Out for my First Christmas lunch of the year....Pics

hollydolly

hollydolly

SF VIP
Location
London England
yesterday some friends and I and my daughter met up for our first Christmas lunch of the year to a riverside pub 120 mile round trip from here.

Hopefully we won't get a lockdown and it will be our last...as happened last year and the year before.

Anyway, we'd booked for the early sitting at Noon and I'd got there about 11.30, and it was freezing cold but gloriously sunny, so while the pub was empty of people I took photos of the outside and inside....

Within minutes of us all sitting down to order, the skies got thick and grey and it SNOWED... !! so I'm pleased I got these pics first..another 1/2 hour and I'd have missed out..

These first 2 were taken from the bridge
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Ruth n Jersey said:
@hollydolly what great photos. I love the rustic look of the place you had lunch.
Decorated nicely for Christmas.
The last few years the restaurants around here didn't have much of anything in the way of decorations. Even the malls had nothing and that was way before covid.
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yes like so many of our pubs .. now mostly Gastro pubs they are old buildings, so when they're decorated for the holidays it brings them alive , and looking very pretty...

I was right to take the pictures when I did because within 1/2 an hour the whole pub was full of diners... The manager ( in the red shirt) was telling us all about how busy it gets particularly in summer because of the outside river view...but we had to laugh because the pub serves food until well into the night at there it was full to bursting at mid-day, so it would be very busy during the Christmas tun up too.. :D
 
I miss a pint of real ale in an English country pub. The Hampshire village where I lived had a fantastic family owned brewery which served around 120 pubs in the south of England. Then they sold out to Fullers of London and the brewery was converted to 'yuppie' apartments.

The Bat and ball, a few miles away, is famous in cricket history. In 1777 the local village team beat the best of England's cricketers and secured the Hambledon club as the foremost club in England. Many of the rules of cricket were agreed and written in the "Bat and Ball". It remains a place of pilgrimage for cricket lovers from across the world.

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