Best First Date Spots in Weybridge for Drinks and Conversation

You have agreed on Weybridge because it is halfway along the line for each of you, and now there are 20 minutes on a train in which to decide where. The town is small enough to cross on foot in 15 minutes. That is the main thing working in your favour. It is also loud in some places and silent in others, and that difference decides how long the evening lasts.

Sullivans Wine Bar on Church Street

Sullivans has been on Church Street since 1981. In a commuter town that is close to permanence. The pavement seating is the reason to arrive early on a warm evening, and the interior is small enough that raising your voice is unnecessary. It works best as an opener. The wine list is long, the food is substantial without being a commitment, and nobody minds a table occupied for 90 minutes. If the conversation is going badly, the bill arrives quickly and the station is a 10-minute walk. If it is going well, Church Street puts you within 5 minutes of 3 other places. That is the argument for starting here rather than committing to a table somewhere with a tasting menu.

No39 in the Quadrant

No39 opened in 2017 as part of the Quadrant redevelopment, and it is the closest thing Weybridge has to a neighbourhood wine bar in the modern sense. Small plates, a rotating list by the glass, and a room that fills from about 7.30 on a Friday.

The advantage on a first date is the format. Ordering 4 or 5 small dishes gives you something to do with your hands and something neutral to discuss for the first 20 minutes. Most first dates are decided inside that window. Book ahead at the weekend. Walking in at 8pm on a Saturday means standing. The room is bright and reasonably noisy, so it suits a first meeting better than a second or third, where most people want somewhere darker and quieter.

The Hand and Spear Near the Station

The Hand and Spear is a large Victorian pub a short walk from Weybridge station. It is the practical choice when one of you is arriving by train and neither wants to commit to a long evening. It has the space that most Weybridge venues do not, so a full room still leaves you somewhere to sit.

The weeknight crowd is mostly over 40. An age gap at a table here goes unremarked, so anybody dating an established man can arrive without being looked at twice. A venue where you are visibly the wrong demographic makes both of you self-conscious, and self-consciousness makes a decent conversation much harder.

The Old Crown and the Riverside

The Old Crown is a family-run pub beside the Thames, and its case is entirely about what surrounds it. Weybridge is where the Wey meets the Thames, and the walk along the water before or after a drink is the single best thing the town offers a first date.

The River Wey Navigation runs 15½ miles from Guildford down to the Thames at Weybridge, and the Godalming Navigation added a further 4 miles when it opened in 1764. The towpath is flat, well surfaced and lit for the first stretch. Walking side by side removes the eye contact problem that makes some people freeze across a table.

Meejana for a Longer Evening

Meejana is a Lebanese restaurant holding 2 AA rosettes, and it is the right call when both of you have already decided the evening is going well. Mezze is the correct order.

It arrives in stages, takes 2 hours to work through, and nobody has to perform enthusiasm about somebody else’s main course.

Long dinners raise a separate problem, which is running out of things to say at the 90-minute mark. Reaching for prepared first date questions twice in one evening tells you more than any of the answers will. If the conversation needs a script by 9pm, the answer about a second date is already available to both of you.

Brooklands Before Dinner

For a daytime first meeting, Brooklands Museum is 10 minutes from the town centre and solves the problem of what to do with the first hour. Hugh and Ethel Locke King built the circuit on 330 acres of their estate, work started in late 1906, and the first official race was held on 6 July 1907.

The site is interesting in its own right. An aerodrome was cleared in the middle of the track in 1909, the Wellington bomber was developed there, and Concorde has a permanent connection to the place. A museum date supplies conversation for free, which is why it works for people who find the sit-down-and-talk format difficult.

The Towpath Walk

If the weather holds, the walk is better than a third venue. Elmbridge Museum’s account of the historic waterways of Weybridge records barges bringing bricks and cement up from the Thames between 1900 and 1920, and aeroplanes being loaded at Weybridge after the First World War, presumably surplus production from Brooklands.

That is the sort of detail that turns a walk into something other than a walk. The route from the town lock towards Shepperton takes about 40 minutes at conversational pace, and it ends near enough to the station that leaving is easy for whoever wants to leave. In winter the same walk is a bad idea after dark, and the substitute is a second drink somewhere with windows onto the water.

The Second Date Problem

Weybridge is small, and that is the constraint nobody plans for. There are perhaps 6 places suitable for a first date, which means a second date in the same town runs a real risk of repetition, and a third is difficult. Most people solve this by moving the second date to Richmond or into town, which quietly changes what the evening is.

The question worth asking before you book anything is which of you is travelling further, and what that person will want at 10pm. A venue 4 minutes from the station is worth more to them than a better room 20 minutes away, and getting that right is the part of the evening you actually control.