Route of Sardinia trip in 2011

Wandering moors and dales

Well, the beautiful weather that smiled on us down the rump of England has long gone. The sky has fallen in, Chicken Little, and even though it is the height of summer, there is fog, and we have been in waterproofs, socks, and sleeping bags for a full two weeks. Luckily, we lived here for so long, albeit so long ago, that we have become fairly immune to the weather -- thank goodness. In our usual fashion we have been hunting down interesting little villages.

Whitby, probably our fifth trip here -- is, of course, Captain James Cook's training grounds. Here he lived while he was an apprentice seaman, lodging with his captain. Nowadays a copy of his ship, the Endeavour, takes a small group of the many thousands of tourists who flock here daily for a quick trip up and down the beautiful harbour.

Fat Betty, high on the North York moors, marks a moody and isolated spot just west of The Lion Inn at Blakey Ridge where we overnighted on our Coast to Coast walk a few years back. Terrific memories. 

Heather lies still in patches of purple on the windy moors around Fat Betty, and moulting sheep dig hollows into crusts of earth to find protection from cruel winds that bite into your very bones around here. Even in summer.

We find Kilburn, the village of the Mouseman, Robert Thompson, and gaze in awe at the solid oak furniture his descendents and studio craftsmen happily make in his workshop. Still with his unique trademark emblem, a carved oak mouse, tucked into some whimsical corner of each piece that he conceived when one of his helpers working with him in a church commented that he was as 'poor as a church mouse'.

Kilburn is thick with people, here solely to visit Thompson's furniture showrooms. These crowds appear here daily. Amazing to think that pieces Thompson sold in 1930 for £5 are now being auctioned off for £5,000 and more.

Not far away is the pretty village where the Duchess of Kent grew up, Hovingham. The rather squat square castle her family owned sits around a crunchy pebbled square that seems as accessible as the village green just in front of it. You can imagine little girls from the big house running out to play. And right next door is their village church, dripping with weeping willows softly brushing old gravestones.

We move into the Yorkshire Dales proper and camp, for a week, on a farm that is straight out of All Creatures Great and Small. Smack bang in the middle of the dales scenery that was filmed. The vet is a regular visitor - a locum from New Zealand. If the sick cattle she treats live she will have proved her worth, we discover. God help her if they have reached their life's span.

Drystone walls stitch themselves across the landscape like lines in a patchwork -- right to the treeline. Stone cottages, thick with moss, border little village streets.

We think we have seen it all so many times before, but we haven't. We are especially charmed by Linton-in-Craven. Linton's packhorse bridge is a relic from ages past, arching across to the village green which rises up to the prettiest almshouses we have ever seen.

Built by a wealthy local timber merchant benefactor who made a fortune in London suppling wood for coffins needed after the Plague in 1665 and the Great Fire in 1666, these six cottages surround a central chapel built especially for the inhabitants, and all of it is used for those in need to this day, under the provisions of his will.

Rain gives away to sun on our last Sunday. It is hard to leave in the rain and almost impossible if there is sun, but, tomorrow, we have to head south to drop off our van and it is not long now till we have to catch our plane. But, we will return. And that is a promise.

oooOOOooo

Appletreewick where we return again and again 

Whitby, of Captain Cook fame

Fat Betty 

Heather colours the moors

Sheep shelter in the tufts

Handmade furniture by the Mouseman 

The mouse, his trademark 

This lane closed almost to a walking path

Village graveyard, Hovingham weeping with willows

Drystone walls across the dales

Stone barns thick with moss 

Ancient packhorse bridge in Linton-in-Craven

Almshouses built by a benefactor made wealthy selling wooden coffins during the plague

Drystone walls stitch the fields

Perfect cottage garden in Kilburn

Sun setting on our trip as we drop off our motorhome at Scholar Green 

Eating for England

We are now rarely bothering to cook. The rot started one sunny Sunday in a Norfolk village, called Salthouse. We'd planned to make lunch. In fact, we queued at a busy seafood vendor's shanty stall along the coast and bought a big bag of crabs that his staff had dressed, and some of their fresh raw samphire. Samphire is like a salty green asparagus with more shoots, and is grown right there, in those Norfolk marshes.

