Weekend at Barnard Castle and Cotherstone

For the weekend, I met with some friends and travelled to Cotherstone. We started off at Cross Lanes Organic farm, Barnard Castle, which runs a farm shop with local and organic produce and a cafe using local ingredients. The menu has a wide range of items, including a pizza menu where the pizza are cooked in a wood fired oven. We shared an Italian Pizza, Breakfast Pizza and a Chicken Tarragon Pizza.

I didn’t believe this at first when a friend told me, but there are sheep on the roof! One side of the roof is covered with grass for the sheep. I have never seen anything like it before…

Later on, we drove to High Force, the largest waterfall in England. They normally close the area at 5pm but we made it in time! It is very beautiful and calming.

We finished off the evening with dinner at the Fox and Hounds pub in Cotherstone, which was just opposite the cottage we were staying at. We arrived at 8pm only to be told that due to two large parties being booked there, it would be at least an hour’s wait for food. The lady said we could try again at 9pm so we went back to our cottage. What was nice of her was that she personally came to our cottage to tell us when was best to return for food.

So…to end the day I had one of the specials – pork tenderloin in a creamy leek sauce and mushrooms with a side dish of vegetables…

This left me feeling so full I had no room for dessert!

Comments

Edinburgh - National Museum of Scotland

The National Museum of Scotland is a vast building filled with exhibitions and displays covering nature, history, art, literature and science. There are also sections dedicated to Scottish history and culture. There is so much to see, I could possibly see one spending the entire day here! Another bonus is that it is free admittance. We were only here for a few hours, so unfortunately we didn’t get to see everything. My particular favourites were seeing the displays on different world cultures, natural history and the environment and the pivotal role Scotland has played in popular culture and art through the ages.

Christmas is coming to Exeter!

Last week, I met up with my sister in Exeter. Unfortunately due to the recent bad weather we had a little train trouble but when we eventually arrived, the first thought that came to our mind was FOOD! We had a craving for Italian food and originally we wanted to go to Jamie’s Italian but it was fully booked. Nearby is Carluccio’s, which my sister said was quite good so we headed there. The front of Carluccio’s resembles a shop with cakes, biscuits and other Italian sweet treats which you can buy to takeaway. Behind this is a dining area – it doesn’t look particularly impressive or restaurant like. It looks like a cafe (indeed some people just ordered tea and coffee). The menu looks quite good – it displays Italian dishes with impressive ingredients. We opted for the Christmas menu – 2 courses for £17.99. I opted for the Risotto Festivo (a mushroom and spinach risotto with porcini oil and cheese wafers on top) and the Panettone with vanilla ice cream – I went for the more Christ...

Morrisons Gingerbread House

We recently got one of these Gingerbread House DIY sets from Morrisons, which looks very Christmassy. The photo on the box looked very impressive, I doubted I could recreate this look! …And despite my efforts, I could not! I tried my best! Included in the box are the gingerbread, plastic tray, packet of white icing and assorted sweets for decoration. The icing is already pre-made but requires you to massage it for 1 minute to soften it. However, I needed longer than this because the icing was still too hard. The gingerbread house comes in six pieces which are assembled with help of the plastic tray and some icing. This was fairly easy to do! The gingerbread smells delicious that I have to impose some self-control and not eat it… The tricky bit (and messy) was decorating the house. I found icing was difficult to do – sometimes it was too hard to get out of the bag, and sometimes it would not stick to the gingerbread itself! Trying to ice the windows and doors was a nightmar...

Hello Happy Bunny

Search This Blog