England and Wales
 

UA 439 BWI ORD 1752 1900 752 9AB

A pleasant short flight. The male flight attendant kept
winking at C. I rather like these seats; she found
them a hair narrow, but she doesn't have a very big butt
anyway. F had availability, but a 600-mile flight wasn't
worth wasting the certificates.

UA 938 ORD LHR 2125 1115 777 17AB

Both C. and I slept from takeoff until breakfast,
missing both drinks and dinner. Apparently we didn't
miss the upgrade. Breakfast was a cup of OJ, a cup
of decent mixed fruit (grapes and melons), and a gross
little roll with grape jelly and butter.

We landed on time.

Our priority-tagged bags came out quite late, and the
only advantage was that some lackey pulled them off the
conveyor and put them in an area marked "first and
business class," which made them somewhat harder to find.
Both the bags were sealed with the TSA Passed sticker.
Nothing appeared disturbed.

Off on the Hotel Hoppa to the Sheraton, where Dollar
Rent-a-Car has its office. Presently our black 2005
Hyundai Getz was delivered to us, and we were off on
the beginning of our excellent adventure. We decided
to head west on the A4 toward Avebury; went through a
number of dreary suburbs, but then things began to
clear out; Maidenhead (nice name) is a truly charming
town, though, and our lunch spot, whose sign "The Chef
and the Brewer" and the fact that the parking lot was
full encouraged us to give it a try. Turns out that it
is officially called The Shire Horse, but I guess that
that doesn't mean anything. Lunch was pretty good.

I had duck breast, medium rare, with red cabbage, green
beans, and bacon potatoes. The duck was very nice, quite
rare indeed, a half breast cut artfully to look like
more than the 4-oz serving that it was. Its sauce was a
standard brown gravy, possibly made with duck stock but
more likely with beef. The cabbage was excellent; the
green beans were al dente and fresh. Bacon potatoes, well,
I ate the bacon and onions off the potatoes. I had a few
beers with this: John Smith Smooth, which is pleasant and
very smooth, but without a notable flavor or character;
Courage Bitter, just slightly bitter but with a nice tang;
and the local Hog's Back Ale, which is quite floral and
hoppy with a malty aftertaste.

C. had seafood pie and mash, both quite good. The
seafood was shrimp, mussels, scallops, and fish, all in a
winy cream sauce; it was topped with crisp if premade
puff pastry; the mash were lumpless, buttery, and fresh.
She had a Strongbow with that; might have wanted another,
but as this was her first experience ever driving on the
wrong side of the road, she decided discretion was the
whatever discretion is.

Continued on the A4 right to Avebury, which is the
greatest and second most famous of the ritual stone
circles. It is, they say, four times as big as Stonehenge;
but it's much more primitive, lacking the structure of
the latter; much less preserved, the natives having used
many of the stones for building over the years; and much
less prominent, being in a village rather than on an empty
plain. Actually, it was built without regard to the henges,
so the effect is of village, pastures, and ritual site all
kind of mushed together.

We'd had a recommendation of the Red Lion Inn in the
center of town, but on the way there we stopped by the
Henge Shop, where the proprietor (as it turns out, born
in Ohio, as C. and I both were) dissuaded us from there
and told us about several other places a 5-15 minute
drive away. But after walking the circle, it was getting
dusky, and we thought it might be a good idea to eat
within walking distance of our B&B, so wee went to the
Red Lion after all; turned out it wasn't too bad at all.
We figure that it was a bit too working-class for Mr.
Henge, so he steered us elsewhere.

My duck & bacon pie was perfectly okay, another half
duck breast sliced with a couple ounces of gammon slice
to bring it up to a nice serving; it came in onion gravy
topped with a lid of (less good than the earlier meal's)
previously frozen puff pastry that this time had a cute
lattice atop it. It came with seasonal vegetables of
peas, broccoli, and various other things. I also had a
side of onion rings, which were quite good. I had the
Greene King IPA to start: it was fine but not very bitter;
the GK Abbot ale had more character and spicy hoppiness;
an Old Speckled Hen, quite hoppy, was nicer still. C.
had the slow-cooked Welsh lamb in a lightl minted sauce,
which was fair, although I thought the sauce way too minty,
and she thought it not very minty at all. A Scrumpy Jack
cider, more acid than normal cider, went well with.