We'd only heard of it as an ingredient on television, never tasted it, though we'd always wanted to. We were also charmed by the fish vendor's tale that he had seen Samphire growing along the West Australian coast, around Monkey Mia, when he was there, not so long ago. So we bought some, without any cajoling, promising we'd find that stache in West Australia if ever we went. The crabman gave us detailed instructions on how to cook the samphire, noting that Norfolk folk finish it off with a dressing of vinegar and butter. Which would go perfectly with the crabs, we thought.

And it did. It was delicious. But we ate it that night, not that day for lunch. As we ended up enticed by what we saw on people's plates on tables at the pub, next door to the crabman's shanty, overlooking the marshes and dykes that stop the North Sea invading the low lying land in this part of Norfolk.

Potted prawns entree. I am now hundreds of kilometres away from this very ordinary pub that attracted crowds driving from far and distant to eat, but I would happily drive back tomorrow just to try this entree item a second time. I immediately voted it my favourite taste sensation on this particular trip, and have it down as a Special Request for Pete to master, the instant we get home. A preserve jar full of curried prawns with a rich layer of butter melting on top, as it arrived at the table. I plan to eat it often. Our mains were tender roasts of lamb (fed across the road on the marsh grasses, and butchered locally) and so yummy I didn't want to leave. This meal started our taste buds thrumming seriously.

The next day we ate thick, delicious, flaky Steak and Ale pie in The Belgian Monk in Norwich that was beyond delicious, ridiculously cheap. Now, this, typically, is basic English fare, but this serving in this pub could not have been bettered in a Michelin starred restaurant. This year, again, we have found eating out in England so reasonable, and with the current exchange favouring us it costs just a little more than we could buy the ingredients for at home, without any of the effort of having to cook ourselves.

Moving up to the Yorkshire Moors we came across an immaculate little village inn in Sawdon near where we camped -- with a meticulous vegetable plot and herb garden out back -- (we have been known to go hunting for the herb and vegetable garden before we even enter a pub restaurant, this trip!) -- with barely 40 seats, which on Sunday didn't fill just once, but was well into seating its second round of guests, when we left. All reserved.

This in one of the tiniest, off-the-road villages, in the Yorkshire Moors. Not a place you would expect too many folk to even know was there. Here we ate beautifully done fare, but the star of the show was a red cabbage vegetable done in a red wine and balsamic reduction that was so crunchy, red, crisp and mouthwatering, that it, too, is listed, as another Special Request for Pete to master. As we left we promised the passionate foodie chef-owner, who has a clever sideline in designer-cottages-to-let attached to his pub, to go with his delicious designer food -- that we would return. And we definitely will.

Then, today, in an unassuming little village pub in a remote village in the Yorkshire Dales we ate to-die-for warmed goat's cheese sliced en croute, that was so memorable I may start thinking of it is an English not a French dish; along with a dessert of trussed red currants and fresh raspberries on a bed of macaroons and meringue, that may become our standby dessert for unexpected dinner guests. So very easy and so delicious.  We have a couple more weeks to try out all this local fare and none of us, as yet, seems inclined to revert to home cooking yet. All in the name of foodie research, of course.

oooOOOooo

Poor lamb's days are numbered

Crab pots on the docks waiting to be filled

Potted prawns at The Dun Cow, Salthouse

Mediaeval feasting later at Skipton Castle

Lucious cake for afters

Prime beef and lamb locally sourced

Speciality treats in Ilkley 

And always there is coffee

Living in the lanes

We have spent so long in rural parts this trip that it is almost a culture shock to visit a city. We have driven to a couple of larger places while in Norfolk and the visits are a disconcerting experience we are not terribly keen to repeat. So much graffiti there that we just don't see in busy and productive rural parts. So many homeless folk living on cardboard boxes in alcoves in the streets, some with that wide-eyed down-and-desperate-look about their eyes. Practically every 12 and 13 year old seems to be pushing a pram. Teenage boys, out with their mates, have a tag-along toddler. So many store fronts are dead, emptied and barred, gathering mounds of street litter in dirty chinks and crevices. And, as in Italy, the larger cities feel as if they could do with a good sanitizing clean.

The country lanes are where we have been hanging out. Behind a farm fence we camp as the cows head off to be milked. We spend much of our day chatting: to the local farmer who pulls his tractor into a passing place to let our motorhome by, or the village publican who has all the best angles on how to make ends meet, or the church ladies, who know exactly who goes where, with whom, and why. Not much escapes country folk. 

