Prince Leopold, Upton Lovell

Something around 2 years ago we ran across the Prince Leopold, which is off the main road that runs between Salisbury and Warminster.  It had just opened with new owners and a refit that wasn't quite finished.  We were very impressed with them and had every intention of returning.

We didn't intend the gap between visits to be nearly two years, though!

Anyway, we were staying in Warminster at the weekend and were pondering where we might take our hosts for Sunday lunch - preferably somewhere with nice food, out in the country, and also somewhere handy for Salisbury as well as Warminster so we could take The Builder's mother out with us as well.

I remembered the Prince Leopold.  Looked them up. Booked a table.

The refit is now finished!  And they have a beautiful restaurant overlooking the Wylye

The food was amazing.  What really impressed us most was the vegetables. Lots of places do beautifully roasted meats and potatoes. Most places can turn their hand to Yorkshire Puddings. But so many places largely ignore the veg.  Some peas and carrots, a bit of roast parsnip, red cabbage if you're lucky. At the Prince Leopold you get a half a braised baby cabbage and half a romanesco broccoli, proper roasted carrots and parsnip. And a huge pile of delicious rainbow chard (silverbeet).  Not only that, but the meat, potatoes and Yorkies were equally beautifully prepared and the gravy was a proper herby gravy.  More to the point, they also proved a child's serving for Gwen which meant that she easily finished her portion without either having to eat so she was uncomfortably full or (worse from her point of view) having to leave food on her plate.

We all had dessert.  My meringue came with raspberries and some rather nice cream - and the most amazing passionfruit sauce.

I was also very impressed with the waiting staff who were friendly, attentive, on the ball and not in the least bit pushy.

And the sun shone. A bonus!

If you happen to find yourself in or around Wiltshire or Somerset I would heartily recommend  the Prince Leopold.  Our firm intention is to go back - and not to wait another two years!!

Harvest time

Finally, finally, finally we are beginning to get a good supply of runner beans and zucchini, both of which have been worth waiting for. The zucchini in particular are extremely tasty.  The sweet corn, alas, are looking pretty and healthy - but are very small and have no cobs on them at all.  We have almost finished eating the first early potatoes and The Undergardener has dug the Lady Balfours and the Highland Burgundy Red.  These two maincrop varieties are usually highly dependable but this year they were very disappointing. We got hardly any potatoes from them.  What we did get was tasty but it was a very poor harvest.

The butternut squashes, on the other hand, are proving to be highly prolific.  We decided to pinch out the growing tips on them and to clear them back a bit so that we could see what was going on and so that the other plants might have a show at growing too.  While we were doing that one of the squashes fell off the vine. So we took it home with us. It was, of course, not properly ripe, but it was extremely delicious and lovely and juicy. We are waiting patiently for the rest to ripen - October or November, I would think, depending on how the autumn turns out

As for cucumbers ... some of them are still on the bitter side, and we have noticed that even the sweetest of them turns bitter if cut and then left.  So we are eating cucumbers as fast as we can possibly manage.  I have discovered that if you cut them into strips and de-seed them they stir fry remarkably well! 

Butternut squashes growing happily in the greenhouse

One of our many enthusiastic cucumbers

A self invited Bramley apple - I took all the blossom off in the spring because it is a new, small tree. So it produced more blossom and a few, hidden apples!

It's not quite ripe, but was very tasty. And weighed in at 1.25 kg

This could almost be the entrance to a Secret Garden :-)

The cages are doing a good job of keeping the butterflies and pigeons out

Marlo isn't keeping anything out!!!

I decided on Saturday morning that I wanted a book or two about Singapore.  We are planning a couple of days there in December and I thought it might be interesting to see what, apart from shopping, there might be to do there.