Interestingly, the fairly extensive (for a pub) menu was
constructed thus: protein, sauce, starch, seasonal vegetables.
The sauces on offer were onion, brown, lightly minted, and red
wine. Mix and match. I bet that if I'd ordered my pie with
mint sauce, the cook would have just shrugged and put the
lightly minted brown sauce on instead of the onion and shoved
the mess into the oven to finish.

We repaired to what appears to be the only B&B in town,
run by the charming John and Denise, who appear to be
well known among the locals.

It has three pleasantly-appointed bedrooms with a shared
bath; you get the feeling of staying with your granny or
something. The comfy bed was perfect for a much-anticipated
snooze, and all too soon it was time for the full English
breakfast, a custom we were to become quite familiar with -
a cholesterol- and blood-pressure-raising plate of bacon
(not American-style crisp fat stuff, but rather a paper-thin
slice of salt loin), sausage, mushrooms, grilled tomato, and
fried egg, served with toast and tea or coffee. This version
was pretty standard, only the mushrooms were canned (I think
home-canned) and the sausage was made mostly of ground skin,
a budget brand, but I liked it. Denise brought out a jar of
homemade marmalade (by her sister-in-law) to go with the
toast. The only other guest staying there, a Seattle girl
named Barbara, joined us for breakfast; she had spent several
days there and used it as a base for her historico-literary-
new-age tour of the countryside and was that day leaving for
Bath. After which we were off on our adventure - I'd thought
we were going northwest toward Wales, but C. really wanted
to see Glastonbury, and in the end she won out.

We ignored the interesting-sounded Woodhenge and skirted a
bit north of Stonehenge, avoiding the plague and twenty per
cent chance of pestilence of tourists, and soon found
ourselves at market day in Glastonbury - it would perhaps
have been a lovely town were it not for Arthur and Guinevere,
whose graves were said to have been found there, so there was
a whole lot of Celtic-mystical nonsense and more than a touch
of Disney about the place. While C. shopped, I found peace
in the ruins of the Abbey (like most Catholic institutions,
destroyed by Henry VIII); after a good walk through the
grounds, I headed for the exit, where just before the door I
saw C., who was just ready to come in and look for me. So
I did another good walk, and we visited the graves of the
king and queen (discovered by the monks of the Abbey in
1191, so they say) and the site of their reinterment (razed
in the Dissolution). Then it was on to Wales - north on the
motorway, crossing the Severn, then up to the Brecon Beacons.

I'd heard of a place on Talybont-on-Usk, just south of
Brecon, with the imaginative name of Usk Inn. It was said
to have great food and reasonable rooms. So we took the
scenic road up by the Usk and went there, only to find that
the AA had named the place the 2004-2005 Pub of the Year,
and that prices were - although still not confiscatory -
fairly high. We spent 80 quid on the room and another 80
on dinner. But first, we kicked back for a drink. C.
had a local cider, Stocksomething Press, which was
unfortunately less attractive than Strongbow, and I had
a pint of Felinfoel, the national ale of Wales, which was
smooth and rather weak, unlike the Welsh. For exercise and
appetite we walked down to the river and back through the
village, which looks pretty prosperous but is still rather
nothing. The agreeable barmaid, who also served as the
check-in clerk, told us that there was a very small window
for dinner, as one of the two chefs was out sick. Quite
sick, actually, she said. I wondered whether she meant
that he was dead, or in jail, or quit. We dined anyway on
a fairly decent meal cooked by an amateur, I thought. I
speculated that the cook who had won the AA food rosettes
was gone forever and that the landlord was hiding in the
kitchen.

The soup of the day was a very subtle, almost underseasoned
leek and potato with fennel, which paired nicely with a
glass of a pleasant but nondescript Pinot Grigio - C. had
this, as she likes soup.

My orange-thyme scented pate with apple-carrot chutney was
quite excellent, obviously made by or using the recipe of
the revered chef; came with toast points and a little salad;
I drank an intensely flor-flavored Fino (but not Lustau)
with it.

Breads on the table were mediocre.

