Reader, I expected Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy to walk in through the door at any moment. Or perhaps to find them already seated around a table with friends in the Gun Room. The Freemasons at Wiswell is the most country inn EVER. It’s like a Tardis, with an unimposing plain frontage in a small …
The Dog & Gun is a pub with a Michelin star, hiding in a quiet north-east corner of Cumbria a long way from the Wainwright fells. The star is an interesting award, because there’s nothing stuffy or gussied-up about the pub or its food, and no matter what they say on their website I’ve always …
The Pig’s Head is a great gastropub conversion of a huge old tavern in Clapham Old Town, with a high glass-domed ceiling and plenty of scrubbed wood, dried flowers and jars of preserved and pickled on shelves. They have a strong focus on meat (though their veg dishes are great by my reckoning) and have …
The signature dish at The Loch & The Tyne, Adam Handling’s big rambling dining pub in Old Windsor, is a starter called ‘Mother’. It’s a splendidly savoury dish of thin slices of baked celeriac formed into a package around a creamy-gooey interior that includes the warm earthy flavour of truffle, the odd zing of apple …
We’ve got a new vice. It’s this: self-catering stays attached to National Trust properties. Okay, not as exciting as you were hoping. But so far it’s been great, staying in a historic building, in what have been huge and well-equipped apartments or cottages, and with free access to roam around the grounds (when no-one else …