Author Archives: Miss Penny Black

Devon and Dorset

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We spent a morning exploring Lyme Regis in beautiful sunshine and ate delicious Devon pasties for lunch while sitting on a bench overlooking the beach. Delightful!

Lyme Regis has one of those quintessentially English beaches that are composed of enormous pebbles. The noise they make when you walk over them is extraordinary. The beach is lined with colourful bathing boxes in lovely pastel shades and there were many people out walking dogs and only one person in the water, which we’d been assured wasn’t ‘that cold’.

Looks like a comfy surface to sunbathe on. Not.

The town is full of stores selling designer clothes, art, food that’s practically art, and the words ‘organic’, ‘locally sourced’ and ‘ethically produced’ are more the norm than the exception. Life in the south west of England is appealing indeed.

Our first evening in town was stunning calm and clear – especially for October.

Lyme Regis by night.

The lamp posts in Lyme Regis celebrate its position on the ‘Jurassic Coast’, an amazing area where frequent landslides often uncover million year old fossils.

Mid afternoon we headed over to Axminster, home of one of the fabled River Cottage Canteens. We loitered in a pub with free wifi for a while then arrived a bit early for our booking.

First in the door!

Starters were cauliflower soup with an onion bhaji in the middle for me and Luke had a plate of fresh buffalo mozzarella with an arrabiata salsa on a naan. I’ve always thought mozzarella was too bland to eat raw but this dish was amazing. The bhaji in my soup was like a giant, crunchy, spicy crouton that was the perfect compliment.

Pork belly!

For mains I had pork belly, which was excellent, and Luke had a pumpkin and almond risotto with chilli and barley. I had bitter chocolate mousse for dessert and Luke had a cheese platter. If you ever have the chance I highly recommend eating there. It was amazing value for three courses (£20 pp), the flavours were complex and perfectly balanced and the staff were very friendly and helpful.

We had also learned that the second episode of the latest River Cottage series had been shot at the pub where we were staying so we’re super keen to see it next week.

Happy Halloween from Hugh!

The next morning we checked out of the hotel and headed to the seaside village of Beer. Because… Beer!

I’m a sucker for towns with funny names and Beer ticks that box. We bought some postcards (obviously) and some more delicious pasties and sat in the sunshine. Pasties and ginger beer seemed a very appropriate lunch to be having by the beach. Very Enid Blyton. No mysteries to solve, however, just lots of photographs of boats and chairs and then to the Beer beer garden overlooking the beach so Luke could have a beer.

The most fiery ginger beer we’ve ever had.

Like toy boats… but big!

Beer!

Our friend Jen, who lives in Bristol and who has featured several times in this blog previously, had carelessly issued an invitation to come stay any time. We decided a free bed and good company were not to be sniffed at, so our next stop: Bristol!

Lyme Regis

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We’re in Dorset, having driven down from Nottingham today and the further south we got, the better the weather became.

We’re here because we’re both River Cottage fans and it’s a very difficult thing indeed to watch the tv show and not want to come to the south west of England.

For those who haven’t seen it (and shame on you), River Cottage began as a documentary of Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall, a London chef who moved to Dorset to try to live, as much as possible, off the land. He rented a small property and grew his own vegetables, raised some pigs and became very involved in the local community. Over the years HFW moved properties, opened restaurants, trained chefs and promoted a wonderful ethos of responsible, ethical food production. I very much admire his dedication to something so important and the success he’s had both locally and internationally. It’s hard to know whether River Cottage started the trend of gourmet, organic, locally sourced farm produce down here, but food in this area is seriously good. We’ll report back tomorrow on the fare we’re served at the River Cottage Canteen in Axminster. Can’t wait!

Bakewell

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Until Lucas, Matt and I took a drive through the countryside around Nottingham I thought that a ‘Bakewell tart’ was made by a company called ‘Bakewell’ because really, that would be an appropriate name for a company that makes pastries. Turns out it’s a place from which the eponymous delicacy originates. Lucas and I had one each and weren’t enormously impressed, but I’d certainly recommend the village as somewhere to visit if you want to see one of those perfectly picturesque English villages.

‘Lashings’ of cream were promised but not delivered. A veritable teaspoon, I say!

