me impatiently waiting outside for the “Closed” sign to be turn around. It didn’t help that the door was open and there was life inside, but the lovely chap summoned to open up had to “connect the cellar pipes” or something. Don’t ask ME how pubs work.

As so often happens (particularly in Kent), my initial grumpiness about having to hang around for 3 hours dissolved in a sea of cheer as the joy of an Anglo/German crossover revealed itself.

What a masterpiece of simplicity. Shame it’s Pipers rather than pretzels, mind.

Actually, that’s a serious beer board, for those of you who like that sort of thing.

I should have had the Hacker Pcschorr, to prove to you I can spell it, but that lingering urge to score the cask meant it had to be a pint of Kent’s finest Coppernob, after the barman had vigorously pulled off the first pint.

As (nearly) always, the last pub in a county is a joy,

cool and chewy (3.5), and all the pub needed was the punters delayed by the earlier dramas. These seats were made for talking;

I chatted Ramsgate pubs with the barman, and the owner kindly updated me on Madam Scheherazade,

once landlady at the sadly-missed Great Tree. Now, THAT was a pub.