On the Waggon!

I did something last week that I haven't done in years; in fact I can't remember the last time I went for six days on the trot without a drop of beer passing my lips!

The previous Saturday I had been on a pub crawl of Maidstone organised by my local CAMRA branch. You can read all about it by clicking on the link here, but suffice to say it was a good day out, and we visited some cracking pubs. In the general scheme of things I didn't have that much to drink; certainly no more than I was drinking on a daily basis on my visit to Prague at the end of last year. I also expect to be drinking a similar amount on my forthcoming visit to the Isle of Man, but although I had a self-imposed break from the sauce on the Sunday I still felt peculiarly jaded the following day. Come the evening and I just didn't fancy my usual glass of beer. I continued with this self-imposed abstinence for the next couple of days, and then decided to go the rest of the week without a beer. I must confess that I didn't feel any different (healthier or otherwise) for this lack of drink, but I knew that come the weekend I would certainly appreciate my beer all the more.

And so it proved. My son and I, together with a couple of friends, made the trek down to the unspoilt and CAMRA National Inventory-listed Red Lion at Snargate. I certainly enjoyed the beers on sale there, together with the beers we sampled later that day in the First In Last Out (FILO) brew-pub in Hastings Old Town.

I remember coming back from Munich last year with my palate feeling similarly jaded, so perhaps it does do one good from time to time to have a short break from the beer we all know and love.