So I took myself off to the Wingerworth library. I haven't been there for simply ages. I wasn't confidently expecting there to be books on Singapore, necessarily but it was worth going for a look.  Plus I wanted to put myself on the waiting list for the new Hairy Bikers' book and for some reason I couldn't do that online.  The Wingerworth library is a small, quiet little library, in the Wingerworth Parish Hall building. I was, therefore, somewhat stunned to find that the car park was absolutely full. Chockers. Not a parking space to be seen :-S Fortunately I managed to find somewhere to park out on the roadside. And equally fortunately not all the owners of the cars were in the library which is, as I said, very small. They were all in the hall itself.  Some sort of indoor fair raising money for the Wingerworth Well Dressing later in the month.

There were no books about Singapore. But I did manage to put my name down for the Hairy Bikers' new book, and to re-regsiter my card which had expired (and which explained why I couldn't place the hold myself, online!!).

So I went home and dragged The Builder away form the Olympics on the telly and we pottered into Chesterfield, where they had books about Singapore in the library. We also had a rather nice potter about in the market where I found a honey stall run by a lady selling her own honey, honey products and wax products. The Builder got a new battery for his watch (which took several times longer than we had anticipated - the watch resolutely refused to work whenever the battery man tried to put the back on again :-S)  We came home with supplementary stores of fruit and vegetables, a more or less working watch, some honey and some rather nice cheese.

And then in the evening we went out to dinner at the Nettle, in a slightly early celebration of our third wedding anniversary. Absolutely lovely it was. They too were very busy and their car park was also quite full.  But fortunately I had had the foresight to book a table. And as we walked in they handed us two wine glasses and a bottle of our usual wine (do you think we are maybe getting a bit predictable in our old age?). And we settled in for an evening of delicious food, nice wine and gentle conversation.

It was a lovely day on Sunday. The sun shone and everything.  We went to the allotment and pottered in the garden and The Builder watched more Olympics on the telly and we ate nice, homemade and largely home grown food and it was a pleasantly peaceful day. I spoke to Stella and Tony in the morning. Tony is beginning to feel quite a lot better after his unpleasant bout of optic shingles. It's nearly two months that he has been unwell but on Sunday he not only managed to go to church (Stella drove him) but also to play his flute.  Stella is complaining that she too has been unwell (she's had a bout of chicken pox) and has had no sympathy at all. But since nobody knew until after the event, then nobody will be sympathetic!  Anyway. I shall declare them both more or less better now.

Today actually is our wedding anniversary. We must be having a good time - that three years has simply vanished. The sun continues to shine (although rain is forecast for later in the day) and we are abandoning our austerity drive for the day in celebration. Back to austere tomorrow, but it would be bad form indeed to dine on stale crusts and to drink mouldy water on a day of celebration!!

Early August

The Under-Gardener has been very busy lately picking and then podding peas and broad beans. He's also been digging the first early potatoes in the garden (and today has started up on the allotment, because we think that the potatoes may be coming down with blight.  The weather remains absolutely ideal for blight!). We are also eating carrots from the carrot boxes and the first of the zucchini.  It's funny though. Last year we were in Japan at this time. Before we went we have been eating the runner beans and when we got back the beans had all got too big to eat as pods and we had to wait and gather them in for use as beans. We also had an absolute glut of zucchini. This year the runner beans are still only embryonic and the zucchinis have only just now started producing.

The butternut squash up in the greenhouse on the allotment, however ...

There are five or six of them this size and more on the way. The Under-Gardener goes up in the mornings to pollinate any female flowers. It hasn't been a good year for bee or butterfly pollination, although there are bees and butterflies about and they can get into the greenhouse if they are so minded.  There is one female flower on the poor watermelon plant that was buried under a squash plant.  We've unburied it - but I don't think there are any male flowers and I don't know if you can cross pollinate with squash pollen!  The cucumber plants however are going great guns, although some of the cucumbers are unpleasantly bitter.  A fossick around on the internet and in veg growing books suggest this is because they're too hot, too cold, over-watered, under-watered, pollinated, not pollinated.  Take your pick! This cucumber, however, is not bitter and tastes delightful

There are lots more coming and we will just have to wait and see whether or not they're bitter.  Some of them are also developing a bit oddly. They go all ridgy at the bottom.  I thought that might be what was making them bitter, but it isn't.  Oh well.  We'll just have to watch and wait and see what happens. I'll buy a different variety of seed next year

The squash vines before we pruned them back a bit

The tomato greenhouse. Finally producing tomatoes!

