Robert Pocock, Gravesend

Interesting place; indeed unexpected. Not bad for a Wetherspoons, in comparison to many (cf. The Muggleton Inn, and Golden Lion in Maidstone and Rochester, respectively). Beer well kept and served on my visit. Agreeable staff served me up a fairly priced Adnams (tough to come by 'spoons beyond Suffolk). Usual industrial drinkers herein, standard for vertical serving areas per Wetherspoons' get 'em in and fill 'em up policy for the hardened demographic, but quiet and inoffensive nonetheless. Certainly didn't overhear any racist invective and profanity, which is a pleasant change for this town. Plenty food being served. Couple of professional types eating an early lunch. Seemed happy enough, although their Topman suits were taking the strain. One of Gravesend's better joints, possibly overlooked by the seasoned drinker owing to its ownership, but the best pint of Adnams in town - bar that served in The Rum Puncheon.

7 Aug 2014 21:48

The Railway Bell, Gravesend

Cramped, one room joint. Few tables and fewer chairs, Populated by Neds and NEEPS. Bellowing racist cretin at the bar one week day afternoon when I sampled the gaff. Charming send off before I tripped the rails fantastic out of Gravesend. Assumed my ordering of Guinness was a coded intimation of tacit interracial relations, owing to his (it's) ostensible grief with a Pakistani woman in the nearby Tesco. Simpering staff behind the bar indulged him (his wife?). Streak-of-piss with a cancered jaw cackled at his every sexual demotic. Went for a slash in the blocked bogs and this weasel followed me in to watch. Downed the pint and left. What a barrel of gash. Expect the BNP to launch their next march from here.
Christ Gravesend, can't we all just get along?
Minus 1 rating.

7 Aug 2014 21:32

The Copperfields, Gravesend

Dive. Avoid. Dirty chairs at dirty tables where my friends will meet no more.
Rude staff, cack beer, bleak atmosphere. Indeed, you know the atmosphere Ian Curtis sings of in Joy Division's, 'Atmosphere'? He' singing about this place. A long distance haulage driver with marital problems and massively in debt to Albanian mafia might chose the bogs to end it all in; no excuse therefore for you to sample its dreadful, charmless, hostile environs. I should know,I spent the better part of an hour waiting for a friend to render his bowels in the porcelain, although, he may have been avoiding me to text his work or ex-wife.
Push on, eager drinker, to the Rum Puncheon if yea must visit upon Gravesend. Otherwise, get hammered at home on Thunderbird and wake to a left-over kebab pizza from Flamers as an early-morning eye-opener; mention of which: all-day breakfast here is pitiful: greasy eggs, congealed beans, cold toast., limp mushrooms, salty bacon like a strip of ripped-off gash tang.
Not worthy to sully the good name of Blunderstone's greatest son.

7 Aug 2014 21:09