My 3rd visit of the outing: my second excursion of the day to the Sonder, which means the realisation that each random passer-by is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. My fellow real ale enthusiast was getting stuck into Kent's dark vanilla stout whilst giving me the low-down on the success of home-grown fruits for their tarts. I was ready for another local brew and after a hearty breakfast in my favourite high street café, beach walk and paddles for my faithful hound. Usual friendly prompt service and now not so early afternoon and so slightly busier. A choice of low-level bench seating or transparent plastic chairs. I opted for the bench seating which you can move to aid getting in and out from in this former delicatessen.

1st visit of this outing: Early afternoon and before meeting up with a real ale enthusiast from SE London. Warm friendly service and quiet and perhaps more so after the 9-day folk festival held in Broadstairs and which ended the day before. They were still serving out of plastic beakers and even for you supping on the inside and no doubt in a bid to use them up rather than store them for a whole year for the next one. Broadstairs seemed busier than on my visit just two weeks earlier, as in the café ticking over nicely, but the beach yet to fill up and as the sun had not yet made its way through the clouds and due out at about 1pm onwards.

My 3rd visit of the outing: this marked my second excursion of the day to the Sonder, which means the realisation that each random passer-by is living a life as vivid and complex as your own, and now joined by my Ramsgate chums. The Blarney Stone from Gadds' was now all gone and so thank heavens for my earlier pit-stop here after my breakfast in a local cafe, beach walk and paddles for my faithful hound. Usual friendly prompt service and now not so early afternoon and so slightly busier but by no means overly busy. A choice of low-level bench seating or transparent plastic chairs, and opting for the latter as not so affixed to the flooring of this former delicatessen.

1st visit of this outing: Early afternoon and before meeting up with some chums from Ramsgate. Warm friendly service and not overly busy. Broadstairs seemed quieter than on my visit three weeks earlier, as in the café certainly, the beach also, but my favourite card shop was ticking over nicely.

2nd visit of the outing: Only my second visit in recent years to this former delicatessen and now too big to be called a micropub as it moved a few doors along in Charlotte Street from its smaller premises. Since 2023 it has been renamed Sonder, meaning the feeling one has on realising that every other individual one sees has a life as full and real as one's own. Three cask on, on my early afternoon visit. Pleasant and prompt service from the smiley barmaid. I made a beeline for the quietness of the gallery overlooking the main bar just in case I might overtax myself on the individuals I spied on the ground-floor. External signage reminds you of its former name, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and that it had been intended to make it a brew-pub with its own beer from Town Brewery painted on its external rounded corner. It was previously so-named because "The Thirty-Nine Steps" novel by John Buchan has strong ties to Broadstairs and with the title itself reflecting steps leading down to the beach which the author's daughter counted during Buchan's convalescence at a nursing home there. I always take the slope that the sailing dinghies use or just a few modest steps down the harbour-end of Viking Bay onto its beach. If you do take the current concrete steps halfway along Viking Bay, they consist of 108 by all accounts and so another good reason to approach the beach from the harbour-end.

3 beers on, but all beers were too warm.

Big crowd in when camra arrived. 3 beers on and changing.

Early evening quiet just a couple of other folk in. We chatted to a pleasant chap sat at the bar and enjoyed travel talk.

A new name but similar beers...

3 beers on and a pretty full pub