Meanwhile, back in the garden - the hollyhocks are looking magnificent

And for dessert:

Blackcurrants from the young bushes on the allotment

Well now - that was an exciting few days but back to reality now

So after all the excitement of Wednesday and Thursday, it was quite a struggle to get up and actually go to work on Friday!  And then, of course, in the evening, there was the actual Opening Ceremony.

Lots of people have asked me how it was different, being at the rehearsal and watching the actual event on the television.  It was, of course, much more exiting watching the live event - it always is.  But there were still surprises for the rehearsal audiences too. They hadn't shown any of the films during the rehearsals, although they had played the music.  So I had heard the Bond music and knew that he would be involved, but  I didn't know how.  And, of course, we didn't know how the torch would get to the stadium, nor who would light the flame - nor even where the flame would be located.  Another advantage of the television is that you can record it.  We have been watching it again in short bursts to catch all the bits that we missed on Friday.

On Saturday Facebook and Twitter and email were all abuzz with excitement. Freyja was on SKY news and the clip was available online, so we all watched that.  Her Roller Derby team mates were all fizzing. It remained all very exciting.  Freyja tells me that she got a t-shirt and a certificate, plus a program, and they got to keep their costumes and their skates and their tabards.  Her tabard is signed by participants.  Her skates are signed by Danny Boyle himself!

And so it's back to the real world.  It's raining again (at least it is in Sheffield and Tupton). I'm back at work. Freyja has been in Sheffield for the weekend (it was Simon's 30th birthday party on Saturday evening). I met with her, Tabitha, Ross and a sleeping Cally for lunch in the Kiwi coffee and pie shop today. Then she is back to London this evening to pick up her Olympic souvenir photo job. Tabitha is working extra hours at the moment - mostly 6-2 which is certainly an early start but does give you most of the afternoon off.

The Builder has been picking and podding mountains of peas and broad beans and trying to make sure the pumpkin and squash and melon flowers get pollinated. A day off picking and podding beans today though; not only is it raining but also we are between pickings. We ate and drank well, as you might expect, over the weekend - and are now back on a serious austerity program, otherwise we're going to end up stuck somewhere in South East Asia and not be able to get any further on the Grand World Tour :-D  We might have a bit of a break from austerity over the coming weekend though. It is, would you believe, our third wedding anniversary next Tuesday.  And Austin and Kaori's first the day before. This time last year we were in Tokyo dodging earthquakes and playing in markets and things.

For those of you who haven't seen the photos from the dress rehearsal, you'll get to them if you click on this picture

And Another Sunday Lunch

We had expected our friend Richard to be at our place for lunch yesterday.  Alas - events intervened and he was unable to come.  So he missed out on rare roast beef from the new farm shop we've found not far from our place. He missed out on Yorkshire pudding made with eggs from our hens. He missed out on boiled new potatoes, peas, broad beans, baby zucchini and carrots from the garden and the allotment. And he missed out on an onion, garlic and herb gravy, also with ingredients from the garden.

And he missed out on this

I happily admit I didn't make the bread (which came from a local bakery, via the dairy) nor did I milk the cow for the cream (also came from the dairy). But we did grow the blueberries, the raspberries and the blackcurrants which made up our summer puddings. And very delicious they were too!

"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats"

So how do you top an evening like that?

Well, I'm not sure that you can. But we can do something very nearly as good. The sun was shining and the weather was delightful and all four of us were free. The Builder can come out to play today. Let's go and play on the river!

So that's what we did.

Someone (that would be the airline Etihad) has built a cable car that runs between the Excel Centre and the Millennium Dome (now renamed as the O2 Arena - but I have rebelliously continued to call it the Dome!!). It is intended as a quick way for commuters and tourists to get from one side of the river to the other and you can use your Oyster card (like a Myki card but without all the attendant trauma and controversy) to pay for it.  I hadn't realised it was being built until I happened to see a news article saying that it was finished and open. Once I did realise it was there I really, really wanted to go on it.  So that's what we did. We took the (lovely) DLR to the cable car terminus and went on it across to the Dome. (It had stopped running a couple of times on Wednesday but mercifully was very well behaved yesterday.) You do get some fabulous views of East London, Central London and the river.

