retiredmartin

January 2026. Watton. Norfolk.

Obviously no pressure to visit the GBG newbies anymore, but there’s something compelling about them, even if my pinking is a bit half-hearted these days.

The places I’d circled were the newbies, and as I’ve completed Norfolk every year since Delia Smith did her “Let’s be ‘avin’ you” rant at half-time v City I feel compelled to trek off to backwaters like Watton and do my duty.

As you’ll see, Watton is so exciting it gets a second post, but let’s start with the pub.

Odd place, in the heart of the Brecks with its windmills and piggeries and prisons and 50p bags of manure. Only two GBG entries ever on my spreadsheet; one an offie, the other the 16th century thatched Willow House.

Like that one, the Kings Arms is bang in the middle of a high street I will shortly be told is one of the longest in the country. In fact, within the hour I will be the world expert on Watton, although I expect Donald Trump would claim to know more.

It’s solid looking,

and that Norwich Brewery livery harks back to more innocent times, when Delia cooked swan curry (possibly).

The CAMRA Pub of the Year has just been given to the Tamworth Tap again. While that’s exactly the sort of curated public house that CAMRA would like to present to the world, I’m fairly sure Stafford Paul, like me, would much prefer the simplicity and spaciousness of the Kings Arms.

I enter (no stares) to Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish” which I always confuse with “Supersition“. A lovely welcome at the bar, £3.90 (I hear it as “five pounds nineteen” as I don’t speak Narfolk) for the Greene King IPA, which makes a sploshing sound in to the glass.

Oooh, pub branded glass ! Cool, rich, easy NBSS 3.5, but is it a 4 ?. You oughta know, I think it is.

Coincidentally, at that moment the soundtrack veers from ’70s Stevie and Elvis to ’90s Alannis Morissette, as the uncesored version of “You Oughta Know” blasts out. No-one at the bar breaks off from a discussion of the paucity of produce at the market and the price of asparagus.

In some places all the trade would be sitting round that bar and you’d feel a bit left out, but here you can blend in at the sides, and when an Old Boy in the Gents says “Thank you Sir” as I hold the door open I feel part of the furniture.

Dick and Dave would love it. I believe there’s still Americans nearby, too.