Having decided not to attend the Bluebell Railway Beer
Festival, for reasons previously explained, I thought that a visit to Lewes
would be a decent substitute, as well as a good idea. Travelling by bus, via
Tunbridge Wells, would enable me to call in at the O2 shop in the town in order
to sort out the data allowance issues I’d been experiencing with my Samsung
mobile phone. These had arisen whilst on holiday and occurred because I was,
quite rightly, too tight to pay the £100, yes £100 for onboard internet
connection! Like many cruise lines Ambassador rely on Elon Musk’s Starlink
system for communications and web browsing whilst at sea, so that’s another reason not to
cough up a tonne for someone who’s already got far more money than sense.
I didn’t miss not being connected at all in fact it was
rather than nice but when we docked, and bearing in mind that we primarily
sailing around the British Isles, I did occasionally log on to catch up with
emails and in particular, an ongoing application to unlock one of my frozen
pension funds. Anyway, I jumped on a bus going towards Tunbridge Wells, and
since I was travelling before 9.30am, the start time for UK bus passes during
the week, I had to pay for my fare! It was the princely sum of £3.00, but the
price didn’t really justify knocking 10 minutes off my journey.
I called in at the O2 shop, as planned, to confirm I was
paying the correct tariff for my phone and to establish how much many months
were left on my current contract. There was just over a year remaining, but I
must surely have paid for my Samsung Galaxy several times over, since acquiring
it two years ago! Moving swiftly on I walked along to the bus stop but
unfortunately, I’d just missed the No. 29 Brighton bus, which meant a 25-minute
wait for the next one.
One of the reasons for going to Lewes was to return a dozen
or so empty bottles to return to the brewery shop. I’m sure some readers will
recall me undertaking a similar journey earlier in the year, for the exactly
the same purpose. There were too many to carry on that occasion, hence me
making a return trip, but since last Christmas a large number of empty Harvey’s
beer bottles had accumulated in our summer house.
As I’ve written in the past Harvey’s are one of the very few
UK breweries that still wash and reuse their bottles, and good luck to them,
because I think it’s an excellent idea. Far better for the bottles to be
refilled, rather than perfectly decent specimens ending up in bottle banks,
smashed to smithereens. It’s worth noting too that a lot more energy has to be
used to create to create brand new bottles rather than simply cleaning and
washing empty ones, ready to be used again.
I received the princely sum of £1.20 for those bottles, and
with my load considerably lightened, resisted the temptation to buy more. I
could perhaps, have picked up a few cans, and I did at one stage have the
intention of returning later to the shop and doing just that, but it never
happened. I set off to find somewhere to eat, and I also wanted a drink, as foolishly
I didn’t bring any water with me.
The bus journey had seemed to take forever,
primarily because after reaching Crowborough the bus was routed round what I
would call, for what of a better phrase, the “arse end” of the town. That’s not
implying there’s anything wrong with that part of Crowborough, and it’s
certainly not rundown or anything like that, in fact it’s quite well maintained
as one would expect from a well-to-do, leafy suburb. It’s just that without any
pubs or shops, it comes across as one area of sterile housing after another,
some of it very much “des reses” but boring all the same.
Eventually, the bus worked its way back around to the south
of the town and rejoined the A26. It’s that part of the journey where the
imposing bulk of the South Downs escarpment first comes into view, bringing
back memories of a succession of long-distance walks, along the South Downs Way, twenty or
more years ago. Time was marching on
though, and there was still the bottom end of Ashdown Forest to negotiate,
before the bus eventually pulled into Uckfield. Further delays followed as we
pulled into the bus station, before eventually making our way out of the town and on towards Lewes.
There was no escaping the South Downs as the bus approached
Lewes, but I was already having serious doubts about how I should make the
return journey, especially if it was after a belly full of beer. Spoiler alert,
I made the return journey by rail, despite having to pay for it, and missing
the free ride home that my bus pass would have given me. As things turned out I didn’t have more than
a few pints of beer, but still enough for me to make use of the toilet
facilities on the train home.
So, something to eat, and a coffee to drunk as well, before
getting stuck into a few of Lewes’s finest pubs. I noticed the presence of a
Gail’s Bakery, just before I alighted from the bus at the bottom of School
Hill, after first returning my empty bottles to Harvey’s Shop, I retraced my
route and set foot inside the much-vaunted Gail’s for the first time. It wasn’t
surprising to find this upmarket bakery trading in an equally upmarket town
like Lewes, but posh nosh or not, they didn’t have the Cornish Pasty I was
lusting after.
However, on the other side of the road, was a branch of the
rapidly expanding Cornish Bakery chain, where I was able to obtain exactly what
I was looking for, as evidenced in the attached photo. I sat outside enjoying
my artisanal lunch, which was just right for the occasion. So much so that it
was worth asking what Copilot had to say about my spot of al fresco lunch.
“That looks like a proper little moment of calm, Paul — a
pasty with a decent-looking coffee, the sort of simple pairing that somehow
feels more restorative than it has any right to be. The pasty’s crust has that
slightly blistered, golden finish that suggests it’ll give a satisfying crack
when you bite in, and the coffee’s foam looks like it was made by someone who
actually cares about getting the milk right rather than just blasting it with
steam “.
“It’s the kind of table you linger at for a few minutes
longer than planned, letting the warmth of the cup settle you while the world
keeps moving around. A small, quiet pleasure — but those are often the ones
that stick”.
It’s quite scary for AI to be summarising my lunchtime treat
like that, and all from a simple photograph, but that’s the direction we appear
to be heading, at the moment. In the meantime, let’s leave things here, before
getting down to the nitty gritty of what this blog is still all about, a decent
pint, in a decent pub. See you in the next post.