Then we wandered along, past the Dome, to the boat stage - where we could also use our Oyster cards to pay. It's a commuter boat rather than a cruise-along-and-admire-the-sights boat but at the time we were out and about it was mostly tourists who were using it.  We went up as far as The Eye - necessarily passing under Tower Bridge, much to my pleasure.  Tower Bridge is adorned with Olympic rings at the moment and I didn't expect to get to London during the Games to get a photo of it.  I have lots of photos now!

Anyway. We got to The Eye and went for a lovely potter about Southbank.  Ross wanted to go in and admire the Festival Hall, so we did. There were lots of people out to play (school holidays, Olympics, sunshine - and the torch relay had gone past shortly before we got there so there were lots of additional activities going on). Everyone was happy and smiling and cheery (was a bit odd; normally Londoners are in a terrible hurry to get places and get grumpy if you are pottering about in their way!!!). We stopped at a pizza place that a friend of Freyja's had said was good. And they were right. The pizzas were very good. Then we ambled along to London Bridge and hopped on the tube and the DLR and went back to collect the car which Premier Inn had allowed us to leave in their car park for the day even though we had checked out at 10 am. We took Freyja home and made our way back to Sheffield, where we abandoned Ross in a pub (largely because he had spotted Tabitha, Gareth and Cally in the beer garden :-D  ).  So we said hello to them and then went back to Chesterfield.

It was a lovely, lovely day. It was a lovely, lovely mid-week weekend.  It was a bit of a struggle to get up and come to work this morning. But after all - it's only one day and then I get another weekend!

And here is the pictorial record of our day out on the river.  Click on the photo to get to the album

The Olympic Opening Ceremony

Anyone who has been paying attention to the blog over the past few months will be aware that Freyja is making her International Debut in the Olympic Opening Ceremony.  And as a participant, she was given two free tickets to the second Technical Rehearsal. She gave one of those tickets to me, and one to her dad.

 

Now.  The rehearsal didn't finish until 10:15 in the evening, and I really didn't want to have to go back to wherever the car was parked and then drive back to Chesterfield via Sheffield at that time of night. I'm nearly always in bed by 10:30.  Driving any sort of distance after a mighty show seemed foolish in the extreme.  So I checked that Ross could stay at Freyja's place, and then went to book me into the Premier Inn at Beckton, near to where Freyja lives. Then I realised that it would cost no more to book a double room than a single, so did that so The Builder (who wasn't going to the rehearsal) could go too.  Might as well make a proper trip out of it!

 

Wednesday morning dawned bright and clear and sunny in Tupton.  I checked the forecast for London - and put on shorts, a short sleeved shirt and a pair of sandals.  At which point the clouds all came flooding over to inspect this unlikely sight :-S  It was cool and cloudy in Sheffield too, when we went to collect Ross :-S  This confidence in the summery weather was beginning to look a bit misplaced :-S

 

Fortunately, as we headed south the clouds cleared and the sun came out and the temperature went up.  Despite the dire warnings about traffic chaos in central and East London we had a fairly good run to Beckton (though we were very glad we weren't heading to Stratford!!) and arrived in time for a late lunch in the pub next to the Premier Inn.  And for a Brewer's Fare pub, the food wasn't all that bad at all.  And while Premier Inns would not normally be my hostelry of choice, I have to say that our room was spacious, bright, cheerful and very comfortable. We will certainly stay there again - it's very handy to Freyja and makes weekend visits to her entirely do-able.

 

So, Ross and I left The Builder to his own devices (which appeared to involve watching sport on the telly, and eating curry in the pub) and made our way to Stratford, where we were meeting Freyja's pal Alec who had the tickets. Then we made our way along with crowds and crowds of other people to the Olympic Park, where we three and a friend of Alec's had plenty of time to stroll around in the sunshine and explore the park. 

