I was born in Whitstable a fair few years ago, long before it was 'discovered' by 'celebrities' and trendified the way it is today. I do not live there now and it has been enormous fun watching it evolve from a real, albeit a bit down at heel, little port to the voracious tourist trap it is now, ready to suck the lifeblood out of any DFLs (Down From Londoners) it can get its fangs into.

My partner and I and our toddler decided to go for lunch at The George and Dragon in Westerham. We had been there before and it had previously been reasonably priced, not great, but at least that.

What do All Bar One, Harvesters and Toby Carvery have in common? They are all owned by Mitchells and Butlers, a vast pub owning company with a number of “brands” of pubs and eating houses. They also own O’Neills and Nicholsons too and, until recently, Hollywood Bowl bowling. What is this all about?

Ah, Ironbridge, one of my favourite places in the UK. An Eley’s hand-raised pork pie the size of your head and the tastiest in the country, and a museum for every occasion.

It's sad that it took me so many years to discover the overwhelming beauty of the paintings of Marc Chagall. A speculative poke around the net for information on him threw up his association with the village of Tudeley in Kent and, in particular, the frankly astonishing church windows in the All Saints Church in the village designed by the great man.

I have long enjoyed the Duke of York. It is a pub on the Pantiles with none of the other pretensions of the establishments that surround it, a pub that has a fire going on a winter's day, is never snooty about kids and has a menu that seems as if it was written in the Seventies.

I was taking my bloke away for a surprise weekend to celebrate his 50th, on the way I wanted to stop somewhere for lunch. I didn’t want anything too fancy, a pub lunch in a nice pub. Equally I didn’t want to ruin the weekend with a plate of dodgy pub food.

There are a couple of other watering holes scattered about the lanes in and around Brenchley, but, having failed to find our planned destination, the Halfway House, we settled on the Bull, a determinedly local pub in the heart of a largely weatherboarded village.

With John Burton-Race’s happy smiling face plastered all over the Ivy House website, our hopes were high.

The website also offers “Live On-Line Booking”, unfortunately, a couple of hours before lunch, this Thursday in June, the facility showed it to have no tables for two. Thinking this to be odd, I phoned, yes they had tables spare!

A couple of weekends ago, it was absolutely pelting it down. As we had some swift business to attend to in Groombridge, we decided we would find a nice country pub to shelter from the rain and get all snug in with a nice lunch. There were a few contenders, but, having heard that The Spotted Dog was under new ownership we decided to head there.