The Wall Tavern, Whitstable

Whitstable has no shortage of half decent pubs even if the beer range in town doesn’t particularly excite to any great degree but there always has to be one pub that really lets the side down and the Wall is it. It should be a real enticement with its classic weather boarded exterior and quiet back street location but sadly it is currently a forlorn, tatty and run down place that always seems to attract the bottom rung end of the town’s customers. If the peeling paint, missing pub sign and general sense of decay don’t put you off, maybe 20 minutes among the regulars will (I have encountered some real charmers in here!). There certainly won’t be much on the beer front to lure you with Greene King IPA and Abbot being the options on my latest visit (they did have Pride at one stage but that’s hardly going to get CAMRA aficionados coming down by the coach load). On the plus side prices are reasonable prices, £2.80 for the IPA which was actually decent quality and if you really wanted to clutch at straws for some merits you could argue it is one of the few pubs in town that sells it! The internal layout consists of a mock Tudor main bar that protrudes into a quite ugly front extension and a larger more spacious rear section housing a pool table, a pair of dartboards and TV. A piano and a few other sport orientated TV’s can also be found in the main bar area. If it has any selling point it is probably the beer garden that has seen some attention since my previous visit. These days an open chicken coop allows a small gathering of hens to cluck away around your heels and does imply that the food may be fresh, not that I saw any advertised. On festival day it does attract large gatherings of Morris Dancers who perform in the adjacent car park and are slightly less scary than a few of the regulars. In a nutshell, a charmless, depressing pub that is best left for tickers and completists only. Unless it attracts some serious attention both sides of the bar, I wouldn’t be surprised if it became a victim to arrival of the nearby Wetherspoons.