C. ordered the signature dish, baked shank of local lamb
with mint-red wine sauce over creamed potatoes, a pretty
good dish, but as I don't see the point of mint with lamb,
unless the lamb is very gamy indeed, I didn't care for it.

My local ribeye with shallot-red wine sauce was a bit of
a disappointment - the steak was too thin to be cooked
very blue, as I'd ordered it. It had barely hit the grill
and been turned over, and it was still medium-rare at best,
with no crust or brownness. The thing was enormous but
very thin, so it amounted to only about 8 oz of meat. The
sauce was a thinnish stock with a large number of gigantic
shallots, so it was extremely sweet. An amateur, as I said.

Seasonal steamed vegetables for the table included carrots,
fennel, broccoli, and cauliflower and were very average.

Chipped potatoes were very good.

Vieux Telegraphe 01 - on the menu as the 00 - was pretty
decent, with licorice, mint, prune, and wood all
harmoniously cooperative, an amazingly complex wine with
a long finish and a fat mouthfeel that got fatter as the
wine aired; there was a slight tinge of cork, though, and
the wine could have profited well from that extra year.

Up to our room, pleasant, nicely appointed, with Ernest H.
Shepard pencil sketches gracing the wall. A good bathroom
with a long, deep tub suitable for two. Downsides: thin
walls, so we could hear the person in the next room peeing;
and bad ventilation in the bathroom, leading to a bit of
musty odor. Good bed.

Where are you staying in Wales exactly, I don't tend to venture very far North of Cardiff..... ;)

Are you stopping off in Cardiff? :confused:

PM me if you want any advice on restaurants, wine bars, etc.

You're not scared of the Valleys like many others in Caerdydd are you ? :D

flyclub, sorry to relate that I've returned to the States by now
(thus having the time to do a trip report) ... and when we landed
at Heathrow, we didn't know we were going to Wales at all, otherwise
we certainly would have asked advice from the knowledgeable souls
on FT. Never fear, though, from our quick look at your country, C. and
I are definitely planning to return, and when we do, we'll get in touch
with you first!

Cheers
Michael

No, only when they travel to Cardiff for a night out in the pubs/clubs on a Friday/Saturday night. Certainly become a more 'rougher' crowd over the last five years. I would strongly recommend a curfew of 7pm from certain areas of Cardiff. Can usually tell when they are arriving when I see a line of late 80's early 90's Corsas/Escorts/Fiestas as a warning..... :rolleyes:

I have noticed it more since my travelling escalated - I certainly feel 'safer' in some other cities around the world/Europe.

violist - No problem - I have read many of your postings with interest, especially your love of food/wine - certainly be good to meet if your travels bring you back to Wales - I know some excellent restaurants!

Sadly not just a Cardiff problem - sounds like most UK cities outside of London!

Do visit the Gower peninsula - one of my favorite places from my childhood days. I have to warn you though, if you want decent food, eat at Indian restaurants or the odd well vetted and vouched for Pub.

We awoke and padded down to a nearly deserted breakfast
room where we saw an assortment of stewed prunes (okay),
"fresh" fruit (two peaches, one rotten, the other snagged
by me and discovered to be hard as a rock), orange juice
(with that weird tinny taste), grapefruit juice (lacking
that weird tinny taste), local yogurt (flavored and
unbelievably sweet, even the rhubarb kind), and Kellogg's
cereals. Followed by the full English, which C. had:
it was the usual, but the banger was bready rather than
skinny, so she liked it better (I tasted it and didn't
care for it). I ordered the alternative, undyed smoked
haddock, of which they seem to be proud and make a lot
on their menu - half a small fish topped with a poached
egg and lots of butter, very good indeed. The server was
the cook, who was also the owner and the amateur chef I
described before. What the heck, it was past Labor Day,
and loads must have been low, and there was nothing that
Basil Fawlty could do to ruin anything.

