News from Nowhere

durham_rambler discovered from the local paper that timbers from the 'Willington Waggonway' were on show for one day only at the Stephenson Railway Museum, and we took time out yesterday to go and see them. This was part of the same 'Festival of Archaeology' as the presentation we went to last week, about the Lanchester Diploma, though I suspect both events would have happened sooner or later anyway.

We'd never heard of the Stephenson Railway Museum, either - it turns out to be a small but good collection, right next to the Silverlink shopping center. They'd set up a container outside the building, containing a young woman (who turns out to be Dominique Bell, Project Coordinator) and several lengths of untreated timber:



These are mainly the wooden rails of the 'Willington Waggonway', a late 18th century waggonway, built to carry horse-drawn coal carts - which makes it a rare survival of one of the world's first railways. THe timber at the left of the bottom shelf is irregularly shaped because it's just the branch of a tree, used as a sleeper to support the rails.



This rail has been recycled from the timbers of a ship (if I've got this right, the peg sticking out of it on the left is part of the railway, whereas the peg going across it further right is part of the construction of the ship).

Here's Dominique's blog post about her 'waggonway adventure' - going to York to collect the treated timbers for display. Obviously, they are trying to raise money to treat all the surviving timbers.

Some of the treated timbers were on display inside the museum, and I'm afraid I didn't find them anything like as exciting as the untreated ones outside; but I suppose if we want them to survive, it has to be done. There were plenty of other things to admire in the museum, too, shiny engines and suchlike, and we enjoyed our morning there.

In fact, we were sufficiently in holiday mood that we decided to lunch at the Citron Vert, a new 'French bistro' in High Pittington (formerly the Duke of Wellington) which we had seen reviewed in the Durham Times.

They weren't busy when we arrived, despite which they didn't have a table set, gave us the table hard by the counter and kept us waiting for the menu. That wasn't auspicious, but it picked up from then on. The table rubbing elbows with the staff meant we could chat to la patronne (the staff aren't French, but the enterprise certainly is!) as she opened the champagne and made kir royale for the party in the window, who were celebrating someone's birthday (they were displaying a balloon that said so). We both chose salade niçoise from the short menu (the black olives were the sort you buy ready stoned, which don't taste of much, but the eggs were cooked just right, and the anchovies were excellent, and plentiful), and a glass of Touraine sauvignon. I'd wondered how the Durham Times review had managed to square its ratings for quality and value with the prices they were quoting, but the answer may lie in the prices they weren't quoting: the wine, especially by the glass, was not cheap, and the sauvignon was pleasant but not special. However, when la patronne asked how we were doing, and we said what it a pity it was that they didn't offer rosé by the glass to accompany the salad, she said oh, but they did, it just hadn't made its way onto the menu, and poured me a complimentary half glass of Anciens Temps rosé, which was exactly what I would have chosen - pale, dry, with a faint caramel edge. I see from their online menu that their dinner menu includes a café gourmand, which I would probably have preferred to the chocolate brownie (nice enough, not as squidgy as I like it and the ice cream frozen too hard) I did have.

So if I had to give actual marks (which happily I don't) they would include quite a lot of on the one hand, on the other hand. But I think they are aiming for the right targets, even if they don't always hit them.

Also, our bill was handwritten on a picture postcard, and our card was one of the set issued by Penguin, showing the covers of their books: we got the Puffin edition of Heidi. I'm not that easily seduced, am I?

We spent today in Bruges. After breakfast on board, it didn't take long to disembark and drive to a car park Roger had previously identified, next door to the railway station, not excessively expensive and whose price includes a bus ticket in to the centre. In fact it's close enough to walk, and we ended up walking back - but that's another story. Anyway, we had a splendid time not doing any of the deeply cultural things people had recommended to us, just admiring the streets and the buildings and the many, many chocolate shops... I hope there'll be a post that relives that walk, when I get home and can sort out the photos. But for the time being, just two silly pictures: ( oh, all right, then, under a cut )

After that - but no, I said I'd save 'after that' for another post. Eventually we returned to retrieve our car, and it wasn't a long drive to Ghent, where we will spend the next few days.

Friday at King's Cross; Saturday at the Barbican (and beyond); on Sunday we reached the purpose of our visit, which was the Bears' annual carol evening.

( The carol evening: always the same, always different )

( Monday in Peckham )

After our diversion to Gaillac, we returned to the motorway towards Pau, our next destination. Having successfully negotiated the Toulouse ring road, we felt entitled to leave the motorway in search of lunch, so we headed into the next town we came to, which happened to be Muret. Parked, strolled up and down the street considering the options, and settled for Chez Fanny, on a noisy corner by the bridge, giving its pavement tables a fine view of the traffic, the building works, the lethal motorcycles.

The establishment had an old-fashioned vibe: the menu was decorated with stills from the 1932 film. It was old-fashioned enough that when we had finished our first course:



our server, clearing the plates, returned the cutlery to us to eat our main course - in my case, andouillette de canard, accompanied by flat disks of potato and (very well-done, but still tasty) sprouts, the first of the season.

At the next table, between us an the traffic, were two smartly dressed young men: you can just see one of them in the corner of the photo. One sprawled at his ease, talking intently to his phone, while his companion methodically demolished a café gourmand, coffee and three not-so-mini desserts.

Meanwhile, in the background music, a sweet-voiced woman tackled some classic tracks. I was a bit startled to realise she was now singing:

Please allow me to introduce myself:
I'm a man of wealth and fame...