Having a Bakewell tart in Bakewell was something of a consolation after driving an hour through the rain to the enormous Chatsworth House in the hope of seeing something interesting that was out of the miserable weather and then finding it was nearly 20 pounds to get in. It was a real shame as there was a sculpture exhibition on in the gardens that would’ve been great to see if the weather has been better or we’d had golf umbrellas and gumboots. Still, the drive through the Derbyshire countryside was pretty (when the driving rain subsided) with the trees starting to show their Autumn colours.

I found a craft shop in Bakewell and bought some wool and needles to knit myself a Winter hat and successfully resisted buying a cross stitch kit or some beads (it was a mighty effort –  I’m addicted to craft supplies) then returned to Matt’s place where he cooked us a delicious roast dinner. The boys went to the pub and I stayed home and watched stuff on youtube and knitted for several hours. It was so nice to be by myself for the first time in a long time. Solitude is such a luxury!

Nottingham (again) and a Beer Festival (again).

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For someone who can’t stand beer I spend a lot of time at beer festivals. Although if you take away the beer there’s nothing about beer festivals I don’t like. The people are great – they’re down to earth, span all ages and wear silly hats. The atmosphere is laid back, there’s delicious food, new things to try and everything’s cheap. The only way they could be improved is a liberal application of sunshine.

Cheers!

Luke and I drove up yesterday and met Matt and Lucas at the festival. The Cambridge beer festival was the only one I’d known anything about and I’d been impressed by its scope. However the Nottingham beer festival was even more extensive. Approximately 1100 different beers. Lucas pointed out that about a mouthful of each would still equal 33 litres of beer to drink. I don’t think there’s that many individual beers produced in the southern hemisphere. On top of that there’s over 200 ciders and perries.  There was also a fantastic range of food options, from cheese platters to zebra burgers.

Just part of the cider selection.

We stayed for about four hours then headed to England’s oldest pub, ‘The Trip To Jerusalem’, which was almost under the beer festival, as it is partially built into the hill on which sits Nottingham Castle, where the festival was held. We had a drink there then moved on to the Canalhouse, which is a pub with a section of canal in the middle and bridges to walk across. After that we stopped at the Vat and Fiddle, which is attached to the Castle Rock Brewery. After that we wove our way back to Matt’s  (some weaving more than others).

Friday we took a break from the festival in order to drive out into the countryside and… drink more beer. We stopped at a pub called The Unicorn for lunch and then visited a farm shop. Farm shops in the UK are big sheds full of local, top-shelf produce. They almost always have venison, fancy sausages, pheasant and whatever is in season plus jams and chutneys and posh shortbread etc. They, foolishly, had an untended bowl of chocolate covered almonds out for people to try and I ate quite a few before Luke’s frowns shamed me away from them.

It was a rather miserable day so we ditched our plans to visit the extensive Clumber Park and went to see a cathedral that, fortuitously, was filled with the sounds of an army band (although they sounded more like an orchestra to me) rehearsing for a performance that evening. They were very good.

Cathedral interior, right before I was told ‘no photos without a permit’. AGAIN. Bah.

The boys decided to do their own beer tasting at home that night and bought a range of beers to share. We watched more Archer, ate a roast chicken and then went to bed early (well, earlier than we’ve been going to bed lately). ready to face another day of festival on Saturday.

Researching New York

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Everyone researches their holidays but how much research you do depends on you. I have friends who swear by the ‘buy a flight then land and explore’ method of travel but the longer this year goes on the more I realise that I am much happier to know that my accommodation and all forms of travel are booked well in advance and I have a list of activities I’d like to do in each place already written down. Which is not to say that my plans are set in stone but it is undoubtedly cheaper the earlier one buys train and plane tickets and options for hotels etc are far greater if things aren’t left til the last moment. Plus I enjoy the peace of mind that comes from knowing nothing needs to be organised in a hurry.

Of course where you’re going can dictate how early everything needs to be organised and our next stop after the UK is New York. We found some cheap airbnb rooms (one for a week in Greenwich and one for a week in Brooklyn Heights) ages ago. Now we’re making a list of what to do while we’re there.

Seems we’ve struck gold in terms of our Greenwich booking – the Halloween parade is on the second night we’re there. Apart from that we’ve started a list of food we want to try and a few galleries but otherwise I’d love some advice. So recommendations please!