Small Talk - Kent Micropub Tour 2022

It was May 2019 when a contingent from Oxford CAMRA trundled down the M2 to Kent in a minibus on a micropub mission.
And we must have enjoyed ourselves, because we set out to do it all over again this November.

Making good time, we parked the bus in Herne Bay at 12:30, then strolled down the High Street in search of a venue for the first beer of the trip.
And the first micro which we found open was simply called 'The Pub'...

The Pub (73 High Street, Herne Bay, CT6 5LQ - web)
With twelve of us on the weekend trip, we could do a pretty good job of filling the smaller venues.  And by prancing around outside taking a picture, I ensured that I ended up at the back of the queue.
"I'm not used to having a queue", said the landlord.

Queue

Hang on a minute...
Matter-of-fact name; retro hi-fi, draft Time & Tide beers...this was looking very familiar.  We were in a micro called 'The Pub' in Broadstairs in 2019, which now appears to have closed.  Any connection? I'm not sure - with a name like that they're a tough search on the internet.

Furniture comprised of high tables and stools which I couldn't get comfortable on along one side of the room, plus regular tables painted blue with metal canteen-style seating at them.
The blackboard advertised a good selection of Kent ales at £3.50 each, from best bitter to porter.  I opted for Shivering Sands 'Maunsell Bitter', a crisp malty bitter, named after the WW2 forts which were built nearby on the Thames Estuary. 

"Feel free to put some music on", we were told.  I'd just about looked what was behind Dark Side of the Moon before being unceremoniously barged out the way by Tanya, who took charge and selected Led Zep's Houses of the Holy to entertain us during our visit.

Finishing beers at the Pub, we wandered a short distance down the road to The Firkin Frog...

The Firkin Frog (157 Station Road, Herne Bay, CT6 5QA)
Always trust a pub with Firkin in it's name...maybe.
We were welcomed by a great little dog who came to see what all the commotion was about as we traipsed into the bar.  Three handpumps dispensed two beers from Herne brewer Goody alongside a Milestone 'Maid Marion' from Notts.

The comfy front room contained the bar and three tables; guitars decorated the wall of the corridor, which in turn led to a snug that looked a bit like someone's sitting room.

 

The 'Firkin Good', brewed especially for the pub, was a decent enough pint, whilst the Milestone was a bone of contention, returned by one of our group and sampled by a pub local who turned his nose up at it.  I noticed that our judgement on beer quality wasn't quite trusted as it remained on sale with the boss insisting it was a new barrel and should be okay. 

In a day of disappointingly plain WCs, the Firkin Frog won the award for best toilet decor with its saucy seaside postcard smut... 

Mild smut in the gents WC. 

With a schedule to stick to and a minibus that I didn't want to drive off without me, there wasn't quite enough time to explore Herne Bay properly.  I was sorry to miss out on a stroll along the pier.
But I did get a pic of the clock tower in the sunshine - the world's first freestanding clock tower, built in 1837...

Our group headed to a third micro, the Bouncing Barrel. 
As I'd been to the Bouncing Barrel previously, I decided to break ranks, abandoning the micropub theme for half-an-hour to check out the great looking Rose Inn...

The Rose Inn (111 Mortimer Street, Herne Bay, CT6 5ER - web)
This is every bit the proper pub: red cushioned bench seating around the sides of the front room; a fine carpet; award-winning hanging baskets; meat raffle on a Sunday.

So busy was I boldly asking the locals propping up the bar if I could squeeze in and take a picture of the pump clip, that I neglected to get any photo of the pub interior.
It was the kind of pump clip that you can get away with snapping a pic of...

"It's not coming home though, is it?" commented the chap who'd made space for me.
Or is it?!

There were three cask ales in total from Britain's oldest brewery: Shepherd Neame 'Master Brew' and 'Late Red', alongside the football special.
The 'It's Coming Home' was a decent 4.2% golden ale which I thoroughly enjoyed, sat in the back room where the lunchtime World Cup fixture was showing on a big screen. 

We caught up with the rest of the Oxford group at
Parkerville (219 High Street, Herne Bay, CT6 5AD)...

This one-time musical instrument store had a fair few customers for mid Saturday afternoon, from the local ale drinkers to the G&T ladies sat at the bar.

Four cask ales were on offer, all served on gravity from a temperature-controlled room behind the bar: Goachers house bitter, another appearance for Shivering Sands 'Maunsell Bitter', an amber ale from Langton, and a Northdown 'Tidal Moon'. 
The Tidal Moon was advertised as being a port-infused stout, leading us to pick it straight away then complain, nice as it was, that we couldn't taste any port.

As our minibus pulled up outside, orders to drink-up were issued and we departed from Parkerville, on our way to the next stops on the micropub excursion.
More on that in the next post, as we head from Birchington-on-Sea to Cliftonville and the quality of my pictures deteriorates in line with how much Kentish cider I consume.

Kent Micro Pub Tour

Part 1

The late May bank holiday weekend saw a contingent from Oxford CAMRA heading down the M2 towards Kent.  Over the course of two days we planned to take advantage of the eastern part of Kent having such a proximity of micro pubs, visiting as many of these as possible, including the original where the whole phenomena started.

Reaching Whitstable at 1.30pm, our first stop was The Handsome Sam...

The Handsome Sam (3 Canterbury Road, CT5 4HJ)

Located at the southern end of the High Street, just under the railway bridge, this micro has opened in the premises of a former antiques shop.  The first drinks were served in November 2014 when former radiologist Chris Williamson finished the conversion to a pub.
The opening date marked the 4 year anniversary of the passing of Sam, Chris's much loved cat, adopted from an animal shelter and spending over 20 years with him.
As ways to remember your beloved pet go, this is a pretty spectacular one.  In addition to the pubs frontage, Sam appears on artwork, tea towels and beer mats within.

