September 2026. Godstone. Surrey.
Three nights in Royal Tunbridge Wells looking after the in-laws, with only a tiny bit of exploration.
A rare visit to mysterious Tandridge district; north of Gatwick, south of the Croydon suburbs, west of Churchill’s home and the National Trust parkland. Oh, and very close to Titsey.
5,949 commuters souls, clustered around a giant green and a pond that has dried up so rapidly over our Summer of Drought that you can walk across it to the little bird house.
Bit too small for a micro pub, sadly.
The OS extract reveals the attractive hills, and trails, and commons.
Oddly, Wikipedia descibes a village of stone quarries and sink holes,
and an area once known as the worst slum in Surrey, which is a bit like the best cask in Lincolnshire, I guess.
We’re here for lunch at the White Hart, where a sign in the rambling courtyard claims part of it (hopefully not the cask) date to 1309. Yet another thing older than America.
I have never seen so many beams in a pub.
It looks very Brunning & Price, without the passive agressive instructions but with bonus smell of boiled cabbage. Actually, it’s a Marston pub, perhaps their smartest house,
not that you’d know it was Marstons.
For a split second I wondered if we should have booked, it being Sunday lunchtime and all, but it’s very relaxed.
“Sit where you like” say the terrific staff. Unfortunately, all the tables are covered in more unnecessary stuff than a Guildford Spoons. I mean, we have mobile phones, scrap the paper and let us use those codes to order.
Talking of Brunning & Pricey;
Does a Surrey dining pub really need six (6) Locale beers that customers have never heard of ?
Tellingly, the next customers ask “Do you still sell Courage Best ?“.
But Mrs RM is thrilled with her Titsey from up the road, the Pilgrim Exile is good enough, and the barman seems delighted that Marston have given them rare free range over the ales.
A weird soundtrack veers crazily from ABBA to Midnight Oil to the Little River Band to this one;
and the food doesn’t smell of boiled cabbage.
Which is nice.
Hey, I’ve heard of Three Acre brewery. Their beers used to appear from time to time at the Brew Society cafe/bar near Leeds City station, not to mention the Fat Cat in Sheffield and half a dozen other pubs last year, according to my spreadsheet.
Not so much this year.
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I kid you not, I’ve seen more Three Acre than Greene King IPA these last couple of years, and not just down in Sussex where they’ve been on the bar in Spoons, but recently in the Olde Vic in Stockport. Quietly excellent.
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There were so many beers on the bar I missed the Three Acre !
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Martin, if a venue compels me to order via an app (or its World-Wide Web page), it had better provide me with its wifi network SSID and password.
One of the venues I used to like, and which was primarily a cider brewery(!), did away with its print menus, so I had no idea what was on offer and how much would it cost, but then committed the fatal error of not letting me on its wifi (the network did not appear on my laptop computer).
I exited the venue having ordered nothing – never to return. I unsubscribed to its e-mail list.
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