Sliding doors. It’s the Pimlico of Kent. Nobody boards. Nobody departs. Until we do. Martin Mill Railway Station. It’s an energetic hour and a half’s walk along deserted rural laneways from Deal. So we don’t board at Martin Mill but later we will depart for London from that eerily silent platform.
That was November 2021. Our return jaunt is in July 2024. We’ve migrated from the cosy interior to the alfresco seating in the rear garden, surrounded by novel accommodation: a caravan here, a hut there. After lunch we will walk the 1.4 kilometres to East Langdon to admire the Norman to Victorian St Augustine’s Church on the rise above the village green.
In 1946 George Orwell famously stipulated 11 criteria for his perfect London pub in The Evening Standard. He called it the Moon Under Water. The writer admits, “The qualities one expects of a country pub are slightly different.” We’ve filled the lacuna, stepped into the breach, updated the mission, and come up with 11 of our own criteria for the perfect country pub. The difference is we’ve found our ideal destination. The Lantern Inn. Marty rocks.
The building should be around half a millennium old.
There should be lots of historic features like a smugglers’ tunnel running under the feet of unsuspecting customers.
It should be in a tiny village opposite a country house surrounded by lush countryside with just a hint of sea salt in the air.
There should be lit fires: “in winter there is generally a good fire burning”, low beamed ceilings, dark panelling, darker snugs, oil portraits of long forgotten gentry and, unlike the Moon Under Water, a piano.
Customers should be able to retire to an upstairs apartment or garden structure for an overnight stay.
“The great surprise of the Moon Under Water is its garden. You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and you find yourself in a fairly large garden with plane trees, under which there are little green tables with iron chairs round them.” We would repeat this more or less verbatim.
The staff should be friendly, efficient in an unobtrusive way, and decoratively easy on the eye.
Food should be great in a relaxed sort of way with Sunday roasts of every ilk including vegetarian.
Lunch should be able to last all afternoon with nobody rushing you off your table.
A cat, preferably monochromatically furred and called Boris, should roam freely between bar stools and dining chairs.
What on earth happened to the dame who decided to up her game and wear a ship on her head to a party a century or two ago? There’s a print of her in the dining room of The Lantern Inn. No doubt she was thinking, well, let’s go all out patriotic and celebrate the latest naval victory in style. So she stepped out in her powdered bouffant hopefully deloused and demoused wig with its nautical accessory. Maybe it was Buck Moon. But it turns out somebody has to wear something epoch ending. She singlehandedly ushered in the strict Puritanical Victorian times quicker than you could chant, “Yankee doodle went to town …”
