From Nottingham to East Anglia via Boston

I woke early, as I often do on holiday! It is as if I don’t want to miss any of it. So I was up at 3.45am and used the time to complete the blog post about yesterday’s journey and then began to bring together my notes, memories and photographs of the lovely meal last night.

My comfy workspace as I blogged

Having showered, shaved and dressed it was time to go for breakfast, which on weekends doesn’t start until 8am. Clearly, we are the only people who get to breakfast at start time as for most of the hour we were there we were alone apart from staff members serving us.

Our walk to breakfast - I did get permission to use the staff members photo

It is true we are firm believers in the importance of breakfast and after a lot of food the night before I always feel ready for a top up in the morning.

Sara, one of our friends we visited on Friday, asked ‘What is a Michelin starred Breakfast like’ and Restaurant Sat Bains reminded me of what such a breakfast could be. The food for breakfast was of the highest quality and cooked with as much care and attention as the meal had been last night.

Along with the fresh orange juice I had tea and Drew coffee, both served in appropriate pots, much to our delight the cups were actually mugs, my preferred drinking crockery for breakfast – well indeed for most of the day, cups always seem too small and mean.

The first course for breakfast was a range of cereal, yoghurts etc. One was a porridge with honey. I asked the waiter, a Scot, if it was possible for them to do a Scottish Porridge – i.e. porridge oats cooked in water with a sprinkling of salt and no other add-ons – he said of course the kitchen would be able to do this, and they did do it to perfection.

Drew, on the other hand, opted for vanilla yoghurt with fruit compote which was served in a very delicate bowl. He was impressed both by the bowl and what it contained.

Next came toast. A lovely nutty wholemeal toast alongside two toasted crumpets were a real delight. It was toast for me, crumpets for Drew.

We both opted for the English Breakfast, though there were some interesting alternatives. What made the English Breakfast so great was that each element was special in its own way. The sausage had an intensity of flavour it is hard to describe clearly the meat that had gone into it was of the highest quality and the herbs were perfect with the pork, the bacon was streaky and crispy, the eggs were fresh and had such an intense yellow yolk that they had probably only left the chicken in the last 24 hours, I had mine fried over-hard and Drew had his scrambled. The plum tomato was gently warmed, rather than fried, leaving so much of the intense flavour in the tomato, the delicious black pudding also had a lovely bite of spiciness and the mushroom was delicate and juicy. An absolute triumph of a breakfast. This place does good food really wonderfully.

Haydn's Breakfast

Drew's Breakfast

We went back to the apartment by 9am and I completed my blog post packed, checked out and paid and we were on the road at 10am. So we didn't starve they provided us with a sugary, fruity, oatey cake for the journey. Drew had it for breakfast on Sunday morning.

Boston

As we had a gentle day’s travel from Restaurant Sat Bains to the accommodation we are staying at Wagtail Barn in Yaxham we decided to amuse ourselves by visiting the other Boston, or perhaps we should say the original Boston. Having been to the city in Massachusetts on two occasions it has always struck me as strange that we knew the Boston in the USA and had never visited the Boston on our own little island! So, today we remedied that. 

Boston, Lincolnshire, is a very different place from Boston Massachusetts. Though we were pleased as we drove in that some of the house names acknowledged the US link and a pub even had the name “New England Hotel”. Indeed, the main road around the town is called John Adams Way. 

Having arrived at Midday and parked in the Cattle Market Car Park we walked around the town centre. The odd shaped tower of St. Botolph’s Church, known as The Stump, as it never got completed with the final steeple. 

It is there in the Church grounds that the link between this Boston and the bigger one across the Atlantic is made most explicit. Those who travelled with John Winthrop from the Church here in Boston Lincs to Boston Mass are commemorated by a sign and by little markers in the grass around the Church. 

The vicar at the time travelled on the Arabella alongside many of his parishioners and become a key leader and the first teacher of the community in Massachusetts Colony, as it then was. I was reminded of the times we walked the streets of Boston reading about these people from the perspective of them as colony founders, now here I am seeing a town denuded of some of its key people as the emigrated to a new land. A fascinating connection.

Drew was quite taken by the war memorial in Boston, which is much more elaborate than that in many towns. As well as a central memorial there are 40 or so specific memorials to particular battles or particular groups of army, navy and air-force personal, including, for example, the Polish troops who fought beside the British in World War II. Drew took lots of photos of the site (48), which will be on Flickr shortly. Some might say he showed a particular interest others of a more cynical mind might think giving me a lot of extra photos to edit and post would keep me quiet for longer this afternoon/evening as I edited the photos!! [Co-pilot's note - Psst - it seems to have worked :-)]

Going to Yaxham

From Boston we travelled along the A17 to the A47 and leaving there at 1.30pm we arrived at Boundary House, Yaxham just after 3pm. Boundary House is where the owners of Wagtail Barn live and the barn is just to the front of the main house.

We were delighted to see the cute, converted barn which has a delightful rustic charm to it, yet also has all the mod-cons. A perfect place for a fortnight’s stay.

Having been shown around by Richard, the owner, and unpacking out cases and settling in we headed out for some essentials to Sainsbury’s which is 8.5 miles away at 4:10pm. We arrived back at 4:45pm the route is a very direct one and takes us through the quaint villages of Mattishall and East Tuddenham.

Dinner

We rested and relaxed a while before heading out at 6:30pm to travel to the other side of Dereham, our nearest town, to a village called North Elham and a pub called The Railway Arms. Trip Advisor had been the source for the recommendation to try this place and I think their advice was sound.

The route from our cottage/barn to the pub was through the town centre of Dereham and out the other side. Even though it was Saturday evening the town wasn’t busy. We also passed the Church I’ll be attending in the morning, so it was good to see the route in advance of 9am tomorrow. 

We arrived at 7pm and had a hard job choosing from the lovely menu. Perhaps we had been spoilt by the last two nights of seeing a menu and having all of it!!. We couldn’t have managed that here as the portions were generous.

For starters I had a Mongolian Lamb Pancake roll which was served with a pickled vegetables, black sesame seeds and ginger and hoisin sauce. I think it is about ten years since I had a pancake roll, but this one was large and very, very tasty. The pulled lamb and vegetables were tangy and delicious. I used the sauce more as a dip for the lettuce than for the pancake as it was so full of flavour on its own. 

Drew opted for sauteed chestnut mushrooms in stilton sauce with toasted cornbread and parmesan, garlic crumb. He liked the richness of the mushrooms which weren’t soggy keeping a good amount of bite. The cornbread was delicious and the sauce had a real tang.

For my mains I went with one of the items on the specials board – Lamb’s Liver with sweet potatoes and kale – this was just as described a bed of beautifully mashed sweet potatoes with crisp lightly boiled kale (a veg I love) on top and three large pieces of lamb’s liver on top. The healthiness of the sweet potatoes and kale along with the rich iron-richness of the liver made me feel quite virtuous, though the serving size – very generous – perhaps made up for any virtue. All I know is it was hearty and rich in traditional tastes. I like fancy food, I like new and existing flavours, but there are times when the old favourites are just perfect and this was one of them.

Drew chose braised lamb ragu with pappardelle and a parmesan and pesto dressing. This amused both of us as our regular Saturday evening meal is a ragu con fusilli, though our ragu tends to be a beef ragu. Drew delighted in having a, to us at least, traditional dinner and there wasn’t a scrap left on his very generously sized plate at the end. 

A delight. Indeed, the food was so good and filling there wasn’t even space for dessert. We got back to the barn at 9pm and did our ablutions and got to bed before 10pm having had another lovely day.