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 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 …
I had no idea the Chilterns were such proper countryside; only a stone’s throw from London but with proper twisting lanes, bosky woods, hilltop views and bucolic villages. In one of them, Bennett End, is the old red brick Mash Inn, a restaurant with rooms. We stayed overnight in a garden room with dinner and …