We packed up, paid the bill, and headed out into a
half-overcast morning. C. just had to see Hay on Wye,
so there we went, an easy 20 miles up the road. A bunch of
bookstores selling things not unlike those in bookstores
anyplace else. I didn't see the point, but she found it
just charming. As I'd endured that for her, it was my
turn to determine the next direction - so we went from
the rather picturesque Brecon Beacons up to Snowdonia
and its brooding cliffs and imposing peaks. Via, of
course, King Arthur's Labyrinth and Crafts Centre; we
passed on the Labyrinth, wasted half an hour looking at
boring stuff (some well crafted, some not), and returned
disappointed to the car. Just a couple miles north, though,
C. found a pretty nice potter's shop, where she picked
up a nice hand-thrown hand-decorated quart jug for her
friend Eden's housewarming.

Then up through Snowdon National Park; it's amazing what
winding one-and-one-half lane tracks some of the A roads
are, but then they go through the most beautiful areas. It
was too misty to see Snowdon, but the subsidiary peaks are
lovely, maybe even more because of the oh-so-evocative
mist. On the 498 near Llyn Gwynant we had pulled over to
take pictures over the tarn and were fortunate to witness
and not be part of an amusing scenario involving some
highway-going ovines and an enormous tour bus. We were in
a line of traffic and decided to stop at a turnout, and
a good thing, as immediately a number of rather frisky
sheep decided to scamper into the road, which halted
traffic immediately. At length the sheep left the road,
and the cars started to crawl on ... only to be seen in
a couple minutes crawling backwards, pursued by a vehicle
that looked too fat to negotiate the road at all, much
less one lane of it. Eventually things sorted out, by
which time we were ready to retake our position in the
rear of the queue, just a car or two behind where we
would have been had we not stopped.

On to Bangor (where we didn't stop; my brother-in-law
had got a Master's there and still didn't have much
to say about it) and then the relatively fabulous dual
carriageway to the very quaint little triangular town
of Conwy with its fine Edwardian castle and quaint
waterfront (which includes the "smallest house in
Britain"). The first order of business was to find a
place to stay for the night. Turns out that next to
each other, just outside the town walls, are a semi-tony
small hotel and a semi-seedy large B&B (approaching the
size but not the cost of the hotel). As we'd dropped
160 quid the night before, we went for the B&B. The
very pleasant proprietor informed us as we came in that
there was one room left, and it was ours. Looked at the
room - it was reminiscent of what you'd find at a cheap
seaside hotel, which is not a big surprise. We took the
room for L45 despite its not very modern conveniences.

Put down our stuff and walked through town, not very
taxing, as the walls total about a mile end to end to end.
It's a cute little town, plus there's enough to keep a
history buff going for quite some time.

We poked our noses into various restaurants that are
recommended in the guidebooks; nothing struck our fancy,
except maybe the plate of five local cheeses listed under
"dessert" at the toniest place in town, Shakespeare's.
It began to look like a fish and chips night, but then we
recalled having smelled some nice onion-and-curry smells
early on in our walk, so we went back toward the scents.

Along the way we got a few taster bottles of Welsh spirits
from a place called Fine Wines of Conwy, which has some
decent wines at not-out-of-line prices, and a few other
hard liquors, none of which tempted me except for a 5- or
7-year-old Ledaig at about 20 bucks a bottle (didn't get
any though).

And came to a little hole-in-the wall a block from the
train station called The Bengal Chef or The Raj, depending
whether you believe the eat-in menu or the take-out one.
We were the first in there around 7 o'clock, which was
either ominous or sad.

In any case we were determined to eat there if only
because of the hopeful eyes of the young Bangladeshi-
or Assamese-looking fellow who greeted us. And, as it
turns out, on the whole we were reasonably pleased with
what we had.

A couple pints of draft Kingfisher set the mood nicely.

We ordered lamb vindaloo and chicken tikka in garlic sauce
(C.'s not a vindaloonie, and I don't care for chicken
tikka); these were decent. The vindaloo was like what I
remember from college days - a somewhat tomatoey stew
with a rather simplistic spicing scheme, no vinegar or
cloves to speak of, a couple odd chunks of potato, and
a whole lot of hot chile powder thrown in. Not a culinary
triumph, but solid and for me "comfort food" in its way.
The tandooried chicken breast chunks, pretty tender and
tasty, were in a sauce of garlic, scallions, a bit of
ginger, and a touch of tomato, which made it all seem
somehow almost Chinese. A well-done but quite plain rice
pilau soaked up the juices nicely, and side orders of
garlic naan and tarka dal were quite fine although a
bit underseasoned. The bill? About as much as one main
course in the fancy place downtown (i.e., two blocks away).

