Butchers Bridge

I’m not too sure about it here.

I

t took sometime to get the message across to them this morning that I wanted to go out, but it worked in the end. The narrow strip of outside is now really quite boring and there are far too many people on the towpath and even more Woofers. I gave up trying to get across the bridge and decided that a morning snooze would be a far better way to spend my time.

Tom kept coming and going to the bins, I got a clean pooh box and she spent time chopping and cooking again.

Anne and Alasdair were on their way back to Scotland from spending Christmas with family in Wiltshire, a long drive which we helped to break up. Mick walked up to meet them whilst I put a batch of sausage rolls in the oven. It was very good to see them and hear of their Christmas with the grandchildren as we munched our way through the rolls and a slice of birthday cake each.

Next time I make sausage rolls I’m going to try to make my own GF pastry. The ready rolled variety seems to end up being a touch chewy once baked. I’ve hunted for a recipe online and found one to try, but I also got the River Cottage Gluten Free Cookbook for Christmas which has recipes. These however would mean purchasing several different flours which you can’t just pick up in any supermarket. We may have to have another Ocado delivery for them, but then there will need to be somewhere to store them all. I joked with Anne about maybe having a small tender larder that we could tow around. We have to be careful about such comments to Anne as when we joked about buying the house next door to ours in Scarborough and knocking through to give us more space, a few months later the house came on the market. We now own said house which has been knocked through!

At ding ding time today my bell was rung by Anne, it gave a slightly different tone to normal. Maybe that’s because she plays drums lots and is an expert percussionist. My food still tasted the same.

Early evening we walked up the path to the village to The Plough for some food. We’d hoped to try out the Admiral Nelson, but they I believe have just changed hands and are not doing food until the end of January. We hadn’t fancied The Boat House with their two for one and we’d heard good things about The Plough, it being away from the canal often gets forgotten about by boaters.

It certainly wasn’t busy, the menu was fairly standard and the pie of the day had to be checked. As Mick pointed out, I tend to eat a lot more steak than I used to as most options on a pub menu involve things I don’t eat anymore, a shame, but hey. However today there were no steaks available, they’d not re-stocked since Christmas. I had a tasty Lamb Shank whilst everyone else opted for Chicken and Ham pie. The pie looked like it could have done with a touch longer in the oven to get some colour on the pastry and the chips could have done with a touch more cooking. An average meal, we didn’t bother to stay for pudding.

We waved goodbye to Anne and Alasdair who headed off to their hotel for the night, then made our way back to the boat to start to consume the chocolate mountain on board.

0 locks, 0 miles, 2 visitors, 16 sausage rolls, 2 balls wool, 1 pattern, 4 bottle beer, 1 afternoon chatting, 3 undercooked pies, 1 lamb shank, 1.5 pints Hobgoblin, 1 pint Doombar, 1 very large glass for 1 bottle of Crabbies, 2 whips (what happened to the walnuts?!), 1 Santa, 1 reindeer, 1 Luther.