Guitars and pictures of Sam dominate the decor in The Handsome Sam.

The furniture is of a style that we'll see lots of over the coming weekend - a couple of large communal high tables, with all seating designed so as to ensure that anyone left standing is at the same height as those seated.  Plus no nooks and crannies and hideaways - it's laid out to have visitors looking outwards into the room to encourage conversation.

The temperature-controlled cellar room here is covered in canvas and labelled 'the beer tent', which was a nice touch.  Served from that tent were four local beers, poured straight from the cask, from which I picked 'CQB', a 4% pale ale brewed by Hythe micro Range Ales.  And very pleasant it was too.

It was just a short stroll down the bustling High Street of Whitstable to the second pub of the day...

Rock'n'Roll - The Black Dog, Whitstable

The Black Dog (66 High Street, Whitstable, CT5 1BB)
If you know your Led Zeppelin, it's no surprise to find that the owner of this pub is a huge fan and named the pub after one of their songs.
And amongst an assortment of quirky decorations is a model of the Hindenburg, from which the band took their name and which features on the cover of their debut album.
The pub was converted from a delicatessen.  One rectangular room, it's painted in darker colours bucking the modern trend of bright and airy pastel-shaded pubs. Walls are covered with numerous framed paintings.

My only regret was that we were on such a tight schedule that this was just a flying visit.  We had to make our humble apologies to the barman for not staying longer.
A swift half of tasty Tonbridge Brewery 'Velvet Raven' for me, then hastily back aboard the minibus.  

Micro Pub WC Shot 1: My Aim is True

From here we made a short drive eastwards to discover the delights of Herne Bay.

Bouncing Barrel (20 Bank Street, Herne Bay, CT6 5EA)
Admittedly, not the prettiest of pubs from the outside, but inside it's bright, with t-shirts and hops hanging from the ceiling and a friendly crowd of local folk.

Bouncing Barrel, Herne Bay

The Bouncing Barrel has seating for around 20 persons on large old workshop tables, with casks and cider boxes situated in a temperature-controlled room towards the rear of the pub.  There's no bar counter, so we form an orderly line to be served at the door of the cask room.
Of the three ales available, the Gadds 'No.5' was the most appealing to me and ensured I was doing a fine job of sticking to the Kent breweries.
The name comes from the bouncing bomb, the story of which was made famous in WWII movie 'The Dambusters'.  The barrel bomb was tested in the waters off the coast nearby.

Hop decorations and the origin of the pub name at the Bouncing Barrel

Micro Pub WC Shot 2: Seaside Postcard Sauce

I made a quick detour to see the sea before walking a short way down the road to the next pub.  The front at Herne Bay looked lovely now that the clouds were dispersing to give us a glorious sunny afternoon.

The sun shining on the sea-front at Herne Bay.
Lovely weather, but not quite enough to tempt Charles to take his coat off.

Parkerville (219 High Street, Herne Bay, CT6 5AD)
This was formerly Macs Music store.  It has two rooms, with the bar in the front and a stage for live music events in the rear.  Whilst the Bouncing Barrel had been very much ale and cider orientated, Parkerville displayed a blackboard with a large range of gins.
With four ales available on cask, I picked a 'Simcoe single-hop IPA' from Cattle Shed Brew Co, a 'craft' off-shoot of Old Dairy, located in Tenterden, Kent.

Micro Pub WC Shot 3: Note Edinburgh pub map - handy
when in Kent.

Around ¾ of a mile onwards was the Tankerton area of Whitstable where, you guessed it, there was yet another micro to pop our heads into.  We were on a roll!

Tankerton Arms (135 Tankerton Road, Whitstable, CT5 2AW - web)
This is a pub which puzzled me late at night, writing this post.  Almost all of the pictures returned by a Google search looked different to mine.
With a bit of investigation it turns out they've recently moved a few doors down the road from the first location they started at back in 2013.
The pub is run by Nigel and Patsy Ranger and named after the original (considerably larger) Tankerton Arms in the local vicinity, which closed in 1999.

It's a single room pub with ample space and most of the seating on stools and high tables. To the rear, by the small bar, is a snug area with a good selection of reading material and games.

Queuing for the ales at the Tankerton Arms.

The Tankerton Arms gets bonus points for bringing out two trays of sandwiches that were left over from a recent event and which were graciously gobbled down by our party.

We'd received some useful information from the locals we'd chatted to that our next planned pub, The Butchers Arms, was closed during the afternoon until 6pm.  This necessitating a change of plan.  One of their suggestions, diverting from the micro-theme, was a visit to the local Goodys Brewery.
Goody's Brewery (Braggs Lane, Herne Bay, CT6 7NP - web)
This was a great, unexpected delight!
The brewing kit was in a barn, with a tap room in a shed-like construction to the side of it.
The bar offered four of the breweries beers, as well as a wider selection of bottle conditioned ales, all with some kind of play on the word 'good'.
I picked 'Dead Good' a 4% amber bitter brewed with Kentish hops in association with the local Morris dancers.  Always a good sign.  Those Morris dancers know their ale.
Sat outside on the patio next to green fields in the sunshine, this was a tranquil and charming place, to kick-back and relax at the end of Saturday afternoon.

So, a brilliant day so far.  More on the evenings shenanigans in the next post ⇨

Oxford CAMRA chairman Pete, bouncing up and down with joy at the successful
detour to Goody's Brewery.