• The Park is beautiful.
• The gardeners all deserve knighthoods for making such beautiful gardens and for making the flowers bloom at the right time - especially after all the horrible weather we've had this summer
• There were police officers and armed forces there but mostly there were London 2012 volunteers all over the place. Every one was cheerful and friendly and helpful and smiley
• Going through the airport-style security was painless and efficient
• The Park is beautiful
• Food and drink were not as vastly over-priced as I had expected them to be. I bought a good sized box of vegetarian sushi for £6 which is what I would expect to pay in London for a good sized box of sushi
• The crowds were good humoured and very well-behaved and all seemed to enjoy strolling around admiring the park
• The sun shone and the temperature held
• Did I mention that The Park is beautiful?

Here are the photos:

 

Click on the photo to reach the album

To get into the stadium, which is surrounded by a moat made up of the River Lee and gardens and flower meadows, you have to cross one of the bridges.  Once you are in the stadium you can't leave (unless you don't want to come back) but there are food and drink vendors inside, not to mention loos and water fountains where you can fill your water bottles (you can take food into the Park, but not liquids and not huge picnic hampers either). So Ross and I abandoned Alec and his friend and made our way to our bridge (Bridge C, since you ask) and went in to watch the show.

 

I do have photos of the ceremony

 

But I can't show them to you yet

 

 

No peeking now!

 I will tell you, though, that it was AMAZING.  We didn't see all of it (obviously no athletes were available to parade and funnily enough they didn't show us the flame being lit and there were some bits of the show that we didn't see). But we saw a lot of it and you really shouldn't miss it if there is anyway you can watch it on the telly.

 

Then nearly 100000 people left the stadium at the same time, past smiling police officers and cheerful volunteers and almost invisible armed forces personnel, and made our way to Stratford Station, Stratford International or walked to West Ham. And it was all very orderly and very calm. We met Freyja at Stratford International and went back to Beckton. Then Freyja and Ross walked back to Freyja's place and I went in and didn't tell The Builder anything very much about what we had seen in the show.

And it continued to rain on Friday.  Nothing new there, you may thing. It hasn't properly stopped raining for months. The dilemma was that Saturday was the Tupton Carnival  (street parade, then a fair in the afternoon) and it would be a great pity if that had been rained off. I suppose that you can have a parade in the rain, even in torrential rain - but they usually have the fair on the school playing fields and that might not be a whole lot of fun in knee deep mud.

Fortunately, however, Saturday dawned bright and fair. You might almost have thought it was summer!  The Carnival was safe!  It was, in fact, so bright and sunny, and the birds were all so excited by this that I was awake by about half past four and up by about quarter to six.  On a Saturday!  (I realise that the sun does not shine directly in through our bedroom window but at some points in the year it shines onto our neighbours' bathroom window and is reflected back into our room.)  So by half past nine I had done some washing and hung it out, I had washed up Friday night's dishes and cleaned the kitchen.  I had cleaned the shower and the bathroom sink. I had made the bed and done the ironing and many other oh-so many useful things.

The Tupton Parade starts at 1:00 so they close most of the roads that we might want to drive along at around 12:30. So we wombled off and did a bit of shopping and then went and investigated a new Farm Shop that opened fairly recently near us and were back at home in plenty of time before the roads closed.  And just after 1:00 a lovely little parade came down Queen Victoria Road, accompanied by brass bands and tractors and children's groups on little floats and all sorts of things.  There was a jolly, Olympic theme to many of the floats this year.  The Builder watched it from our front window, and I went out and propped against the garden wall to watch. And the people who had come down the hill, confidently expecting to drive through to the highway, or to Wingerworth, or to wherever it was they were going, perforce also had to stop and watch (they seemed entirely happy about this).

So that was all rather lovely.

What was also rather lovely was that at one point on Saturday morning, while I was pottering around in the kitchen, I heard the back door open, then I heard a small clunk, then I heard the back door close again.  I went to investigate.  And there, sitting on the kitchen mat, was a small box with my name on it.  And in the small box was --- THE WIRELESS ROUTER!!!!!!!!!

