The County Hotel (Ashford, Kent)

Three Friends

I am very lucky, I have 3 friends.  That may not sound very lucky, but I have known these guys since I was 11 years old.  We don't see each other very often, but I had a brain wave at the start of the year.  I thought we should meet up more often, we thought about a date that would not conflict with birthdays, anniversaries etc, and finished up with the first of the month.  I nicknamed the event 'Friends First', although my wife did seem a bit miffed (what does that make her?  wife second? family next?  how about Family Infinity!).  [by the way, my birthday is on the 1st and I forgot about that]

Rick, Dean, Richard and I try to meet up on the 1st of the month, every month.  Due to holidays and weddings and other things, this was our '1st' for July.

I am not going to write a long blog every time I go out with my friends.  There's not a lot that I can actually put on the blog (most of what we discuss is rubbish, or too rude or ridiculous to share), also this blog is meant to focus on the spoons journey.  We talked a lot about the blog of course, I think they thought it was OK but don't really understand why I am doing it.  I refer to it as a 'vanity project'.

Last night I learnt something very exciting, this spoons has two different types of carpet.  I have been to this pub more times than I can count, and yet I found out something new.  Who knew. 

It was pretty empty last night.  We had a good laugh about various topics.  Being a Dr. Who fan I was asked what I thought about the new doctor.  In my view it will be interesting, but I do think the decision is a 'political correct' one, we will have to wait and see.

Richard ordered a sharer, which we shared!.  Rick ordered nachos which we shared!.  I had already had a very nice roast dinner before going out, but that did not stop me from helping them.

We drank a lot.  I had a Kronenbourg 1664 to start.  For some bizarre reason the pub are now putting this drink into what looked like an oversized wine class.  The others all referred to it as 'gay', and I was a bit embarrassed.  I asked the guy at the bar if I had done something to offend him, but he tells me this is now the 'correct' glass for this drink.  So it was pale ale and bitter for the rest of the evening.

I still love this pub, and I am really pleased to have great friends and really appreciate that we still care about each other.  We used to drink in The Swan together, but that is now boarded-up.   We did start going to the County before that, mainly because the beer was cheaper and it was easier to get a seat.

Ricks daughter gave us a lift home (thank you), and had nice things to say about my blog (big thank you).  I finally got home at 11ish, went to bed.

21 of 50: The West Gate Inn (Canterbury, Kent)

Reward Meal

When I went to school (back in the dark ages) we had 'Dinner Ladies', of course in our new PC correct world today we have 'Lunch Time Supervisors'.  As I was growing up I was used to the idea of Dinner meaning the meal between breakfast and the evening thing.  So the weekend had started badly, gamma and gamma-p had invited us over for dinner and offered to make a curry.  Originally I had planned to see them during the day, and then go out with my friends in the evening.  Then the wife reminded me that Dinner is evening and not mid day, so I could not go out with my mates and also visit my lovely child.

gamma lives in Canterbury with his girlfriend gamma-p.  They are both students.  gamma-p makes a really great curry.  Student life is probably not much fun (although they don't actually go to the uni as the holidays have started).  Their life has been made less fun as their accommodation does not have any running water any more.  They have been given bottled water as compensation, but long story short, curry was off the menu.   They decided that they would take myself, the wife, and delta out for a meal instead (at Lunch time, which is Dinner time, which means I could have gone out with my mates after all).

We took the drive to Canterbury, but thanks to the smelly road being shut (the one that goes past Quest or Givaudan or Bachelors or Campbell), we had to drive through Ashford town, the traffic was normal (i.e. bad), a nice drive to Canterbury itself, but then it blocked up just outside and took another 20 minutes to drive about 2 miles.  

Everyone was in good sprits and we took a walk along the river into the town.  A fallen tree blocked the path.  At this point gamma said "that reminds me, there is a tree blocking the path".  We could not go under the tree, we could not go over the tree, we could not go around the tree, so we went through the tree. 

Once into the town we made the walk to the West Gate Inn pub for lunner.  We did go in, so it isn't a complete failure, but the pub was very busy and no empty table for five (except in the smoking area), the general feeling was that we should go somewhere else.  I should state as this point that I am happy to still count this pub towards my target, as it seems I have been here before with a college from work and some business colleges from Germany, and we did have a drink.  It counts, OK.  We left via the back passage (oh err).

After much debate we decided we wanted Fish and Chips and we walked back into town and found 'Maria's Coffee Lounge'.  It was not busy, but you still have to go to the front to place your order and there are no menus at the table.  gamma and gamma-p went up to order.  Given that everyone wanted Fish and Chips, of course we all ended up with something different.  Chicken and Chips, Sausage Sandwich and Chips and I had the cheese omelette.  (i am sorry, but the omelette was very poor, the cheese had no taste).  The toilets have a code you have to enter, but if you push hard you can just go in.  I don't think they made us feel very welcome to be honest and I now know why it wasn't busy.

