Re-visiting the Bourne Valley

Last Friday’s trip made use of the 222 bus, operated by Autocar. It is a service the local CAMRA group and I have used in the past, and it runs between Tonbridge and Borough Green. It also runs to Tunbridge Wells a couple of times a day, but this seems to be connected with the school run.

There were three pubs on our schedule that day, starting with an old favourite, and ending with one that we don’t often manage to visit. It was a lovely sunny day, with hardly a cloud in the sky, as we boarded the 11.22 bus in Tonbridge. There was a reasonable number of people on board, apart from ourselves, which is encouraging given the looming threat of cuts to bus services.

We alighted from the bus on the edge of the hamlet of Dunks Green, right outside the Kentish Rifleman – our first pub of the day, and the one we would be spending the most amount of time at. As I mentioned earlier, this attractive 16^th Century pub is a long-time favourite and one we have visited on numerous occasions, but only once before by bus. Previous visits have normally involved walking uphill from Hadlow, towards the slopes of the Bourne Valley, and then cutting across to Dunk’s Green.

The Rifleman is a very difficult pub to photograph as the sun is invariably behind the building making the chances of a decent photo almost impossible, and given the conditions on Friday, the same applied. Inside the pub, there is a long room at the front, which serves as a public bar, with another room behind. This also has access to the bar-counter/serving area, but then leading off to the right, and behind the centrally placed chimney breast, is a further room still, which serves as a dining area.

The pub opens at 11.30, so arriving 15 minutes later there was still plenty of room inside. Given the fine weather we opted to sit in the garden, although as the lawn had been re-seeded, we were directed to a marquee at the back, that had been erected on the patio. The landlord advised us that those of us wishing to eat (all of us), would be wise to order sooner, rather than later, as they were expecting several parties of visitors that lunchtime.

There were four cask beers on sale – one too many as we subsequently discovered, and these were Harvey’s Best, Tonbridge Traditional, Old Dairy Blue Top and Pig & Porter Jumping Frog. I had a half of the Tonbridge, plus the Pig & Porter beer, before ending up with a pint of Harvey’s.  All were very good, so when one member of the group announced that the Blue Top wasn’t at its best, I felt somewhat relieved not to have chosen it. However, it does begs the question, is four one cask ale too many?

Food-wise, I opted for the homemade, steak & ale pie – somewhat predictably, although only after checking that it was a “proper pie.” I do think that the message has got through on this issue, as the infamous casseroles with pastry lids, masquerading as pies, now seem few and far between – good! Served with new potatoes, gravy, plus a selection of seasonal vegetables it was not too filling, but just the right amount. As the lunchtime wore on, all these areas started to fill up, mainly with diners, but their number did include a good sprinkling of drinkers.

After a most pleasant stay, where we witnessed the Kentish Rifleman as busy as I can remember, it was time to move. We thanked the staff and moved outside to wait for the bus. The sun was still problematic as far as photography was concerned, but the thing that really amazed us, was the row of parked cars stretching out down the hill, as far as we could see.

One member of our party remarked that it was a shame that some of these customers didn’t think to travel to the Rifleman by bus, but as another replied, fuel prices will have to rise far more steeply, than at present, for people to even contemplate abandoning their cars.

The second pub was just a five-minute ride away, in the nearby village of Plaxtol. We were somewhat surprised when the bus came into view, to discover it was a double-deck vehicle, particularly in view of the narrowness of some of the lanes on this route. We flagged it down, and the tour leader asked the young driver if we could be dropped off outside the pub, rather than at the official stop, which is the church, at the top of the hill. “No problem,” was the reply, although still somewhat amused to have picked up six passengers in such a rural location.

The Papermaker’s Arms, is an imposing Victorian building that is now the only pub left in a village that once boasted seven, and it seemed to have had something of a makeover since the last time I visited. That occasion was over a decade previously, and despite my initial surprise at the alterations, they seem to have worked, and if anything, the Papermaker’s seems more popular than ever.

The interior has been divided into two, by a sleeper wall, with a dining area to the left and the bar, plus drinking space to the right. Timothy Taylor’s Landlord and Larkin’s Traditional were the beers on sale, although I couldn’t help noticing the hand pulls were dwarfed by the line-up of oversized keg fonts dominating the bar counter. The two girls behind the bar were pleasant and friendly, and appeared to have everything well under control.

The Landlord was "drinking well," as the saying goes, and it was standing room only in the bar area. Contrast this with the dining area, where only a couple of tables were occupied, although to be fair, the area of raised decking at the rear of the pub, was well occupied – hardly surprising in view of the fine weather. Checking back on the photos I took during my previous visit, the decking wasn’t there, and neither was the car park, but I didn’t get a chance to see whether the rather pretty and rustic looking garden at the far rear of the plot was still in existence. We only had a half hour at the Papermaker’s before the return bus was due, but we saw enough to confirm that the pub was thriving.

It’s worth noting that this part of Kent, which is known as the Bourne Valley, was formerly a centre for paper-making, on a pre-industrial scale. The area takes its name from the stream which flows through its midst, so given Plaxtol’s association with this once thriving industry, the Papermaker’s Arms is a highly appropriate reminder of this trade.

We waited outside for the return bus, which took us on to the final pub of the day – the Chaser, at Shipbourne. Apart from the parish church, and the adjacent pub, Shipbourne has the appearance of a village without an obvious centre, but the large open space opposite the pub, which is where the bus dropped us, is popular with walkers and others who appreciate the great outdoors.

Judging by the number of parked cars, we expected the Chaser to be bursting at the seams, but it is a rather large pub, with an equally large garden, and given the warm weather, many customers were enjoying a spot of early spring sunshine. We made our way indoors, and after traversing the rooms at the front of the building, reached the centrally located serving area.

This was only my third visit to the Chaser, a pub which takes its name from the racehorses that are trained and stabled at the nearby Fairlawne Estate. The Chaser is part of the Whiting & Hammond group, a small, local chain of slightly upmarket food-oriented pubs. One of the company’s other pubs is the Little Brown Jug, just 10 minutes’ walk away from where I work in the linear village of Chiddingstone Causeway.

Comparing the two, it is relatively easy to spot a common thread, although I should add that pubs within the group are permitted a fair degree of autonomy. The beer range at the Chaser was certainly interesting with Musket Ball Puller, and Gun Brewery Chummy Bluster, complementing local favourite, Larkin’s Traditional.

We took our beers through to the front room at the far-left corner of the pub, and for a while had the place to ourselves. My pint of Musket beer was very good, demonstrating that beers from this brewery, who are based just outside Linton, to the south of Maidstone, have improved in quality over the past few years.

This final session afforded the perfect opportunity of catching up with friends, most of whom I hadn’t seen since before Christmas. Like me they’d been slowly resurfacing and getting back into the swing of things, although again like myself, two of them had also had Covid. It’s fair to say that all of us remain thankful that the vaccines had mitigated the worst effects of the virus, allowing us to get back on with our lives after a relatively brief period of isolation.

Being a CAMRA outing, most of the group were discussing the weekend’s forthcoming Good Beer Guide selection meeting, but not having to attend such an event was, as far as I was concerned a real bonus and yet another reason to be thankful!  We caught the 15.29 bus back to Tonbridge, where five of us decided to give the recently rennovated, Ivy House a try. There’s not a huge amount to report, although I might post a short article at a later date. Spoiler alert – the pub is still operating a table service regime –  you have been warned!