After skipping a year, we returned to Kendal for the third Lakes Comic Art Festival. We rented the Marketplace Hideaway: hidden away indeed, to the extent that, when we arrived yesterday evening, after road closures leaving Barnard Castle, after a scenic drive through scenic Cumbria, with sun and clouds (mostly clouds) making patterns on the hillsides, after twice round Kendal's one way system, and braving signs saying "No Entry Except Deliveries", because we were delivering ourselves and our belongings, weren't we? - when, after all this, we identified our landmarks between which we would allegedly find our path, we still couldn't see it. Closer still, though, and all was as described, and we have a choice of bedrooms, a small but perfectly adequate kitchen, a bathroom and a downstairs lounge. (TripAdvisor has some photos.) There was no wifi - which is to say that if you stood outside in the garden, Kendal Wifi was intermittent, and durham_rambler connected with the Cloud, probably via Caffe Nero next door. So I wrote this a bit at a time over the weekend, and am uploading it now with (I hope) a minimum of editing - I'd rather put my time into adding pictures and links than fretting about tenses.

( It's all about the crabs )

( Revolution in the Council Chamber )

( Lunch at the Castle Dairy )

( Vinyl is not dead. )

( It's all about the yards )

( From the pub to here - via the Sydney Opera House )

( Why we didn't make the McKean treble )

( Coda in Elephant Yard. )

We had a lunch date with friends at the Bridgewater Arms in Winston in Teesdale - not just a pub we'd never eaten at before, but a village we'd never visited, reached by a road we'd never driven along (turn left at the t-junction in Staindrop where we'd turn right to visit our friends at home), late-summer with the sunshine gentle on the straw bales in the fields and lighting the downy heads of the thistles lining the verges. The south is another country, even when it's the south of the same county...

I haven't seen many pubs with 'In Memoriam' over the door - not the door through which we entered, but adjacent. The building was built in the nineteenth century as a school, and has kept that theme in its décor (and why not? We celebrated my 60th birthday in a pub converted from a nineteenth century school, though I don't seem to have written about that) though it now has serious pretensions as a gastropub. And very nearly lives up them: the short version would be 'pricy, food very nice but with some misfires, service so friendly and charming that you don't care'.

The longer version: the menu is quite long, and I was tempted this way and that before I finally made my choice. My starter of mussels in cream sauce would have made a perfectly acceptable main course: they were sweet and tender and heaped high in the soup plate. The roast turbot of my main course was unremarkable, but that's OK, I'd chosen it for the accompanying samphire risotto - which was delicious, but mainly because it contained a generous seasoning of bacon: I enjoyed every mouthful, but though I could see the samphire, I couldn't actually taste it. The little dish of vegetables didn't seem in any way relared to the dish - I certainly didn't need the potatoes!

Perhaps because we were drinking a New Zealand sauvignon blanc that was all light perfume and green fruit, I chose the Gooseberry and Elderflower Trio for my dessert:



and we all admired it, and wondered what the different components might be - well, durham_rambler had to make a second choice of dessert, as the panna cotta hadn't set, so there were no distractions. It is effectively three variations on gooseberry fool: a little heap of soft cream topped with fruit all sitting on a toasty, nutty meringue base; a tiny spoonfull of fruit fool floating on a glass of elderflower jelly (this would have been fine without the fool); and a heavier fool of almost clotted cream. Two months ago it would have been seasonal, spot-on with the promise of early summer; in late August it was still delicious.

It wasn't all about the food (and drink), but the conversation was mostly about family and friends and plans, so I won't record that. Also about books, and websites, and the Labour party - and this clip, which explains why Corbyn is ahead in the leadership poll.

From Talisker we went to our hotel, the Rosedale in Portree, three fishermen's cottages right on the harbour now converted into a family-run hotel with many stairs: it was friendly and comfortable and, provided you can cope with the stairs, I entirely recommend it.

( Dinner at the Rosedale )

( Dinner at the Bosville )

( Neither of the above )

After which, it was time to go and look at the broch. But that's another story.

If one of you wants the crab cocktail starter, and the venison (with haggis mash) for the main course; and the other chooses the smoked haddock fish cakes and the vegetarian main course, which is a stack of Mediterranean vegetables layered with goat's cheese; what wine will you choose to drink? We cut our losses on the starters - once upon a time we'd have ordered a half bottle of white, but we don't have the stamina these days (even if there'd been anything on the list to tempt us) - and went for the Small Lot Mendocini Zinfandel, which I liked very much: fruity and ot over-tannic, which worked with the tomato sauce on my vegetables, but complex. structured, not over-bright.

"That's not a Durham accent," said the proprirtor, who served us. "Whereabouts in Durham do you come from?" "Durham City." "Ah. I'm from Langley Park."

I wished I'd taken my camera down to dinner. For one thing, the food was elaborately presented. Anything that could be piled up, was: that vegetable stack, obviously, but even the fishcakes were balanced one on top of the other, and as for the chocolate dessert...

For another thing, the dining room has a panorama of mountains. It's perched above the road above the Spean, and looks across to the slopes opposite, and down the valley to more snowy summits. Once upom a time, says durham_rambler, it wasn't the Glenspean Hotel, it was the Nevis View - and yes, that is Ben Nevis just visble beyond smaller but closer peaks.

Tomorrow we will drive down that road and take a closer look.

At the breakfast table, logged in to J. and weegoddess's wifi, dealing with suspicious activity in one of my e-mail accounts: because we are Living in the Future, and We Can.

Breakfasting on good coffee and the last of roozle's fabulous you'd-never-guess-it's-gluten-free pumpkin loaf, because this is New England in the almost-Fall, and We Can.

I feel a bit self-conscious, posting on Tuesday evening about Friday lunch, especially when the specification was: a totally casual lunch. But there are things I want to record, so if it seems a bit precious, well, no doubt the next post will be more interesting.

( Well, probably... )