We have noticed a change down these lanes and byways. It is like a Fight for the Little Man. And it started with the Farm Shops we have increasingly seen since Essex. Farmers here, as in France, are attempting to do so much more, it seems, to keep the profits closer to home. At the simplest level there are honesty boxes by the gate - with fresh free range eggs, new-grown potatoes, or punnets of strawberries. Spare produce put out the front to share, for a fare price. There are, of course, those who take their produce to market. Most of them still do, I would guess. Others supervise the sale of a good selection of their produce. They have cobbled together a rough-hewn stall, or set up a trailer display. And they sit under the shade of an umbrella nearby to reap some reward from their produce, without having to go to market. It must be worth their while, or they would not bother a second or a third day. And some do it all the while they have produce to sell.

Some have built themselves a complete farmshop. Right there where their farm and produce is. In the lanes. And people drive in and out often. Others, like some of the farmers we've stayed with have set up their own produce shops in their nearest village. Often their shop is the only provender in the village selling fruit and vegetables, let alone fresh and organic pork, geese eggs and local cheeses. This type of branching out seems to be on the increase in the counties we are driving.

Today we came across a variation on this theme. A way to make a dying village pub trade into a roaring success. One that is so incredibly successful that I can see it being used as a template by others.

In a village of barely a couple of hundred folk, we stopped for our early morning espresso at a pub that was open. For a pub in a village to even be open during the day, these days, is a surprise in itself. More often than not they are closed till around 6pm. And their doors close for the night by 9pm. Sad times for pubs, we have been hearing. It is just not worth their while, they say: what with drinking laws, the global financial crises, the gloom of the times, etc. We listen to the tales of woe often. Pubs are, we are told, a dying species. Well, this one isn't. We walked in, eyes wide open -- and noticed that every table was set with wine glasses for lunch and most had Reserved signs on them. For lunch. And there were well over 100 seated spaces indoors, while outdoors there was a garden terrace, and beyond that, lawn spaces decked out in wooden tables and gay umbrellas, for those who might choose a less formal aspect.

There was nothing spectacular about this pub. It looked as though it had once been an old World War 11 pub, as though it might have been the local for a nearby airfield crew. It still had war mementoes as a theme in its decor. It was even a khaki colour, very generic, though fresh: and its old wooden beams were completely painted out to give everything a clean simple look, and a minimalist leanness.

The coffee was superb. The barista, dressed in black, said it would be, when he served it. It was. We asked to see the wine list. Four double sided pages: with three or more Australian wines on the list -- but with a preference for the French. We asked to see the lunch menu. Only to be told that it was new daily, that is was too early to be complete yet, that it would appear around noon, just as the tables would start filling for lunch. The head waiter, also dressed in stylish black, joined the chat because we were clearly Aussies -- and he, like many young foodies in England, had been to Oz, working and enjoyed it.

How do you survive? we asked, when all around pubs are closing their doors, admitting defeat? Food, he admitted. This was basically a food pub, and they catered to that demand with their chefs -- tho', even at that time of the morning there were more than a dozen folk chirpily drinking coffee, beer or wine in various parts of the dining room space: so drinking was far from on hold. Well, the pub was open for a start.

But good food, and it was basically traditional British food with a lean towards the French, he said; food 'that people wanted' that he felt was the key to their success. To that end, he said, the pub had bought a shop across the street to service not only the pub meals, but passing diners and the community: a large stylish provender of local food supplies that went from farm to fork, including fish. This was, we noticed, before we even entered the pub and knew the connection -- doing a roaring trade.

We popped across to the shop when we'd finished chatting and bought our dinner of smoked mackerel and a purple basil jam for a tasty edge. The store was a cross between farm produce available from a farmer's roadside stall, and produce that would be at home on the shelves of the finest Delicatessans in the land. Only more local, crisy fresh and heavily patronised. Crowds were queuing to be served in this small village where not much else was functioning except the pub and the pub's food supply shop. It doesn't hurt, the Maitre D' said, that we are only 8 miles from Norwich. Norwich folk frequent us daily. Or that folk from King's Lynn don't hesitate to drive nearly an hour to come to dinner.

