We've had our breakfast and I've taken T1 back to the surgery via a Tesco Express to try and get some lunch for him. It's a very small one. They had no veggie meal deals, incredible, so had to cobble together a lunch. Now I'm walking back to the hotel again so I can have a shower and get ready to go out for the day.
I just walk past the Granville theatre which I guess is their equivalent of the Leas Cliff Hall. Hard to tell how big it is, seems to be the same sort of acts playing there. Maybe higher profile acts actually, even though one of them is Jim Davidson 1 I'm walking back along the sea front and will try and make sense of these notes in a minute 2.
Plan for the day mostly to look around for a present for the Doctor who's looking after T1. Haven't seen anywhere nice and gifty yet, might be difficult. I might get on a bus or a train to the next town. we're not far from Broadstairs, but there might be more nice bits of Ramsgate that I haven't found yet.
Well that's the end of my dictated contemporaneous notes and it's only from the beginning of day two. We had cooked breakfast both days, and you had to ask for the vegan sausages, but it was all fine. Vegan yoghurts and non dairy milk as standard, plus hash browns, beans, tomatoes, cereal, coffee, all ok.
As part of my walk to and from the doctor's surgery I did walk past some nice bits. There are some blue plaques, I saw one at the Albion Hotel where Queen Victoria stayed for four months. Round the corner is a house Wilkie Collins stayed in, and there was another one for Mary Shelley. These are all obviously from a different era, getting on for two hundred years I suppose some of them. Probably not a lot of recent royal or literary stays.
I did find a nice independent pirate and smuggler themed bookshop and cafe, I had vegan cake and coffee there and bought a book as a gift and a card. There's not much to recommend the high street or shopping type areas. Then to Waitrose, got some lunch, and some truffles as part of the gift, so jobs all done now. I am free for the rest of the day.
I had a look at Ramsgate Tunnels and if it had worked out better for timing I might have done the tour. But I was thinking, I can do this tour and go to a pub, or I can go to two pubs. You think you can guess don't you? Well we'll see.
I took a walk uphill in Ramsgate, Ramsgate is very hilly, looking for The Conqueror. This is a micropub I had heard of, and it was OK. Beer was good, and it was friendly. I spoke to a nice couple from Watford who were actually staying in Folkestone and were there in Ramsgate as part of a beer guide day out. They'd tried to do more pubs I like, including The Firkin and The Potting Shed but had found the opening hours insane. They had been in The Three Mariners though. Also another lovely guy from Richmond who'd done a lot of travelling, and then a retired school caretaker who now paints portraits. The layout of this pub was a bit cluttered though. No bar again, like the Hovelling Boat, but it felt a bit too full even with only four customers in. It's a bit the nature of micropubs, but this wasn't as comfortable as most of them.
Now in theory I could fit in another pub, but which one? Ramsgate does have a lot of pubs, some of which look good. Some. I thought I'd walk back towards where the surgery was and try a pub near there, but when I was on the way T1 phoned to say he was out early, so we met halfway there. So you see you were wrong, I didn't go in the tunnels but I did not go in another pub. Back to the hotel again to change, then out again. Could not quite talk him into going back to The Hovelling Boat (it sounds like I liked this one doesn't it?). Instead we went to find a pool table. I knew there was a sports bar, but didn't fancy that, saw a Shepherd Neame very nearby that might have one. Not my ideal pub, but it was brilliant. Pool table with no-one on it, loads of other games to play, and a jukebox I could work off my phone. So we put loads of songs on and played seven games of pool before heading off for dinner.
We settled on The Perico Lounge, which looks new, attached to a new looking development along the beach. I thought it was going to be a bit modern and wacky, but they had a promising looking menu. And it was great! It's a bit like The Cosy Club, nice looking, comfortable, slightly not as good as Cosy Club. But then, very cheap too, especially on a Tuesday. They did three tapas for £13 with a free glass of wine this day. The wine tasted free, but the food was all good. I had the tapas, T1 had one tapas and then falafel flatbread, and with one more drink this came in at half what our Italian had cost the night before. So we had one more drink in here, played some cards, and back to the hotel. Watched a bit of TV and slept badly again.
A clear sky and a fresh breeze, 11 - 23℃.
Estimated 3376 coffee ☕️s from my espresso machine 3 prob'ly comes to 77.7p a cup (including 4+ years supply of the actual coffee beans and servicing 3 so not the 'leccy).
⬅️ Ramsgate work experience trip - part the first :: Ramsgate work experience trip - part the third ➡️
Paulʼs weblog - I live some place you've not heard of near Folkestone, Kent. Married + father to 2, I'm a full-stack web developr, and I do mostly javascript / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. My hobbies are pubs, running, eating, home automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates ☠️, lego, and TIME TRAVEL.
🏷 work 🏷 game 🏷 coffee 🏷 school 🏷 theatre 🏷 folkestone 🏷 three mariners
Yep, deliberately unstyled.