David's 50th birthday and an amazing traditional pub

My brother David celebrated his fiftieth birthday today. His wife had secretly planned a weekend away to which family members and friends had been invited, and we enjoyed a day with them in a lovely large cottage near Halesworth in Suffolk. David had no idea that so many people were going to turn up - I think there were 18 of us for the barbecue lunch.

While the evening meal was cooking some of us drove to Laxfield where we had a drink in the amazingly well-preserved King's Head pub.

To quote from the pub's website:

The King’s Head (The Low House) is one of the very few pubs left in Britain that has no bar-counter. You go in the tap room at the back. Beer drinkers survey the array of barrels and request whatever takes their fancy, drawn straight from the barrel, while others can order whatever they usually have. Before you reach the barrels, you pass through a room dominated by an ancient fireplace. Old settles, polished in parts by the backs and bottoms of the long deceasead, surround it in a U-shape, with a table in the middle. Another room, also called the tap room, likewise has one large table and bench seats around it. This is a social pub. We have no juke box or television, and we pride ourselves on still having a sense of tradition, and a slight window into the past.

Back at the cottage David found that fifty candles give out a fair amount of heat!