April 2026. Royal Tunbridge Wells.
A gorgeous Tuesday night in Royal Tunbridge Wells, as blogging royalty headed out to see the state of pubs in commuterville.
Mrs RM was racing down to the Pantiles, the picture postcard quarter,
where I’d asked her to meet me in the Ragged Trousers, a long-term favourite from her misspent youth.
It’s the fashionable place in town, the one with Slazengers and Hellman’s Mayo on the bar.
It’s 6pm, you’d expect a bit of after-work and tourist trade, but nope.
Mrs RM is halfway through her pint of a house beer from Tonbridge, so the second one pulled is a decently chewy 3.5, but possible not quite chewy enough to get the Ragged (that’s what the youngsters call it, apparently) back in the Guide.
It’s a simple pub without pretence, with talk at the bar of an excess of Jägerbombs. “Oh gawd, no !“.
Mrs RM had just “dropped” (ugh) her post on Toulouse, I’d left a conversation about a Frenchman falling off a scooter in the George, and now in the Ragged we have posters depicting Les Français dropping bottles on their toes.
Hard to believe, but from where we’re sitting, we could walk to France across the sea in a day. And when I say sea, I mean the wet stuff, not the visualising word. Just for clarity.
retiredmartin 