Back to the B&B, which I discover was called Llys
Llewelyn and is appropriately described in Rick Steves'
guidebook as "faded," and our room, which picked up a
weird odor reminiscent of sheep's pee as soon as we
turned down the bedclothes; I traced it to the mildewy
duvet, which we rendered tolerable by turning it upside
down and covering it with a bedspread. And so in these
humble surroundings we actually had a decent sleep,
perhaps helped along by the taster bottles, which we
sampled in the darkish downstairs parlor beforehand.

Penderlyn Madeira wood aged single-malt Welsh whisky -
this has a sweet, almost floral aroma owing perhaps to
the wood finish, and a lowland Scotchlike nose to
palate, with some peat and smoke; rummy sugar after
and a bit of raw alcohol burn. Not a great drink, but
if it had been 10 quid I might have picked up a few
for friends, just because who's ever heard of Welsh
whisky. But on returning to the store, I discovered
that rather bizarrely, they ask 30 for a bottle.

Danzy Jones Wysgi Licor, supposedly flavored with
rose hips and herbs, has a distinct underlying taste
of Welsh whisky and a dominant licorice presence; I
found it rather nasty, mitigated by a decent whisky
finish; C. thought it one of the worst things
she'd ever had. We found that the bottle, in a gift
box, had had a hairline crack, so that old whisky
and sugar goo was all over the place, and about half
the bottle was missing. We mulled over returning it
the next day, but then we figured that the only thing
they would do for us would be to saddle us with a fresh
bottle of the stuff, so we swallowed our loss and not
the rest of the booze, which we tossed in the bin.

Black Mountain liqueur, the other component of the
gift set (along with a jigger that now sits amid
C.'s other glassware), is an apple blackcurrant
cordial that, after the Danzy fiasco, we were prepared
to hate. We didn't hate it. A pruney dried apple nose,
quite thick texture, good acid, not too sweet, lots of
cider apple on the palate and a bit of green herbs and
currant as well; a dried fruit finish. We actually
finished this (these were 100 mL bottles).

We woke to a pleasant, partly cloudy late summer morning:
after the now-routine full English breakfast we bade
goodbye to the genial host and took a stroll through town;
C. went to a shop and got funny little favors for her
colleagues before we headed out shortly before lunchtime.

Oh, I'd forgot to say that Wednesday evening I'd finally
got in touch with my friends George and Anne - this is
relevant - whom we were planning to visit on Saturday.
Turns out, though, that their cricket club had an outing,
and as there was no way of reaching us to tell us to come
another day ... and it's a good thing I called in, for the
only possibility of getting together was Thursday dinner.
Now, we're in Conwy, and they're at Horndon-on-the-Hill,
way across the country. So instead of taking two leisurely
days, seeing the Cotswolds, stuff like that, we have to
leadfoot it singlemindedly (stopping once only, for fuel)
for 5 hours, hoping for good weather and few trucks.

I plotted a diagonalish route using mostly A roads, as
C. doesn't care for motorways; fine with me, because
at least I would be able to see some of the countryside.
C. of course would have to plug on, looking neither
left nor right.

Next time ... this was kind of a whirlwind tour ... agree about
Indian restaurants; see above.

Great report! In fact, you have been to places in Wales I have not. I have yet to venture North of Brecon and have lived here since I was Born (25 years ago), yet I have travelled to the USA probably around 75 times since I was born....... :rolleyes:

Ely, the Docks (the 'proper' bit) and Splott especially. :D

Great report violist !.

An inauspicious beginning - road works bringing the A55
to a halt west of Chester. Look at it on the bright side,
I said to C., pointing out the panoramic view out over
the River Dee, at least you can see something. Presently
we were on our way and had a fairly smooth journey, the
hamsters in the engine working overtime and mostly pretty
well. We did get behind a farm vehicle or garbage truck
or something near Nantwich, and there was a triple whammy
of big semis, blinding rain, and torn-up road that led
C. briefly to doubt our mission, at Stoke-on-Trent
(the dual carriageway abruptly disappears, and we were
routed onto slippery streets parallelling the mud- and
waterlogged construction sites, and heaven knows we were
fortunate to have managed to avoid being killed by a huge
lorry or each other), and our brief stay on the M1 was
horribly congested; but we covered our 280 miles in just
5 hours, which means that on the straightaway the little
Getz must have done very well indeed.

