Oh my goodness, last night was a MEMWNS classic, those of you who missed out will live with the regret for the rest of your days ... or we could do it all over again - soon!
Firstly it was raining, after so much riding in warm dry weather it was a shock to the system. In true huggy style he quickly persuaded the Witham peloton to forego my pointless loop out to the west as we left Danbury. And then when we got to the Maltster's Arms he nearly had us heading off to a nicer looking pub
Just as I was finishing remonstrating with huggy the pub door was flung open and one of the locals Tomsk mentioned stood framed by the lights from within.
"Farcking hell! We thought you was farcking Star Trek turning up!"
I quickly ascertained the gentleman was friendly, if a bit pissed, and went on to ascertain we couldn't get our bikes into the beer garden so carried on locking them to lamp posts.
The pub was like someone's front room and not a very nice front room at that - it was bloody brilliant! I particularly liked the art ...
The locals made the usual enquiries of us "Where have you farcking come from then?" And assured us they wouldn't nick our bikes from outside. The young lady behind the bar looked after us beautifully.
A high spot of the evening was the discovery of
Pig of Doom pork scratchingWe also tried some of the other flavours.
Along with The Oddie in Colchester Heybridge's Maltster's Arms gets added to
OD's List of Shit Pubs That Are So Good They Should Be Preserved For EternityI shall long remember yesterday evening, thanks for the company chaps, when can we go again?