retiredmartin

October 2026. Tonbridge.

I decided to let the train take the strain from Sheffield to Tonbridge; at £29.60 advance it was probably cheaper with diesel over £2 a pint or whatever they sell it in.

Sheff-St Pancras, quick dash, St Pancras-London Bridge, quick dash, London Bridge to Tonbridge. I just wish it was easy to add a longer break between legs to nip out and get a pint on those advance fares.

At Tonbridge Station a couple of primary school children, smartly uniformed, politely ask if I’ve any change to buy a drink as it’s hot (feels like 24 says my phone) and they haven’t had a drink all afternoon. I give them a quid, they thank me effusively and they head off to the corner shop. But am I unknowingly funding their Shandy Bass Freddo addiction ?

Mrs RM was on parental care duties, and arranged to pick me up just over the road from the Foresters Arms. I even sent her a map. “Have a drink while you wait” she says, she’s a good wife.

The Foresters used to be a really good pub, last one out of Tonbridge on the road to soporific Southborough and the in-laws.

It even had a spell in the Beer Guide just before COVID, pitched at a more youthful crowd than the average Sheps.

But today, though the interior hasn’t changed, the beer has.

I read that Sheps is (again) “looking at all options” for its future as beer sales drop and the costs of running pubs rise. And the Shepherd Neame pubs I visit are often painfully quiet, the cask ranges reduced to Whitstable Bay and no sign of Spitfire, or even Bishop’s Finger in the actual Bishop’s Finger.

“No loss” say some, “the beer’s not a patch on what it was when I were a lad etc etc“. But I’ve had decent Master Brew, if not often, and one of my Top 10 pints was Spitfire in an East London Spoons.

What careless stewardship of brands, to let Spitfire whither while promoting something called “Bear Island East Coast Pale”.

I suppose if you can charge six pounds seventy (£6.70) for an inoffensive but dull keg pale pint rather than a fiver for slow moving cask it’s good business.

At £6.70 I made that pint last, eking out the last of our Indian Summer facing the A26, swapping tables to avoid the worst of the ash tray smell.

When the beer is this dull, you get your value from watching the comings and goings of the Golden Hour; the tradies popping in for a pint, ladies lingering over a bottle of rose, the pizza trade.

I made that pint last well over an hour, but was glad when Mrs RM arrived at the designated pick up point, me waving and pointing to the parking place.

She drove straight past me.