VINTAGE TRAVELLER

OK.  Back from France, wine cellar replenished, few extra pounds round the middle, silly grin on face.

We stayed at a former chateau (most rural hotels seem to be former chateaux)

 

in a little place south of Calais, not far from the Belgium border.  It was set in small but pleasant grounds.

 

When I say 'small', I mean a bit bigger than my garden, with only a small stream running through it.  It was perfect for a couple of days relaxing and of course we had chosen it for its renowned chef, who likes to surprise guests, rather than give them a menu.  Here's a starter - scallop soufflé on caramelised endive with seafood sauce and a crustacean foam.

Yes, it was stunning.  Main courses don't photograph so well, so here's a dessert - baba on a sort of crème with spiced pineapple and a little tube of rum (I'd already squeezed mine!).  There's a mulberry lurking round the back too.  Don't know what the red bits are; maybe the chef cut himself.

 

Even for someone who doesn't do desserts, this was heaven!

The hotel was used during the War as a hospital (for German soldiers).  There is still a bomb shelter in the grounds (which we didn't have to use).

We spent a day in Ardres, which has a nice public office (if you look closely, it is dated 1679.  Actually, it is dated 1679 even if you don't look closely.),

an interesting church,

 and a very nice wine shop.

But we also enjoyed driving through the French countryside, with one village seemingly piled on top of the next.

Though the roads in these parts were horribly congested.

 

I took this pic just because I liked the colours.

 Some nice brickwork.

On the way home, we stopped in Boulogne.  We always used to lunch in the old city, partly because it is historic and nice, and partly because it is nearly all restaurants.  But we've now found where the locals eat lunch . . .   This is the town hall in the old city.

 This is the town hall in Calais.

THE JOY OF SUSSEX

What a fabulous day I had yesterday!

I had a bowl of Frosties, a slice of toast and half a cracker with some cream cheese for breakfast.  And a cup of tea of course.  Later I had another half a slice of toast and a piece of a nutty chocolatey thing (which was delicious, but which I later found out had been retrieved from down the back of the settee).  Then I went to Singalong at playgroup, where I ate 1 grape, a piece of cheese, the last inch of a bread stick and a slice of pear.  And a cup of coffee.

We then went to Kids Hour at the Lime Tree Cafe where I had another cup of coffee, some baked beans, another piece of bread stick, a bite of an apple (and I think that was a cheese string with it . . .), and 2 raisins.  Then to Waitrose for a free cup of coffee.  And, back home for tea, a chocolate marshmallow and a spoonful of rice pudding.

That must be all the nutrients I need for growing! (Do nutty chocolatey things count towards my five a day?).

Here is the Lime Tree Cafe.

  

I think I've posted a pic of it before, but it has a curious end wall.

 

That evening we went off to Brighton to visit Chilli Pepper, a restaurant that received an award last year for its cuisine, which they explained to me is based on them having a chef from each of the main areas of India and then producing some sort of synergy in the kitchen.  Must be an Indian thing; I thought chefs attacked each other with cleavers given half a chance.  Anyway, the food was stupendous!  They don't do this one chilli symbol means hot thing; nearly everything has one chilli and the Goan chicken wings go up to 4 chillis.  So you can imagine how spicy the food is.  We had kedgeree, deep fried potatoes stuffed with coconut and coriander with tamarind and mint sauces, ginger garlic chicken in fenugreek sauce and a whole plaice in ginger, chilli and chickpea batter with mango rice and tomato curry.  Mmmmmm.  And not a tikka masala in sight!

Interestingly, for me, the restaurant is in a street which I used to consider a bit of a slum in my childhood - terraces of tiny houses along a narrow, slightly scruffy street.  But it has been completely rebuilt and is now almost entirely restaurants.  I think the only three buildings not restaurants are a hairdressers, Tesco Express and the library.

This is the library that some of you might be interested to see.

 

This is the Pavilion that I posted about the other day.  Thought you might like to see a pic of it at night.  So many ideas here for converting my summer house.

This is the entrance to Chilli Pepper.

 

And this is one course of our dinner.  Excellent!  But somehow I still had this nagging nostalgia for cheese strings.

AUTUMN TO ODE

We went to Shaldon last week.  It was surprisingly glorious weather.  I have posted on Shaldon before, so I won't go through all the town again.  We went there on the ferry of course, Britain's oldest ferry, which has run continuously since at least the 13th century.  I think I've posted on that before too.

