November 2024. Ramsgate.
And the hits just keep on coming. You can’t really justify going all the way from Rye to Ramsgate for a lone pint,
and the Montefiore, ticked a decade ago, is one of those pubs I want to go back to on every return to this great town.
Tucked a few yards up a side street a mile from the beach, the sort of side street with giant inflatable Santas in November.
Looks a bit plain, huh ?
But enter that door,
and you have a symphony in light brown (or is it wood chip ?).
I took this pic at the end of my visit;
on entry it was packed with the annual Old Codgers Christmas Pub Crawl.
We wouldn’t get Stafford Paul wearing a Santa hat, or a jumper of any sort, come to that.
It’s a Gadd’s stronghold, with a No. 3, a No. 5 and a No. 11 on the blackboard.
“What’s the No. 11 ?” I ask, and am presented with a taster before I can protest “A pint’s a ta…“.
You won’t get me writing about beer, but someone should write about this 1.2% pale, the best low alcohol beer I’ve had.
But it’s No.3 you come from, and a soundtrack of Christmas classics calming cello, and the best pub seating of the month.
The Xmas crawlers moved on, I said hello to the Guvnor, the conversation turned to Albania and a shared Hitchin heritage, and I said “Stuff the train, I’ll stay for another”.
retiredmartin 
“with giant inflatable Santas in November” until today when the storm will have sent them invading France.
“We wouldn’t get Stafford Paul wearing a Santa hat, or a jumper of any sort”. I can’t argue with that.
“1.2% pale, the best low alcohol beer I’ve had” – I’ve often commented that cask beer could be brewed well at that strength but have never seen it in a pub below 2.8%.
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Brakspears did a 2.5% a few years ago and it wasn’t half bad.
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I remember that. Bill, very good, but then their standard bitter at 3.4% was good to. Brew Dog did a 2.8% Edge 10 years ago that superb.
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I know of several beers of 2.5% or 2.8% since 1st October 2011 when that meant a significant duty saving for larger brewers.
It’s a 1.2% cask beer I’ve not seen before.
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If all the Christmas trees, Santas in hats and silly jumpers get blown to Calais or Marseille I shall be happy.
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Yes indeed, and all the Halloween tat a few weeks before that.
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Do you remember pubs in the seventies having much Christmas decoration, Paul ?
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Council house front gardens certainly didn’t.
And it’s all part of the same thing.
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No, just Slade occasionally on the juke box suggesting ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ ( me then having absolutely no idea that within twenty years I’d marry a relative of Noddy Holder ).
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They were playing Slade, and Roy Wood, at the Christmas party at my Dad’s care home this afternoon. The fact I know all the words and Dad doesn’t was striking.
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Council houses, ah yes, I remember them.
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