So I prepared another couple of lions to griddle (setting up the previous router had been a nightmare of epic proportions). And found that the lions were surplus to requirements.  The router had come with our account details pre-installed.  All I needed to do was plug it in.  And a few minutes later it was ready to receive new laptop friends.  And even that is considerably less of a palaver than getting devices attached to the previous router.  The Builder is delighted!!!  He really, really doesn't like my laptop at all.  I think, when I eventually get around to upgrading it, that I will not offer it to him :-D

Sunday dawned bright, shiny, sunny, warm - and as early as it had dawned on Saturday. So I got up and did more washing, more ironing, more cleaning, more hanging out of the washing. And I made a lemon and tarragon stuffing for the Sunday roast chicken, and a sponge cake with whipped cream and stewed gooseberries. I podded the peas and beans that The Builder had gathered in while he collected a large bowlful of raspberries.  By the time The Builder sat down to watch the Grand Prix I had got the chicken on to roast, the potatoes on to simmer and the vegetables on to steam. By 6:00 in the evening I was more than ready to declare the day over.  All of these early starts are quite tiring!!! (The downside to early to rise and early to bed means that I tend to wake up around about half past three, convinced that it's time to get up and of course - it isn't!!)

And still the sun shines. I have been very brave today and worn summer clothes.  And sandals. I head out of buildings, braced for it to be cold, and find it is strangely warm.  And there are children jumping around in the water features around SHU and down by the station.  Someone has put (quite solid) table tennis tables down by the station - and people are playing table tennis on them. Although I am not sure where they get the bats and balls from.  As I said - anyone would think it was summer :-D

Still no wifi modem at our place

We've been waiting and waiting and waiting for our new, promised wireless router to turn up.  And so far there has been no sign of it. I was quite patient until the 5 working days, which was the maximum amount of time it should have taken for it to turn up, had passed.  Then I decided I was going to have to griddle my lions once again and ring Orange to find out where it was. 

I really, really hate ringing Orange. It takes for ever. The people on the other end of the phone, although scrupulously polite and friendly, tend to treat you as though you're an idiot. You spend weeks and weeks on hold listening to horrible "music". I always need intravenous gin and a good lie down after a telephonic encounter with Orange.  However, there was nothing for it. We need a new router and I can't see why I should pay over £80 for one when I have been told I can have a free one.

In the meantime, I was listening to a news item talking about how sending text messages has largely replaced actually talking to people on the phone.  Makes perfect sense to me. If what you want to do is request or convey information, texting or emailing is much more efficient. You have a record of what has been said or agreed, and people can read the messages when it is convenient to them. I seriously prefer emailing to ringing on the phone if I have to deal with businesses or utilities.

Shining light moment.  Maybe I could *email* Orange.  After all - I only want to know where my router is.  And after much faffing about on their website looking for a way to email them, that was exactly what I did. 

Mind you, I did feel that the promised response time of "within 48 hours" was a bit slack!

As it happens, 24 hours later they got back to me to tell me that my order for a new router had been marked as a duplicate when it got to the distribution centre and thus no router had been sent.  Terribly sorry and all that. Have ordered another one.  It will be with you in 3 to 5 working days.

Sigh!!!!!!!  Just as well I have a dongle.  And just as well again that I bought loads of data when I topped it up on the Tuesday evening of last week. The Builder is, of coruse, quite right when he points out that we are paying for a service that we can't access - and that we are paying for it, effectively, twice given that I've had to top up the dongle.  But at least we're getting to use the data I've paid for (says Frances in definite Pollyanna mode!!)

And an unexpected advantage was that on Sunday morning, when I was talking to Tony and Stella and later Austin on Skype, the combination of using a dongle for internet access and a rare sunny morning, meant that I could take all three of them (individually) for a stroll around our garden and show it off.  Silver linings and clouds and so on.

The sunshine didn't last.  It's raining again. And it's dark and gloomy and quite chilly.  And quite remarkably humid, given the temperature!