We didn't check, but it would not be at all surprising if out beyond the garden tables in this pub there was a fully functioning herb and vegetable garden. Fresh and local being their theme. We are seeing this more and more at these successful pubs. I hope you are not hoping for a reservation for dinner, the Maitre D' said regretfully. We have 130 bookings and not one seat available. We'd have loved to have stayed for dinner. But, it is places like this we remember, and, if possible, return to. And one can only imagine what crowds this pub and deli combination brings to this lucky village on any sunny Sunday. It's amazing what we see down these country lanes!

oooOOOooo

A study in green at Ranworth

Relaxing by the broads at Coltishall 

The Recruiting Sergeant, Horstead

Brilliant farm shop opposite

Lavender fields are in bloom in  Heacham

We took time out to visit the House of Correction at Little Walsingham

From here, many convicts were transported to Australia

More on marshes

For the third time this summer, the Camargue, Venice Verte, and now the Norfolk Broads, we have found ourselves in the marshes.

We first came to these Broads about forty years ago. Not too much appears to have changed, tho 'the Broads' themselves are visibly shrinking and under threat. The Norfolk Broads are ponds, channels and marsh areas that were actually made by men over a thousand years ago. As the first settlers moved into East Anglia they chopped down what trees were there, so when they needed firewood they discovered that the marshy black ooze beneath their feet, when dried, became a slow burning fuel, peat. So, they set about designing sharp tools, shaped them to shovel the earth out in neat even bricks of peat, then lay 'peat logs' out in stacks to dry in the sun. When winter came they had fuel for cooking and for warmth.

And for the monks at the Abbey in St Benet upstream, who burned thousands of peat turves each year, and the Priory Cathedral folk over Norwich way, these peat diggers became increasingly busy carving themselves out a living: chopping deep and wide holes into the Norfolk Marsh as they drew out the smelly earthy black peat that had become like gold to them. Then the sea rose, and filled their deep broad peat holes with water. And so the Norfolk Broads came to be.

Over time the broadwaters filled with fish, filtering reeds topped with butterflies, and waterbirds. So, the descendants of the peatmen took to slashing the reeds and sedge from invading their waterways and put them to good use as roof thatching. They set about catching eels and marsh fish and trapping ducks and water birds. They spent much time digging canals to transport their products further afield. Until the Industrial Revolution made all their efforts increasingly redundant.

Nowadays, it is pleasure boatmen, hobby fishermen, seasonal holidaymakers and occasional icecream vendors who throng the shores of The Broads. Many of these folk don't realize that The Broads are even under threat. They are decreasing in size. They are dying in parts. Mother Nature is silting up these ancient waterways, and when she isn't hard at work, Man is doing his bit to kill the Broads with his sewage and chemical effluents, the chief offender being household detergents. 

It remains to be seen if any government purse will be large enough to stretch to returning the Broads to its canal rich days, or whether, over time, it will revert to the boggy fens of dark ages past.

oooOOOooo

Norfolk Broads, another marshland 

Laying peat turves

Miss Bec almost lost in the grasses of the Broads

Mother Nature and Man are reducing the Broads

Flowering marsh plants were once harvested

Harvesting would let in the sun 

Tales these Sussex churches tell

The weather is staying idyllic so we wandered into Suffolk, continuing our exploration of historic villages and came across Cavendish which once was an Anglo-Saxon settlement owned by Cafa, known as Cafa's Edisc, meaning Cafa's enclosure, from which Cavendish came down through the ages. A group of almshouses huddle pretty-in-pink below an immensely interesting church tower.

This church tower was of particular interest to Pete, as here, Sir John Cavendish hid his valuables, while being hunted down by peasants seeking revenge. John's son had killed Wat Tyler, the leader of the Peasant's Revolt in 1381. Wat, Pete believes, might be a relative on his mother's side.

John, though, was later caught just down the road at Bury St Edmunds, and ended up beheaded, poor bloke. Up in the belfry where John dropped off his valuables is an odd little priest's room, complete with fireplace and a window onto the altar. High up there with the bats.

A little further on is Long Melford which has several amazingly large estates bordering a very long village route that occupies part of what once was a Roman road. One of them, Melford Manor with its distinctive pepperpot towers, was the country retreat and deer park for the monks from the prosperous abbey at Bury St Edmond. What a life these monks must have had! A bit like nobility, tho' with all the prayers added!

