Jim & Happy : Typical English Sunday lunch

Today we walked to The Abinger Hatch for lunch – the Sunday roast. The Hatch is the pub where Simon works (our friend introduced in previous blog), it is a more up market pub for the more affluent Surrey residents – that’s right, us!

Lunch was fresh and tasty with the biggest Yorkshire pudding I’ve ever seen. For dessert I had the ‘deconstructed apple crumble’. I was intrigued by the name. I was keen to see how it would be presented. The apple was in a little glass served with custard, on the plate next to the glass was a line of crumble (novel idea) and beside this a mound of raisin and apple compote. I piled the crumble and compote on top of the custard in the glass – reconstructed. I ate too much so needed the walk home.

We walked home through the graveyard and then back onto the roads. As I have mentioned before the roads around here are narrow and tree lined, add cyclists and they can be nerve racking. Walking along the road you hear the whirring and whooshing coming up behind you, hopefully by this time you haven’t waivered out further into the path of the bikes in fright.

The weekend before we arrived here there was a bike race with 20,000 cyclists – what a nightmare. Karen and Rob (home owners) said it was a spectacular sight watching the cyclists buzzing past the front gate. They have a tandem bike so you can’t blame them for their enthusiasm. All I can say is I’m glad we weren’t here.

We found another pub yesterday – The Stephan Langton. Rob told us about it so we went for a look. It is only a ten-minute drive from here. Great looking pub hidden away in middle earth. It looks just like middle earth in Lord of the Rings as much of this area does. We thought we might go for lunch during the week, the menu sounded inviting. I don’t thing I would want to drive down there in the night. I bought beetroot from a farmhouse near the pub – 4 for 50 p (75 cents) what a bargain. I roasted them for dinner last night, fresh and yummy.

Puppies are good – Jim has given them nicknames. Daisy is Daisy Duke (from Dukes of Hazzard) and Poppy is Floppy as she does lean to the right. This afternoon when we were feeding the chickens Daisy and Poppy came along for a walk. They don’t always bother. They had a burst of energy. Poppy was off out the front gates and Daisy was wandering off to next door. It was quite a job rounding them up from different directions. They are so obedient not like Natty who use to do what she wanted.