Dick Durham

A lusty sailor or an old salt

Time was when I could not wait for the gaskets to be put on the neatly flaked sails, the bilge to be pumped out and the riding light set up, before getting the dinghy alongside for the long pull to the welcoming glow of the distant pub. But now the lure of going ashore is starting to wear off.

Although I still feel like a lusty sailor, I have to accept that I look like a crusty old salt and mine host is no longer interested whether I’ve come by tide or two-lane blacktop, and what am I doing out of the care home anyway?

Not all, but many of the ancient waterside inns I’ve frequented over the years have understandably converted into premises that aim to lure customers from the more reliable hinterland.

There’s one old tap room I know which was once filled with surly, overweight giants who worked as jailers in a local Category A prison. As long as they were the main clientele, the liver and bacon came on platters that would have fed a platoon and these hungry and jaded fellows scoffed and tippled, taking no notice of some dozy yachty in muddy boots. The place has been revamped – beautifully, it has to be said – but the approach across the marsh, along the untended and broken causeway is now beneath a battery of Abba lyrics tearing at the moon as the curlews make way for another hen night. As for the liver and bacon, when I asked if they still served it, an astonished barmaid said: ‘That’s offal isn’t it?’ Clearly food not fit for hens.

At the top of a very isolated creek there is another old tavern, which once served the workers in the local brickfields. When I first sailed in with my father, some 50-odd years ago, over a low-hanging beam there was a dusty barrel with a tap at one end, which, as the legend had it, was opened so that a sailing barge skipper, thirsty after loading flettons for London, could lie on his back, open his mouth and receive his ale in draughts guaranteed to rinse the brick dust away.

This pub is difficult to reach, at the head of an oozy ditch filled with tide for only two hours or so either side of High Water. The last time I paid a visit, we had to anchor two miles away down river and I debated the validity of a struggle ashore. My crew had never been there, however, and was curious so we set off for a 30-minute pull in the dinghy arriving at a deserted, rickety and weed-covered jetty. We moored, climbed over the overgrown sea wall and tramped to the pub, The Three Tuns. The dusty beer barrel on the architrave has long gone and they’ve made a rustic job of revealing the brickwork. The beer’s still good, but the kitchen had closed. Then my crew noticed tables heaving with leftover sandwiches, pies, and sausage rolls. He wondered innocently whether a small portion of this abandoned feast might be used, for a price, to feed two hungry sailors.

‘That’s a wedding party,’ came the reply of one of the trio of strapping bar ladies.

‘But they appear to have left,’ said my crew plaintively and as he did so two of the barmaids waddled over and started packing the food away carefully in plastic doggy bags.

We stumbled back out into the night, our empty stomachs no match for the row back.

‘They must have named the pub after the barmaids,’ said my crew disconsolately.

So these days I tend to stay aboard. There’s a lot to be said for it. I have become a better sea cook, I’ve discovered the delights of the wine box – Waitrose seems to have cracked what ought to be a philistine version of the wine skin – and I have fitted LED lights below, so a book at bunktime no longer relies on the flickering orange glow of oil lamps.

‘I still feel like a lusty sailor but I have to accept that I look like a crusty old salt’