From Malmsbury to Nottingham or from Niall Keating to Sat Bains

 

Today was a relaxing day when we gently travelled from the Cotswolds to the Midlands. The somewhat eccentric route, more about the details later, looked something like this.

Breakfast

I woke, as I often do on holiday, just before 4am and got up and completed the first of yesterday's blog posts. After showering etc (lovely powerful shower here in the hotel) the day really began with breakfast. 

Drew suggested that after eating so much last night we might not have space for breakfast, but I reminded him it had been 9 and a half hours since our last morsel of food. He didn't need any more convincing.

Drew ready for breakfast

The breakfast room at Whatley Manor is large and airy, there was plenty of space for all the residents to be socially distanced from each other, as we were the first to arrive we had a choice of seats.

Breakfast consisted of a cool course, croissants, yoghurt, cereal etc followed by a selection of hot dishes. We opted for the English Breakfast declining the baked beans which neither of us like. The breakfast consisted of a fabulously plumb pork and herb sausage, a piece of black pudding, two rashers of bacon, a mushroom, half a tomato and a fried egg (I like mine over-hard, as the Americans say, Drew's was sunny-side up). It, along with four pieces of wholemeal bread, was delicious and set us up for the day - well until dinner time anyway.

Haydn's English Breakfast

After breakfast we went back up to the room, I wrote the blog post about last night's dinner, and we packed and left the hotel at 11am. 

Shipton Mill

From the start of lockdown, like many people in the UK, Drew began to make his own bread. After a successful white sourdough he venture out into a tasty rye sourdough and has now made a wide range of sourdough and yeast based breads. At the start of the pandemic shop shelves emptied of some staple items including flour, so after ordering a first batch of basic flour from Lakeland Drew found out about the items offered by Shipton Mill who deliver across the UK.

One of our bags of Shipton Mill flour in the kitchen at home

As we travelled towards Gloucestershire yesterday Drew, jokingly, said "As we are going to Gloucester perhaps we could have a look out for Shipton Mill". We laughed and reminded ourselves that Gloucester is a big county (1,220 square miles to be exact). 

Well last evening we decided to look and it turns out Shipton Mill is only 4.5 miles from Whatley Manor. So we couldn't leave the area without having a look. 

Shipton Mill

While deliveries from Shipton Mill have always been speedy, even in the midst of the pandemic, I can now see a case for coming and collecting our own flour and treating ourselves to another Niall Keating meal before going home the next day. Seems a very good idea to me.

Visiting Old Friends

When I outlined the plans for our trip in the first blog post and shared it via Facebook, one of my oldest friends, we were at college together in the early 1980s, who is also a Facebook friend made the point that we would be travelling very close to where he and his wife lived. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So we visited Wappenham, a quaint village which looks quite untouched by the modern age.

Having met Andrew Kirkpatrick at his school in the final year of A levels, the year before he came to college, we have remained friends, though not always with more regular contact than Christmas cards, since then. I first met Sara Pickering when visiting Andrew in Budapest in 1990, they had met in the city when both were working for the UK government out there. The following year (or was it the year after?) it was a pleasure to celebrate their wedding with them in the Catholic Church in Brighton. 

We last saw each other in 1998 when Andrew and Sara visited me in Tongwynlais and 23 years later it was like we had only seen each other a few weeks ago as they welcomed us to their home with a lovely few mugs of tea and we did lots of catch-up chat. What an enjoyable way to spend some time and break the journey up to Nottingham.

M1

After leaving Andrew and Sara's place at 2pm we called at the Sainsbury's Petrol Station in Northampton to top up. Given we are getting a Electric Car from September 1st, a Honda E, I wonder how easy it will be to top that up in comparison to using petrol in this Honda Jazz hybrid, time will tell.

From Northampton in was straight up a busy Friday afternoon M1. Drew was impressed that there were lorries three abreast on the motorway. Lots of Welsh motorways aren't even three lane, let along have enough lanes for lorries to be three abreast.

Lorries on the M1

Restaurant Sat Bains

From the M1 it was a short distance to the outskirts of Nottingham to Restaurant Sat Bains where we are staying and eating tonight.

Sat himself was standing at the kitchen door when we arrived as his team ran through the rain to pick the next herb that was needed for their dishes.

Our next post will tell the story of another delightful two Michelin star meal.