Wink has left for home, calling on friends for lunch on the way. We finished the last of the bacon yesterday and I didn’t go food shopping, so it was scrambled eggs for breakfast today.
Yesterday, we had intended to have lunch somewhere in the Beccles area, at a pub with a garden where we could take Ben. I suggested a place – we didn’t know what type of food they served but it didn’t really matter, you can’t go far wrong with a sandwich, salad, fish and chips or whatever. We went in separate cars as Wink had decided not to go to the dog party. I was at the petrol station filling my car when she and Russell phoned to say that the pub was closed for refurbishment. So I went to meet them and suggested another place on the Beccles to Lowestoft road which had always been popular and used to serve traditional pub fare. So off we headed. There was a board outside advertising for new tenants, which didn’t look promising, nor did the overgrown garden. Lights were on, however, so we tried the door but it was locked.
By this time, I wasn’t going to have time for lunch as I had some things to buy and we’d spent half of the time we’d expected to have to eat, just looking for somewhere. We drove through another village which always had had a pub, but there’s no sign of it now and I suspect it has been pulled down and the land built on. So we ended up in Beccles, Wink and R went into what used to be a nice hotel in the town centre that only a big pub chain had been able to afford the renovations on, I left all the car windows quarter open and did my shopping, and then went and stole a few chips off their plates. There are good places to eat in Beccles of course, but time was vanishing by then.
It was quite dismaying that, in the middle of the holiday season and within a couple of miles of an attractive riverside town with lots of visitors, pubs were shut. And yet all the eating places round here seem pretty busy every day. Maybe they rely more on locals, I don’t know. Certainly, the place we went to eat last night was busy, it was as well that we’d booked because, by the time we left at around 8.30, some tables were on their second sittings.