Pulled in to Horndon, where about the first words spoken
by George to C. were, you look terrible, perhaps not
what a young woman wants to hear at any time. A beer and
a catching-up chat (I hadn't seen George and Anne for
nearly five years) later, everything started going a bit
better. We put our bags up in our rooms (each of us got
one of the kids' rooms - the kids have long gone on and
had kids of their own), freshened up, and then it was
time to be shown around the village.

There's a post office cum convenience store, a butcher
shop, a doctor's office ("surgery"), a knickknack store
or two to snare the odd unsuspecting tourist, and a rather
well regarded inn, the Hill House, to serve a population
of maybe a few hundred. Also a pretty I'd say 18th century
church and a 16th century wool market, which indicates
that the place was perhaps more buzzing, or at least
baaing, half a millennium ago than it is now. There are
also two pubs, an upscale one in the good part of town,
and a downscale one in the rough part of town, about 6
or 8 doors down.

George steered us to the upscale one, the Bell, which is
associated with the hotel. This prides itself on being
the Morning Advertiser food pub of the year, whatever
that means. (In truth, the food was quite good.)

I was all set to have a Bass or something, when John,
the landlord, suggested that I should try something that
I hadn't had before (which makes sense, doesn't it); so
we started with a round of Crouch Vale Brewer's Gold,
a local [Essex] brew that is clean and smooth and quite
easy to quaff. C. had another Strongbow - it seems
that she can't get enough cider when she's over there.
Anne had a Coke or something, as she is a modest if at
all drinker.

The breads that came to the table were all right,
probably the best of the trip. Oddly, there were two
kinds, both soda breads. George noticed that C. was
particularly enjoying them, so he called the waiter
(who had an outrrrrageous accent, only German - it
turns out that some European hotel school ships its
students across the Channel for finishing) over for
another basket when we'd finished the first one; C.
protested loudly, but still the bread got eaten.

Anne had salmon cakes, croquettes really, which were
well seasoned and properly fried; George got the smoked
haddock, which was excellent - probably the best thing
on the table.

C. ordered lamb-mint sausages over creamed potatoes,
which were pretty good, only you know that I think that
lamb and mint get mighty old mighty quick.

I had the fanciest dish at the table (and probably the
fanciest dish on the list, except for maybe the sauteed
pigeon breast) - chump of lamb over sauteed sweet
potatoes in what was described as an oriental sauce.
The lamb was tender, nicely pink inside, and the sauce,
which turned out to be an Indian-spiced sweetish brown
sauce, went well with. On the side I got a rolled-up
eggplant slice stuffed with duxelles, very good.

Side vegetables come with - zucchini, kind of average,
a rich and tasty potato cake, and cauliflower with a
sharpish mustard-Cheddar sauce.

Another round of the same, despite the presence of a
fairly good and not-too-grossly-overpriced wine list.

And though we shouldn't have, we had dessert,
compromising by having each couple split one. C.
and I had a chocolate quelquechose (decadence, oblivion,
what have you) with Bailey's ice cream, well prepared;
and our friends shared a coconut baked Alaska.

Then more small talk with the landlord's wife, and then
a walk to work off a few of the calories we had ingested.

And where did this walk land us? Clue: we ended up in
the bad part of Horndon.

Of course. Where else would these feet take us but to the
other pub, The Swan, which to my eyes was just like any
other regular pub, with a fairly sedate middle-aged
clientele, an agreeable barmaid, and some pretty good beer.

There is a difference in the customers: at the Bell, there
are wealthy businessfolk and other yuppies or would-bes
mingling with the cream of the local society; the Swan
is populated with folks without pretensions, and, if rumor
is to be believed, with fists. I discovered also that it
is the home base for one of the better-known folk music
associations in England, which holds regular hootenannies
or ceilidhs or whatever they call them there there.

