November 2024. Ramsgate.
In for a penny…
You can’t come to Ramsgate and not head down King Street to the High Street, the heart of Ramsgate and the embodiment of its “rough diamond” status.
This 2020 pic, one of my favourites, capture the town’s charm perfectly.
Where King St, High St and the road to the World’s Biggest Spoons collide sits the enigmatic Harbour Bar.
I shall have to visit this one some time if my Blog Series has any credibility. No cask, but bingo, which I play with Dad at the care home on Tuesday afternoons,
and am very good at, assuming the idea is not to leave any marks on the bingo card.
But today, it’s a long overdue return to the Red Lion, one of the Thornley Tavern empire. A guarantee of pubbiness, if not an unencumbered exterior.
Actually, the ceiling looks a bit of a work-in-progress, too,
but you don’t go to pubs to admire architecture, you go for banter with strangers, a sensationally chewy pint of No. 3,
and a packet of scratchings (NOT crackling).
Landlady and staff apart, entirely blokes watching rugby. Why ?
Bingo is far more a real sport than rugby.
retiredmartin 
“a sensationally chewy pint of No. 3”
I thought the red triangle would have had you on the No. 5.
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Had No. 5 in the Montefiore.
Such a shame Ramsgate isn’t in Cannock.
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Yes, forty minutes on the bus then.
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Your pictures remind me of how unusual the town is to walk around. Not many places like it. All those Thanet towns are quite different from one another.
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I wondered if you noticed that. I took some photos of Addington St, as gorgeous as anything in Deal or Brighton, I might use in a future blog, and the way it beers from upmarket to rundown is astonishing.
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Yes, I also think you and I have a liking, if that’s the word, for the rundown. I found I preferred the rundown parts of Ramsgate to those of Margate. I’m still not sure why.
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“Faded glory” vs “down at heel” perhaps? But definitely not “distressed”.
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