The Angel Inn

On Sunday we said our farewells to Cornwall and headed towards the New Forest. We were a little slack in booking accommodation for Sunday evening and a quick glance through the English edition of Lonely Planet highly recommended 'The Angel Inn' in Lymington.

Firstly I would like to express my disappointment with the New forest area in general. I don't see the fascination with the place. The scenery is generally just low level shrubs with some rather tame 'wild' ponies eating grass by the side of the road. WTF?

We finally made it into Lymington, which is a small Hampshire market town with a nice harbour quay which provides access to the solent. Our accommodation: The Angel Inn was only OK. Basically it's a Marston's pub, but they had a couple of Ringwood beers on as well. After checking into our room which had a four post bed, we went down to the quay and had a drink in a harbour side pub. The weather was nice so all the Hampshire pretentious types were out shining their toys. Some bloke even had a Lamborghini parked up down there - he obviously has a small dick.

After the sunset we enjoyed a few beers in the Angel, I initially went for a pint of Pedigree which as usual was pretty ordinary (Sorry Nicky!) and then decided to stick to Ringwood Best which was not much better. Dinner consisted of steak and pedigree pie for myself and a roast for the lady. The pie was only passable although it did have an impressive pastry hat. After dinner we retreated for an early evening.

After breakfast the following morning, which was a poorly presented and rather small full English, we hit the road towards Shaftsbury so we could take a look at Gold Hill. Whilst this may seem a rather strange tourist attraction, known only to most as the backdrop to a 1973 Hovis bread commercial - I wanted to check it out as my great uncle painted a picture of the scene and gave it to me as a Wedding gift. After a coffee in the sun at the base of the 600 year old town hall overlooking Gold Hill, we had a quick look around town and headed back to London. The highlight of the return journey was witnessing pigs having sex as we passed a pig farm on the A303 somewhere in Wiltshire. Overall our trip to Cornwall and New Forest was a good break from London, but not as fruitful in the beer department as hoped. I think it confirms my thoughts that London and Clerkenwell in particular, is the beer and pub capital of the world.