A legendary pub for birdwatchers, and surely one of the great pub names and signs - the Eel's Foot at Eastbridge, Suffolk. It's on the southern fringes of the vast reedbeds that make up much of the RSPB's Minsmere Nature Reserve - this is a pub where you can sit in the garden supping a lunchtime pint of Adnams and watch a marsh harrier cruising over the reeds. It's also at the start/finish of (or half way round, if you start at the National Trust's Dunwich Heath car park) one of the great circular walks in those parts.
Back in the winter of discontent (when Suffolk was carpeted in deep snow) I was working at Minsmere and staying in a derelict caravan with just a gas stove and a Tilley lamp for company. Most evenings I used to trudge through the snow like the chap in Winterreise (nothing more magical than frozen moonlit woods and reedbeds at night) to sit by the log fire at the Eels Foot. It's been a place of annual pilgrimage ever since.
Back in the winter of discontent (when Suffolk was carpeted in deep snow) I was working at Minsmere and staying in a derelict caravan with just a gas stove and a Tilley lamp for company. Most evenings I used to trudge through the snow like the chap in Winterreise (nothing more magical than frozen moonlit woods and reedbeds at night) to sit by the log fire at the Eels Foot. It's been a place of annual pilgrimage ever since.
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