The rest of the day was pretty normal for us, a trip to PoundLand (waggon wheels, thank you), a nice walk back and some good conversation, and then we went back home taking gamma's washing home with us.

delta was keen to get home as he had a plan for the 'ultimate burger', he was inspired from a Crusty Kob that he bought a few weeks back from the co-op.  His idea was to build a super burger (hand made using mince beef and onion), slice the kob in half and make it into a burger (adding cheese).  So for the evening we put this plan into action.  the wife suggested slicing the bread twice and putting bacon into the top layer.   Safe to say the burger was very good, and it reminded me of a Victoria Sponge.  His new invention is now called the Victorious Burger.

Thank you gamma and gamma-p for having us and paying for lunch.

Royal Victoria Pavilion (Ramsgate, Kent)

Too Early

Of course the pub is not open yet.  The original open date that I saw was July 18.  I am getting the results of my MRI on that day and thought that afterwards I could come to this brand new pub and either celebrate the good news or commiserate the bad news.  The wife told me that I was wrong, and that it must mean July 2018.  In the end we are both wrong, according to the official web site it is ‘August 2017’.  So just after my birthday.

Parking in Ramsgate is not fun. There is a lot of on street parking, but no spaces.  When a space does become available there is a mad rush of people fighting to get to it.  We caused a bit of anger whilst looking for a space.  Finally, we went to the carpark after the town, and it was nearly empty, great news you say, well if you want to buy a piece of real estate maybe. £4 for one hour, I don’t want to own the damn spot.  I was the 3rd person in the queue to get to the cash machine, moan, and then drive off.  No wonder it had loads of spaces.  Come on Ramsgate, sort it out.

In the end we drove back out of Ramsgate and found a space along the top of the hill, there was a ‘it’s a knockout’ thing going on, so it was busy, but thanks to a skilful bit of parking we were finally here.  The toilets nearby were horrible, The wife said she would now needs a full sanitisation.   The walk down to the town is really nice, the cliff has some lovely flower arrangements and there is a great view. Although it was a long walk it was worth it.

We walked back in the main town. It was getting a lot hotter and the back of my neck was starting to burn. As you walk into the town there is a ‘wilko’, so we went in there (we went in the ‘out’ door and nearly got squished), found some cheap(ish) spray sun tan location. 

Ice cream next on the agenda, I had a great mint choc chip and a honeycomb thing, Katherine went coffee and salted caramel.  We sat inside, I am not sure if we should have done, but no-one asked us to leave.  We used the toilets outside the new spoons and took a few photos

Then we went to the Queens Head to get a beer.  It’s a really nice pub, there is a young girl outside singing Maroon 5 (the wife's favourite band).  It’s almost a shame that I am only doing a spoons blog as it could mean that I miss out on good local pubs.  It has a strange layout, with quite a small main bar and three entrances.  Most people are sitting outside, but I am pleased to get some shade.  Katherine says she is happy to stay here and I can see why.  We just about get a view of the harbour. 

Sadly someone has a motorbike and wants to rev the damn thing just in front of the singer, I was quite impressed she didn’t miss a note.

After a while we decided to move on. The Wife was not ready to go home. She had text gamma several times as she wanted to pop in and see him on the way home.  He ignored the texts as he normally does. 

We took the walk back to the car, it really was lovely, the breeze had died down a little and by the time we got to the top we were both feeling very hot and bothered.   

Once in the car we took a drive back via Canterbury.  I phoned gamma and he was happy for us to visit, so we popped in and chatted for a while and then finally back home to Ashford.   A perfect weekend, and still time to watch a movie and grab some Chinese from Wok Express (our personal favourite).  Gamma loves it too, shame he decided to move to Canterbury isn't it.

20 of 50: Sir Norman Wisdom (Deal, Kent)

The Blog Starts Here!

This is really where the blog starts, this is my first entry since starting the blog properly.  I have decided that I need to take more pictures and try to make the log entries a bit more interesting.

The day started in an unusual way, our son delta got up before us.  Delta probably does not know that mornings are a real thing, so something was obviously different.  Today he is going with some friends to Chessington.  This leaves me and the wife on our own again.

Yesterday we went to Katherine’s cousin’s wedding in High Halden, with pims and morris dancing on the village green.  It was a really great day, and best of all I was driving, which means today I can do the drinking.

Katherine suggested a trip to see the new spoons in Ramsgate, it’s not open yet, but it might be good to see what progress they are making.  We started the journey and put on some happy tunes (Will Young’s excellent ‘Echoes’).  The sav-nav suggested going via Dover, which I did think was a bit strange, but if it avoids going via Canterbury then it seemed like a good idea to me. 