But Shaldon is becoming an organic foody heaven.  Most places now offer locally sourced or home-grown ingredients, often wild or organic.  The last time we went there it was to visit a tea shop which had just been voted the best teashop in England, or some such.  This time we sought out a new cafe on the Ness which has been voted the most sustainable restaurant in Britain.  And it has its own microbrewery.  Here it is in its Halloween glory. 

It has a sister restaurant in town which has already received AA stars for its sustainable fine dining menu.  But this is the view from the cafe

  

The tide was out while we were there, as you may be able to see along the beach.  At this time, the distance between Teignmouth and Shaldon looks short enough to jump across.  You can see the beach on the right and the famous backbeach on the left.

 

At low tide, you can almost walk across the Teign in fact at its widest point.

Shaldon is also the only place I have seen a milestone marked in miles, furlongs and poles.

 

On our way home we stopped as usual at the roadhouse just past Dorchester on the A35.  Even here, they offer only locally sourced products, including local venison burgers and locally roasted coffee.  But I'd watch out for the barleysugar.

TERRIFIC BILL

Went out for dinner in Guildford this evening.  Ate at Bill's.  If you don't yet know them, they have been in Brighton for some time, where the restaurant is in a fruit and veg shop.  The restaurants sell most of the products used in their food - Bill's sauce, Bill's marmalade, Bill's chutney, Bill's beer, etc, which are all delicious.

I'm a bit hard pushed to categorise Bill's; it's sort of simple, distressed chic.  The Guildford restaurant is in a 17th century inn - all beams and wooden floors, with an odd mix of lighting, plain wooden tables and chairs and a sort of ancient tavern feel to it.  It was packed to the gunnels and the noise level meant you had to shout.  It reminded me of what pubs used to be like.  I occasionally imagined I was in a party.  The food is straightforward British with little twists.  My fish cakes had a mango salsa; the grilled chicken was served with tsatsiki, chips are served in a bucket (not a very large one), etc.  All very wholesome and tasty.

We were surprised to notice a Bill's in Chichester the last time we were there and now one in Guildford.  Apparently there are now 19 of them and they hope to have opened 30 by the end of the year.  What recession?!

I managed to watch the end of Broadchurch the other night.  Make sure you watch it, if you haven't yet.  Absolutely stunning stuff.  The series has been compared with The Killing, which I guess provided inspiration, but the acting was extraordinary.  Not to mention the dramatic photography.  And somehow the culprit was not known until the last episode, ensuring we clung onto our seats with our fingernails until the end.  There was just a hint of criticism, amidst all the accolades, that the killer was revealed so early in the last episode, but I thought one of its great strengths was its treatment of the affected family, neighbours, community after the arrest.  We don't usually get to see that and I enjoyed it as much as some of the plot twists.  Anyway, get hold of it.

I am off on Sunday again this time to take a walking group from Marrakech to Madrid.  I shall use the train occasionally . . .  See you when I get back.

GAMES AT THE TWENTY12 OLYMPICS

So, now we’ve started to win medals, the media mood has improved a little.  

 

There is still a tendency to look on the black side.  Commentator in interview with silver medal winners : ‘so you didn’t win.  How are feeling right now?’  I was amazed to hear also on the radio news this morning that retail shops and hotels in London are complaining that the expected crowds of tourists haven’t materialised.  I’m not surprised about the shops incidentally – most people are either in the Olympic Park or sitting in front of a television somewhere.  Did anyone really expect tourists to come here during the Olympics and to spend all their time in the shops?  But they interviewed a hotelier who complained that he had just had to reduce his tariff from £500 a night to around £100.  I wonder whether putting his prices up 500% in the first place might have discouraged one or two people.

It may be true that there are not so many people about, but I am pleased to see that venues are on the whole packed now and there are few empty seats.  I think that the Olympics just took a while to get properly underway.  Or maybe there weren’t so many people wanting to watch unheard-of athletes in preliminary competitions.  But I was certainly struck in my one foray so far (to the tennis) by the feeling of there being such an entity as an Olympic family.  It’s a horrible term maybe, but there was a friendship and a sense of something shared at the matches I watched, with jokey rival chanting for GB or another team.  And on the next court to ours there was a match between India and the Netherlands, where half the audience was Dutch and half Indian (no doubt from the Indian community in Britain), and the noise was extraordinary.  It struck me then how much this Olympics is more than just Team GB performing in Britain.