Actually Elizabeth 1 came calling one evening, on one of her Ministers who owned the estate in 1578, and it is recorded that she was greeted rather royally by "200 young gentlemen in white velvet, 300 in black and 1,500 serving men". How very fine. I can't help wondering if mine hosts set up marquees out back in the deer park to store all the servants when not in use? And just imagine the logistics of trying to provide enough loos and meals for that number of staff, even for one night. Or, and more likely, they just did not bother. Ahh!

Long Melford's church, the Holy Trinity, is a quite gorgeous feature of the village, too. Its exterior is decorated in beautiful flush work, which is the ancient art of knapping flint and laying it, with limestone, to make a stunning textural and decorative element.

St Mary's at Boxford, further down the road, has some illuminating little memorials: a vicar who lost his son in infancy had a wee brass made and melded into one corner of the lady chapel floor, showing the child's crib and his little shoes resting on the floor beneath it. Above and to the right of David hangs a memorial to a rather astonishing Elizabeth Hyam, four times a widow, who after a Fall, in 1748, suffered a Mortification, which "at last, hastened to her End...in her 113th year." Darn that Mortification. What might frisky Elizabeth have continued to get up to without it? Wonderful tales these churches tell!

We slept in a farmer's field accessed by brushing both our side view mirrors on the hedgerows, left and right, so narrow was his lane. This was no ordinary farmer. His grandfather started the business in 1935 and his grandchildren are now working it with him. He had fields of produce growing both sides of the lane when we walked it later that evening. And free range animals to boot. To defy the supermarkets, he owned a farm shop in town where he provided produce to the locals that any delicatessen in Australia would have been delighted to place on their shelves. And it was crowded.

Most of the produce was homegrown: all the legumes were his and a wide variety of hand-cut herbs came fresh from his fields. There was bread from the next village collected that morning, and cakes, locally made and packaged. There were bottles of jams, chutneys and pickles and mayonnaise from shoulder-brushing farms just a few miles distant. Everything was local, fresh and gone today, if not tomorrow.

We bought dinner from his grand-daughter in his store, and ate tender organic pork lightly smoked, with a crunchy garlic-marinated zucchini, fresh from his fields. We tossed it off with an Eton Mess, mashing newly-harvested strawberries and home-made meringue, fresh from his store. Eating felt clean.

oooOOOooo

Once built by benefactors as almshouses for the poor

Long Melford Manor with its pepperpot towers

Not bad for a village church

Flint and limestone flush work on exterior of Holy Trinity

In memory of the death of the vicar's baby son in 1606

Elizabeth, four times a widow, died aged 113

Tales from Essex villages

Winding hedgerow lanes, so narrow we had to stop to let cars by, brought us to Finchingfield, another picture postcard village clustered around a ford. Here, pretty pastel and tiled houses nestle higgledy-piggledy onto each other, their roof timbers curving into the lean. Many homes display pargeting, that charming patterned plasterwork finish that has been used to decorate homes since Tudor times.

Country fields are decked with barns painted black that look smart and stylish. Windmills are mainly white. In every little hamlet you can buy fat geese and ducks, free range eggs, pick your own strawberries, and tayberry jam: farm fresh, home-made, regional fare. Everywhere there are honesty boxes for goods available, that day, on display. It truly is a foodlover's paradise. No wonder Jamie Oliver is so used to walking out his back lane and picking up such fresh, crisp and regional produce. What is not to love about this fertile land?

Thaxted has a pretty almshouse sitting just below a windmill. Its old guildhall, tumbling over the main street in deep overhangs of toppling eaves, recalls the 1400s, when men of the Cutlers Guild built this gorgeous structure as a meeting place, as they set about their business turning Thaxted into the cutlery capital of England. Across a cobbled Stony Lane is a tumble of half timbered houses where Dick Turpin once lived. And whyver not? I could.

With their soaring church spires, marvelous produce, and legendary history, these Essex villages have it all: the perfect escape to the country, particularly beautiful in this soft summer sun that lingers here so much longer than in most other parts of England.

oooOOOooo

Thaxted spire

Finchingfield above the pond

Patterned pargetting on village homes

Olde white windmill 

Tiered Thaxted guildhall 

Dick Turpin once lived here