There is a stretch of the A20 after Folkestone that for some reason is limited to 40 miles, this was originally because of ‘operation stack’, but it’s been like this for over a year. 

We drove through Dover (which I am told is the best thing you can do, although I disagree slightly as it has a good spoons and a nice curry house ‘Cinnamon Island’).  Katherine nearly crashed into an Italian driver who decided that he didn’t want to go on the ferry after all and he cut across the roundabout straight in front of her.  It is the first time she has been scared that she might actually cause damage to her lovely car.

As we drove on our sat nav (mine is called ‘greta’, I tried to get her to call hers ‘ping’ but she was having none of it), told us to turn off to the left towards Deal.  I thought it was strange and said so, it was at this point I was told that I never listen and that Deal had been the destination all along.  Of course, this was not a problem for me.

As we pulled into Deal (after driving though Ham and Sandwich), there was some event going on that meant all the parking was conned off on the main street.  As drove along the front we found a marking space and prepared for a walk into the town. 

It was then Katherine gave the bad news, ‘we’ve already done this one’.  She remembered a recent(ish) visit to Deal and we had already done it.  I still think it is worth a blog entry, and it screws with my numbering, but we were already here.  The sun was shining, it was 28degrees.  We walking though the town and the memories came back, there was a market here last time, that’s where that smelly cheese was, etc.  And then the best bit, the pub was new, it was not the same one we had been to before.  The journey was back on track! 

My heart sank as we moved nearer the pub, from the outside it looked like a crappy old furniture shop (I later found it that it used to be a furniture shop, I don’t know if it was crappy or not).  We went inside and saw the familiar things, a unique carpet, some nice fancy seating, the ‘toilet’s upstairs’ sign.  We walked into the back area to find a table and I thought we might have taken a wrong turn, it felt like the old BHS café we had in Ashford.  Even the carpet was ashamed and did not want to be seen in there. 

We were hungry and ordered the ‘big breakfast’ (without mushrooms and tomato), and a nice pint of beer (perfect for breakfast), it was 11:30 by this time.  The wall next to our table (lucky 13) looked dirty.  I said to Katherine that we really need something to happen to make the blog more interesting, the best I had was a man with a squeaky shoe stand near me.  I did consider tripping him up but felt that he would not appreciate it.   Is the blog actually worth the effort without explosions and people with wood legs falling over?  A quick visit to the toilet, which was very fancy, and off we go.

After breakfast (Katherine insisted on calling it brunch, but that means I miss a meal, why would I want to do that), we popped into Lyndas.  I had left my sunglasses at work on the Friday so needed a new pair, this shop sells a bit of everything.  We brought glasses and a new wallet (mine was falling apart), a gift for Katherines friend for her new home and a purse.  I don’t know if Lynda served us or not, but the woman working there did not really seem to be happy to be there, I felt like I had insulted her by having the cheek to spend over £20 in her shop.  I was pleased to leave.

We popped into poundland, got a 5 pack of mentos (living it up) and some peanut brittle.  They also sold sunglasses, and unlike happy Lyndas they went one step further and had no staff at all, just ‘self-service’.  Then we went to the beach.  The beach was lovely, the weather perfect. Beta will tell you that every day is beach weather, she loves the beach and really would go rain or shine.  However today really was perfect.

My legs were starting to go red with the sun. 

I would have been happy to stay longer, but then remembered that we only put 2 and a bit hours on the car parking, which, thanks to parking in another country, would be a 20 minute walk, so we made our way back to the car. We got back to the car with 1 minute to spare.  I did suggest that we stay longer, but Katherine suggested we go to Ramsgate to see the new spoons there. I left Deal with a sense of Déjà vu.

The Samuel Peto (Folkestone, Kent)

To be honest we were a little bored, delta had gone out for a day of fun with friends and left us with gamma.  gamma is a fond lover of the 'all you can eat' type of thing, but was interested in my previous tale of how awesome this pub actually it.  

So we took a drive down, found a parking space near by (where I could not remember the bloody number plate for Katherines' Nissan 'puke' [as the kids call it]).  Anyway, the pub was busy but we were able to find a table upstairs in the pews.  

The wife's face dropped as I opened my phone and started to place the order.  For me, not having to speak to other humans or queue is perfect, so the ability to place the order at the table, well that is amazing.   

Food and beer arrived, always at the same quality level (good but not fantastic, never enough chips).  The pub itself is amazing, and like most of the spoons we have been to they manage to put the toilets on a different floor to the everything else (genius).  

I also like the pun of 'hymn' and 'hers' outside the toilets.  gamma calls me 'pun man' thanks to my rather crappy jokes.   After the meal we walked past the 'all you can eat' and promised ourselves never to go back there (as the quality dips every time, and the price rises).  

Another visit to my favourite stores, Poundstretcher, PoundLand etc., a few bits of useless rubbish purchased, and off home.  

Another fine day.