Essex Boys best bitter is made by Crouch Vale as well (I
am reminded that this is an Essex brewery, not a Suffolk
one, which I may have claimed before) but is completely
different - pillow-soft, touch of coffee and spice, but
so smooth it seems not to have any alcohol at all.

I tried Ansell's best bitter, something else altogether -
very floral, rather assertive odor reminiscent of bathroom
disinfectant. A bit of a disappointment.

Adnam's bitter was a tad sour and metallic but otherwise
perfectly unexceptionable. I think that Essex Boys was the
winner among the three.

At some point some unspecified person jostled the table
and spilled part of my beer. It was the Ansell's, so I
didn't complain too much.

And so we toddled on back through the village for a well-
deserved rest.

Next morning our hosts were out early for their cricket
club meeting (an overnight affair that involves, so far as
I can determine, betting on the horses, lots of alcohol,
and no cricket at all), and after a bleary-eyed chat we
were left to our own devices. I discovered that a nice
cold breakfast had been set out for us, fruit, cereal,
bread, milk. And there was a big tub of Benechol at my
place, perhaps because (as with people in middle age
everywhere) one of the topics of conversation had been
our various little health issues. I didn't have much -
just a piece of fruit and a slug of o.j., but I did have
to taste the Benechol, which turned out to be neutral in
every way.

A quick hop up various secondary roads, past the Secret
Nuclear Bunker, up around Haverhill, and to Bury, where
our friends' wedding reception was going to be held.
A gorgeous day, and C. was clearly enjoying driving
on the wrong side of the road, tootling through all
the quaint old villages, and saying hello to each cow
or sheep we encountered.

Noonish, as we hadn't had a full breakfast, we decided
to stop at the Cherry Tree in Stradishall, which had
the advantages of having a good car park (with many
cars) and an attractive although mosquito-ridden patio,
and most important, being open. It is, as most pubs in
the area, a Greene King house, so we had our IPA and
Abbot Ale (no Speckled Hen on tap here).

C., who had been hankering for a regular bar meal,
and because the pubs we'd eaten had by the luck of the
draw been mostly of the gastro variety, got the so-called
deluxe ploughman's: Stilton, Cheddar, pickled onion, and
bread, with a salad as a concession to the Cantabrigians
who appear to frequent the place. All were good; I tasted
the Cheddar and found it first-rate.

I hadn't seen mussels on any of the menus, even in Conwy,
where shellfishing is a major source of income; so when I
saw them listed at the bottom of the blackboard specials
(about 30 items, so I wonder how special they are) in a
tomato broth with chorizo treatment, I ordered them. It
was that or the Thai chicken curry - there is a big gastro
side to this place, but at least it hadn't quite lost
touch with its roots, from when it was a watering hole
for the nearby RAF base and later for the two (?!) prisons
in the area; in addition to the ploughman's, one could
get sausage and mash, various sandwiches with weird
names like Doorstop, or, for the very studently penurious,
a big basket of chips for L2. It was not a large serving
of not very large (but wild) mussels, in a garlic-free
and wine-free broth with some onions, tomato, and sausage
dice - a perfectly good dish, but not so hearty as I would
have expected or liked. I was reduced to eating lots of
bread and butter, even taking into account that we were
supposed to have cocktails and dinner 2 hours thence.

flyclub: we had made a conscious decision to visit interesting places
that were 1. (ever so) slightly off the beaten path and 2. accessible
by auto and no other way.

In any case, no fault accrues to a native's not visiting the lesser
attractions of his own country: I've been sort of based in one area
for 35 years but have never set foot aboard the USS Constitution,
the top historical attraction for hundreds of miles around. Although
I was once contracted to set up a concert at its mooring place,
only another group undercut me in price and then (heh heh) failed
to do the job.

Staying at B&Bs in England is a notoriously risky business. Better to use the Travelodge or Premier Inn chain of motels, which are excellent value for money and can be booked on line.

Good point. However, you still did well with your itinerary! However, Wales is a very safe place on the whole outside of the largest cities (Swansea, Cardiff and Newport). The biggest problems would be sheep..... :rolleyes: