Eating our way through the Peak District

Some many months ago (like in around January!) Pat from Ballarat announced her intention of coming, accompanied by her brother and sister-in-law, to inspect us. And asked if I could find an interesting pub for them to stay in, not far from us.

So I booked them into The Nettle. Which is most certainly an “interesting” pub being, as it is, “unspoiled by progress”!

I arranged to take the relevant days off. But it was so, so, so far in the future that it didn’t seem to have any real impact.

Life trundled on. And suddenly – Pat, her brother and sister-in-law were arriving NEXT WEEK!!!!! I emailed asking what the plan was. And wasn’t so much met by a resounding silence as by a load of questions about things not connected to The Plan at all!

And then – it was the day they were arriving. And I still didn’t know what the plan was! Shortly before 10 pm I rang the Nettle to see if they had arrived yet. And they had. Just. At that very minute!!! We arranged to meet at The Nettle at around 11 the following morning, and I left them to it and wandered off.

And since then we’ve been being quite touristy, interspersed with little bursts of practicality. So we did Pat’s washing while she had access to a washing machine. And while it was drying we drove out to Chatsworth and had lunch in the farm shop restaurant. Graeme, Margaret and I had a wander along part of the Wetlands walk. And we FOUND THE COWS!!!!!!! I think they must have been in bed the last time we went around and couldn’t find them. We had some of Jayne's lamb roasted on Wednesday evening, with home grown veg and Jersey potatoes, followed by a gooseberry and raspberry pie (gooseberries and raspberries from the garden :-) ). We had a drive out to Castleton on Thursday and then up and over Winnats Pass and drove in a roundabout way to Eyam – where we had rather more trouble finding a pub to eat in than I had anticipated! But when we did find it – the effort was certainly worthwhile. The food wasn’t bad at all. The Builder and I joined them all at The Nettle for a sumptuous dinner on Thursday evening. Then on Friday morning, accompanied by Jenny, they went to Cambridge, The Builder (not accompanied by Jenny) went to work. And I had an extra day of work, just because!

As we were setting off on the Wetlands walk on Wednesday afternoon, Graeme asked, more or less in passing, if the local surgery did ITV tests, or was it BBC tests – or maybe even Channel Four tests. I looked blank. Finger tip tests for his warfarin. I continued to look blank. I don’t know. But they’ll know. We’ll go and ask them when we get back from the walk. The receptionist knew what he was talking about. Alas – the only person who did them was the practice nurse and she was in Clay Cross. She would be in Tupton on Thursday but she was fully booked. The receptionist rang Clay Cross. The practice nurse would see us today – if we could get there by 5. Which was a bit of a worry because it was already twenty to! But we made it. Graeme had his test and all is more or less well.

Tony tells me the test is really the International Rescue test. It’s a Thunderbirds test!! (Although I think he might actually have said it's the International Normalised Ratio - but he clearly meant International Rescue!)