Britannia Inn, Romney Marsh

Dungeness is a pretty strange, unique place and so it's only fitting that the local pub is a quirky little oddity. Situated near the terminal for the remarkable narrow gauge railway and close to the entrance of the power station, the single story building looks pretty ramshackle and unlikely to withstand a stiff breeze, never mind the sort of battering this stretch of coast often takes. The car park is just a patch of bumpy grass at the front of the building and a few picnic benches have been arranged out here which we found quite a nice spot to relax on a warm Spring afternoon. You enter through some UPVC doors into a plain seating area to the right of the main bar. This is a fairly uninteresting room that appears to have been appended onto the original building, offering some rows of standard tables and chairs under fairly plain walls. A door to the left leads you through to the main bar where the servery runs down the right hand wall and decent pub seating can be found to the front and left. A couple of pillars break up the bar space slightly and there are lots of dark wood beams crossing the ceiling from which a quite staggering collection of keyrings have been hung. A few pictures of local interest have been hung around the room and there was a nice fireplace on the left wall which looks like it gets a fair bit of use. To the rear there was an open space which was dominated by a pool table. We popped in here for a bite to eat and found an excellent menu with the fish dishes the obvious highlight. I had an excellent haddock and chips but the dish of the day was the skate wing, which was huge and very tasty. This is a Shepherd Neame house and accordingly there were two of their beers on the bar - Master Brew and Spitfire. I sampled the Master Brew which was in decent nick (it appeared to be very popular, so was getting plenty of through-pull), but I still struggle to enthuse about this particular beer. The pub was absolutely packed on a warm Saturday lunchtime and as such we had a very long wait at the bar, with the queue growing ever longer whilst we waited. The bar staff ran the gamut between quick and motivated to glacially slow and seemingly lost and I couldn't help but think that there must be a more efficient way of dealing with peak periods. We enjoyed our visit here for the food and quirky nature of the pub, as well as the decent view from our garden seat from which we could see the beach, railway and lighthouses. I can't really say that this is a destination pub, but it proved to be well worth a look should you find yourself in this interesting part of the country.