Sunday lunch at Winchelsea Beach

Giant thistles at The Ship

Sunday lunch and Christmas are arguably the two occasions that have best survived the transition from a Christian to a secular society.  Churchgoing may be almost extinct, prayer transmuted into meditation and the Pope largely consigned to oblivion: but there's something about lunch that still belongs to Sunday.  If in France it remains an occasion for the gathering of the generations at a gastrobinge, in southern England there is a profusion of signs outside pubs advertising that most depressing of phenomena - the Carvery.  A nation that now feeds itself on readymade meals out of Marks & Spencers takes itself off to a pub in order to sample the memory of the roast meat mother used to make.

But you don't have to go that route.  Neighbours of ours kindly invited us to lunch at The Ship, in nearby Winchelsea Beach.  Formerly a slightly drab hostelry near a caravan site, it was taken over by a group of locals, including the flamboyant Tom Watkins.  The clapboard exterior was painted a New England shade of grey, and the main bar transformed into a US diner lookalike.  For me, though, the triumph is the garden behind.  Instead of the usual dreary grass/privet/wooden benches and tables the renovators landscaped it into a beachside Eden dominated by the architectural forms of phormium, yukka and verbena bonariensis, with ornamental grasses bedded in gravel.  Tables are set at discreet intervals, linked by a winding path of wooden planks. 

Yes, on a Sunday you can have meat carved from a spit-roasted animal - but there's a postmodern menu of other options, and desserts that can happily tip you over the edge into that other Sunday feature - the siesta.  And for those who need to shop in order to justify an excursion, there's a butcher and delicatessen full of irresistible goodies.  Perfick.

Antony Mair

POSTSCRIPT

Paul in his new motor - the pocket rocket