The Royal Oak is surprisingly large on the inside with lots of seating. It was quite busy and noisy, perhaps because of the Germany vs. Italy World Cup match. It's a Weatherspoons pub, so selected beers were quite cheap, e.g. GBP1.69 for Ringwood's Best, but service at the bar was a bit slow, and they also didn't seem to track who to serve next very well.
About ten of us turned up. The patio area was full by the time I got there so we were seated just inside but that was still good enough to get access to Martin Settle's home wi-fi. It seemed people generally enoyed themselves, but it would have been nice to be able to hear conversations on the other side of the table; perhaps on a quieter night. Some of the bits of conversation I heard included Edubuntu, Perl, and Python. Ubuntu clearly seemed the favorite distribution.
— Ralph Corderoy