retiredmartin

January 2026. East Hoathly. East Sussex.

We’ve finally shut down our caravan in Rye Harbour (Home 3) afer an extended winter stay. The water pipes had frozen over Christmas, but thankfully hadn’t burst. Sheffield gets the snow; Rye gets the bitter chill.

Mrs RM was anxious that I completed those tricky South-Eastern GBG chapters before we escaped to the grim North. Kent’s lone tiddler was up near the in-laws, East Sussex’s remaining tick appeared to be between Hailsham and Uckfield, which is a mystery to me.

Ah, homebrew,

shoud be fun.

But what of East Hoathly (with Halland, irritatingly). Population 1,600, birthplace of the Genesis keyboardist, Wiki tells us;

“A Decca Navigator transmitter station was located here, one of four that formed the English Chain 5B. Designated the Green station, with a base frequency of 127.500 kHz“. I’ll test you later.

I guess “quiet” sums it up,

the sort of place with an red phone box packed with vinyl albums and discarded Watchtowers,

and a village pub that seems to hold the entire village on Sunday afternoon.

OK, some of them are there for Old School puddings,

but there’s a quaint little drinking area facing the bar and that magnificent old Harvey’s pump.

As I take a first taste of another marvellously chewy Sussex Best (NBSS 4.5) I notice those CAMRA awards on the wall,

and when I have to nip out to take a phone call I notice, with an odd sense of horror, that the King’s Head is a GBG regular.

So I simply must have been before. Unless I lied about completing the GBG.

That night, I consult the 14,382 rows of GBG spreadsheet, and there she is,

AFTER Eastbourne in the Retired Martin alphabet. But not in CAMRA’s.