FROM 1066 TO 1698

November 2024. Rye Harbour.

We got back from Battle just in time to park up at our caravan in Rye Harbour and catch last food orders at the William the Conqueror.

Just as it took me decades to find Hastings and Bridlington Old Towns, so it was 2022 before Mrs RM stumbled on the old harbour 2 miles down the creek from the Ypres Castle.

In truth, the William isn’t a great pub,

an unfussy Sheps dining pub with mainly daytime trade (about to shut at 5pm that Wednesday).

But the location is a winner,

the Greek food unpretentious, and the custom seems to know how to use pubs.

Like most Sheps pubs these days it seems to have given up on cask, no Spitfire or Master Brew and some fairly dull NBSS 2.5 pints of the Whitstable Bay.

Our standard order is therefore a bottle of the 6.5% 1698 (yes ! even for the lady !), but I asked for a half of the Late Red as well.

And was given a pint.

Blimey that’s a lot of beer for a late lunchtime, though the Red was cool and chewy enough for a 3, and would have been better without that horrific, sub-Adnams, thin glass.

I asked the barman if they had any proper glasses for the 1698, got a slightly thicker vessel, and felt a bit of a **** for making special pleadings. I think youngsters like vases.

Sensational food and beer matching right there.

Burger and moussaka, neither bargain, both better than expected, and no-one will believe me but I reckon pub food is on the up; even Spoons.

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

15 thoughts on “FROM 1066 TO 1698”

    3. I had good food in the States, the Ear in New York for one. Burgers in pubs are probably your best bet for consistent quality. 10 years ago the upmarket dining pub in Wiltshire or Berkshire would have been the only place for a decent burger, but these days the pub chains will do a good one, though at £15 rather than a tenner.

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    4. Well it wouldn’t do for us all the like the same Dave.
      For me a burger need include no more than a beef burger and fried onions, though I would certainly have liked that gherkin.
      Do you still get get Wimpy bars in the US ? From 1954 they’ve been in the UK, by 1989 having 381 locations, including two in Stafford, but now down to sixty, including Milford three miles from me. I would have gone in Swanage’s earlier this month but the premises were being locked as I approached at precisely 7pm. During the 1970s Wimpy refused entry to women on their own after midnight with an assumption that they might be prostitutes. During October 1981 an explosives officer with the Metropolitan Police was killed whilst attempting to defuse a bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the basement of the Oxford Street Wimpy.

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      1. Wimpys died off long ago when the owner passed away I believe. What is the base issue with prostitutes eating burgers? I thought everyone liked and deserved a burger at any time of day.

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      2. Yes indeed Dave. Thankfully we’re in more enlightened times than the 1970s.
        That 1981 IRA bomb in the Oxford Street Wimpy now reminds me that I remember the A513 being closed as I cycled to work in September 1990 hours after the IRA shot Sir Peter Terry ( Governor of Gibraltar from 1985 to 1989 ) at his home a furlong west of the Milford Wimpy. And that in October 1974 my MP Sir Hugh Fraser would have been killed by an IRA car bomb had he not been delayed leaving his London home. And that Thursday was the fiftieth anniversary of the IRA’s Birmingham pub bombings with 21 killed and 182 injured at the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town, both M&B pubs.

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