But the radio news went on unwisely to add that visitors have been put off coming to London by stories of security concerns, transport problems or weather.  Hang on a mo, I thought.  Where did these stories come from?  Exactly.  This is another case of the media creating self-fulfilling prophesies, talking up issues and fears when they have nothing else to write about and then claiming there actually is a disaster when that story has run long enough.  

The same applies to the question I heard on one of those awful radio chat shows the other day.  ‘Do you think the Olympics is going to help Britain out of the recession or will it add to our economic burden?’  I don’t think these are opposites exactly anyway, but still I don’t recall, when we won the lottery to host the Olympics, anyone predicting that all our economic problems would now be solved either.  Similarly, I don’t think anyone predicted a retail boom.  What was suggested though was that in London this summer (if you can call it that) there was to be one long festival of arts and culture.  There are in other words many other things going on apart from the Olympics and it is then, when the Games have ended, that perhaps people will be wandering the streets and popping into shops and restaurants.  Let’s see if that happens . . .

But there is another question here.  I do understand a little how sponsorship works and how it pays to have a few ‘official sponsors’ rather than lots of competing companies at an event like the Olympics.  But I just wonder whether we have thought this through fully.  There have been so many cases of shops having window displays removed (for displaying the wrong company names with Olympic logos) or athletes prevented from showing the names of their own sponsors (where not official sponsors) or rival company names being obscured, that it is clear that sponsorship agreements have become too draconian.  See here for more details.

Apparently, even using the incorrect terms to refer to the Olympics can mean that you are breaking the law (hence the (safe) title of this post).  But it is the width of the ‘exclusion zone’ that is so extraordinary.  I thought it just plain silly at Wimbledon that Pimms was not permitted to display its brand name and therefore called itself ‘No 1 Cup’, as though that made some sort of difference.  Nearly everyone knew what it was anyway and simply asked at the bar for Pimms.  I heard one foreign visitor ask what No 1 Cup was and the barman said, ‘oh, it’s Pimms’.  So what did hiding the brand name achieve?  

But it became perfectly clear what sponsors’ aims are, when, at Lords cricket ground this morning (where the archery is being held), a BBC commentator had his umbrella confiscated because it displayed a company name that wasn’t a sponsor.  Isn’t this ludicrous?!  The most important objective for sponsors therefore is not the Olympics, nor even advertising; it is restricting the activities of its rivals.  This apparently is a benefit big companies are willing to pay up to £100 million for.  The fact that rival companies are paying good money to sponsor athletes or that totally unrelated and non-rival companies, such as construction companies, have won contracts to supply products to the stadia, is beside the way; they must all be penalised to ensure a clear passage for the official sponsors.

So, I come back to the point about the absence of visitors.  If it really is a problem, don’t you think one of the things sponsors could usefully have done, in exchange for their sponsorship rights, is to promote the Olympics as an attraction and London as a place to visit?  Instead they seem to have operated the other way round – every view of the Olympics must have their companies’ names in sight, and athletes compete under the threat of punishment if they don’t comply, police must be taken from their usual tasks to penalise non-sponsoring companies on the sponsors’ behalfs, and whenever we wish to eat or drink, we must have sponsors’ logos flashed in front of our eyes, as if claiming credit for the meal, even if we actually eat and drink something else.  None of this seems to benefit the Games or even London.  It is no help to the authorities, athletes or spectators.  And apparently not to hotels and shops either.  In fact, since the sponsors have so little time left from their war on rivals to promote either London or the Olympics, the opposite seems to be true.

The Olympics is of course an international event, so sponsors don’t have to be strongly associated with the country hosting the Games, but, given that we are trying to present a welcoming image of London and UK, it does seem odd to me that we can’t sell bitter, or Pimms (except under a pseudonym), or sausage and mash, or Marmite on toast, etc at venues - all those things in fact that make Britain the desirable place to visit that it is.  Sponsoring companies paid tens of millions for the privilege of displaying their names; we possibly spent all of those receipts on policing the sponsorship terms, penalising innocent members of the public, and obliterating from view names that the sponsors didn’t like.  Can it be so much worse if we have lots of local sponsors paying smaller sums each for the benefit of providing food and drink that we actually want and sports equipment that we actually use and maybe some hotels and shops that we want visitors to patronise too?