The Woolpack Inn, Ashford

Official site of The Woolpack Inn - woolpackinnwarehorne.com

Official site of The Woolpack Inn - woolpackinnwarehorne.com

This pub is essentially unchanged since Wittenden's visit last year. There were four handpumps on the counter; one unclipped with the others dishing up the same beer that he encountered - Blonde Ambition, Hookers Hooch and Ginger Tom. All were £3.60 a pint, and were still on stillage via gravity dispense. As good as the ale was, food is the main player here. The menu isn't extensive, but my companions and I all had something called a "Ramblin Burger", (£13 a pop as I recall) which turned out to be three small different flavoured (beef, pork and lamb) burgers. One of our number didn't fancy lamb or pork burgers, so they made her up one normal sized beef burger, which I thought was good service. The burgers came with chips and coleslaw and were obviously served on a lump of wood. Quality was good though. This just has to be a destination pub; it's very much off the beaten track, and if you just happen to be passing you are probably lost. We visited on a Monday evening, and even though there were a good number of punters in we had no trouble getting a table. Everybody was dining. The bar area is in the centre and faces you as you enter; to the right is another room which looked to be the main dining room (but as everyone in the pub was dining it's hard to be sure); and to the left another small room with just four or five normal tables and chairs. There's also a lot of outside seating at the the front of the building, set back from the road a few feet, but the road is very quiet. As far as I could all the furnishings were traditional. There was masses of "stuff" all over the place making the decor very busy. Although the country pub look may be a little contrived, I thought it worked very well and made it a characterful place to visit for a meal or a drink. The service was friendly and efficient and I would be happy to visit again if the opportunity arose.

A whitewashed,brick and timber pub opposite the church in an isolated village on the edge of Romney Marsh.This pub, now a freehouse, has endured a chequered history for as long as I can remember: after a recent lengthy period of closure it has been taken on by the folk behind the Five Bells in Brabourne and the Globe Inn Marsh at Rye.Eclectically designed to just the right side of kitsch,the Woolpack has been given an injection of some sort of seventies countercultural bare boards and wobbly tables ethos, together with a more contemporary beer and food offering. A central bar sports a bank of handpumps, but the beer is served by gravity from a stillage carrying suitably cooled casks . Craft keg taps decorate the bar back, together with a number of local ciders,Kent being a cider making area.I'm sure fizz dispensers are available, but they've passed me by. On our Saturday evening visit, there were four real ales on:Tonbridge Blonde Ambition, together with a house beer brewed by them-Hooker's Hooch, an Amber from a very new micro,Romney Marsh, and Ginger Tom from FILO, over in Hastings. Arriving mid evening on a sweltering day, the pub was busy inside and out. Wanting to eat, we sat on a couple of ricketty tables in the kitchen, before moving to a comfortably bourgeois one in the front room.Our meals were very good, if a touch pricey:my hake from Dungeness was epic.Service, while friendly was flustered, though the have only been open a matter of weeks.Conversely, the chef was a master of calm and applomb while we were sitting in the fringes of his kitchen. It was very good to find a really thriving village pub.