A spot of twitching and a pint....

Here's a post which might appeal to a certain regular commenter on this blog. Lovely summer's evening last night so my wife and I went out for a drive out to Bough Beech Reservoir. There's a "hide" there where you can view Herons, Coot's, ducks, geese, Kingfishers. If you've never been I'd recommend a trip and, particularly, at sunset. Very peaceful. Obviously that's not the bit which might appeal to the regular, let's just call him PB. We then drove on to a place which I would never have known was there called The Greyhound, at Charcot, which is a curious little hamlet, set back off the main road, near Chiddingstone Causeway. The pub, and I think the rest of the village, had a power cut and it was starting to get dark so we sat outside on a rickety wooden picnic bench at the front. Fortunately the pumps weren't effected by the cut so I sampled the Tonbridge Brewery Coppernob which was very welcome and perfectly passable to my untrained palate. The landlord seemed quite a friendly host and we noticed that there was a reasonably priced menu so we could well go back. I'd heard that the Fleur de Lis at Leigh had been recently refurbished, and it was on our way back home, so it seemed natural to go there for another half pint (I'm driving remember.) Turns out that it's a Greene King pub so the beer selection was quite limited but decent enough. The Landlady allowed us to sample the beers before committing to our choice of Golden Speckled Hen which to me also seemed perfectly passable. They were serving food and the menu didn't look half bad. The interior décor was a little too squeaky clean for my tastes but my wife loved it and it was clear that they'd spent a pretty penny on the place. We were told that the exterior has been promised an upgrade also to make it look more appealing. We'll definitely be back there as this looks like the hosts really mean business and want the place to succeed. It's an easy bike ride to Leigh and not that far to walk from Tonbridge which always helps if you fancy more than one drink. We'll be experimenting with other establishments over the summer so watch this space and, landlords I cannot be bribed by free pints and meals into writing good things about your boozers. Not a chance. Homemade cheeseburger, chips and sticky toffee pudding, three pints of Coppernob and a small Glenmorangie chaser? That'll do nicely!...