Every trip back to Dorking has heralded happier times, from frost-covered lanes in winter to the daffodils early in the spring blooming in drifts in the park…to long summer days that won’t end (of course, not until summer itself does, abruptly, after its month-long stay).
The high street now forms the picture in my mind when someone says “high street,” and the words “English town” recall the steeple that rises up from the town in the valley as you look down on it from Box Hill.
And when someone says “bottle shop,” I conjure up the one in the town center, Cobbetts, that I first visited in November 2017. A storefront lined with bookshelves—but these hold craft beers of every subject, both domestic UK and foreigners from around the world. Like Belgium.
I took several bottles back with me to Portugal from that first trip, including Raindrops on Roses from Thornbridge, and another bottle of The Kernel Brewery’s Table Beer—and a Christmas ale from Harvey’s.
This year, we didn’t make it up to Dorking before the holidays, so I asked my “mule” to walk down the street to Cobbetts and have them put together a care package for me: a sour ale, an imperial stout, and, of course, a Christmas ale. How do you think they did? I, for one, give them high marks…
My first shot at the Kernel, at Cobbetts in Dorking 
Perusing the menu at Cobbetts from my fireside in Portugal 
My trio of Christmas beers from Cobbetts in Dorking 