A(nother) weekend of feasting

Back in February, when we were in Ballarat, we met our friend Pat for lunch. It turned out that she was heading to the UK later in the year and was planning to come and stay with us. Alas, at the very time she was planning to come to our place, we were planning to be in Japan.  So we arranged to meet in Chester, where she would be attending a conference, instead.  We put it in our various diaries and went on our various ways.

And suddenly, the trip to Chester was upon us.  I had been planning to take a picnic.  I had a menu all planned and everything.  Chicken and ham pie, salad, potato salad, cake, lemonade. Then we saw the weather forecast for Chester for Saturday and changed our minds!  No picnic for us. Not partial to picnicking in the rain are we!

So I sat down and did a quick and dirty Google for pubs serving food in the Cheshire countryside within striking distance of Chester. And came up with The Pheasant Inn at Higher Burwardsley. Never heard of Higher Burwardsley, but the Pheasant looked all right. We decided to give it a go. After all, taking adventurous foodie chances can throw up some delightful discoveries as well as the few that you might wish not to repeat!

In the meantime, Tabitha and Cally had invited themselves along. I think Freyja might have invited herself along too, but then there wouldn't have been room in the car for Pat once we got to Chester.  Seems a bit pointless to go all that way to have lunch with someone, and then to leave them behind while you wander off a-feasting!!  Gaz didn't have the opportunity to invited himself - he was working.

It was raining when we woke up on Saturday morning.  Lovely, steady gardeners' rain. It rained quite hard when we were about to leave Tabitha and Cally's place. We put the departure off for a few minutes.  It poured, briefly as we crossed the Pennines. By the time we got to Chester, the sun had come out. But it was very wet underfoot. We could probably have had a picnic, but we might have got very wet bottoms. We found Pat where she had said she would be, at Chester University, kidnapped her and took her out to Higher Burwardsley.

The Pheasant was beautiful. It's a lovely building with amazing views out in gorgeous countryside. The food was delicious. My burger with the lot soundly defeated me. Had I realised it was going to be quite so mighty, I wouldn't have indulged in the mixed sharing platter that Pat had suggested we have as an entrée. But I only grudgingly stopped eating it.  I ate the two huge onion rings and all my chips though. The Builder had the hugest, biggest, most humungous piece of haddock that I think I have ever seen. He ate every last scrap. And all his chips. Neither he nor I felt any need for anything to eat in the evening after that.  And feel sorry for poor Pat - it was the conference dinner that evening!!

It is a truth that is pretty much universally acknowledged (That would be a good opening line for a book :-D ) that no matter how full you are, there is always room for ice cream. And along the way to The Pheasant, we had seen loads of signs pointing to an ice cream farm. After lunch we went to investigate.  And found this: The Cheshire Ice Cream Farm  There were about 30 different ice cream flavours. And it was amazing ice cream. I think we must go again one day and have a proper look around.

Then we took Pat back to the conference, Tabitha and Cally back to Sheffield and went home.

We had bought the ingredients for making a raised chicken and ham pie so I decided to make it anyway.  We had it for Sunday lunch, with potatoes from the allotment and vegetables fresh from the garden. And very delicious it was too.

It was nice to see Pat. It was a weekend full of lovely food. All in all it was a very good weekend.

Except that I managed comprehensively to bugger The Builder's laptop.

And I rendered entirely inoperative Freyja's brand new bicycle chain with combination lock.

But apart from that ...

The Pheasant Inn.

(As ever - click on the link to get to the album)