England - August 2012 (day 2) The Wildfood Picnic

Sunday and the Picnic

We arrived at the car park at Blickling Hall in glorious sunshine, parked up, we started to quarter the car park in search of other Wildfood revellers, I saw a very well loaded car, surrounded by a gaggle of people, I think it was Suffs who spotted me and there was no mistaking the rest of the Wildfoodies. Though Jim had left his parrot at home, had his ships dog with him, 'arry the Jock killing machine.

'arry

I must say I was most impressed with the pirates’ booty; he had everything except the kitchen sink. Niceties exchanged (doffing of forelocks, pecking of cheeks etc.) We had a discussion where to set up the banquette. A car park attendant came to the rescue; he pointed us in the direction of a group of picnic tables, within visability but not smelling distance of the toilets, Perfect. Jim started unpacking his trolley full of equipment (those watching obviously thought we were all off our trollies), first the tablecloth came out to adorn the table.

Ma Chinch, Chinch, Suffs, Jim lad, Linda and Kath all discussing the tablecloth

we then started unpacking all of the food, it then became obvious that with all of the food on the table there was no place for us. A rapid rethink, we moved the table, alongside another one and piled all of the grub on that one allowing us enough space on the other one for plates and cutlery (all supplied by the Pirate and his Moll).

Just as we finished the food part, the drinks department arrived, in the form of our friends Carol and Bill. So we had wonderful weather, wonderful food, wonderful wine but most of all wonderful company.

The food of course was far, far too much, the amount would have served a battleship full of starving matelots, never mind 11 Gourmands. But we tried, we did very hard, the bill of fare (in no particular order) was as follows:

Scotch Eggs
Pullets Eggs
Quails Eggs
3 different Quiche’s
Cheeses (I do like my cheese now)
Rabbit rillettes
Cromer Crab
Smoked Salmon
Smoked Trout
Potato salad
Green salad
Tomatoes
Roasted Piedmont Peppers
Breads of every manufacture (about 4 different) and Normandy butter
Pickled onions and various mixed pickles
Corned beef, potato and onion pie
Bacon, sausage and egg pie
Smoked German black pudding
German Würstsalat
Smoked sprats
Cakes and other sweetmeats (I very rarely eat cake, but I made an exception and tasted a fantastic one baked by Alison)
Some very nice wines, (I did enjoy the Sancerre, Carol) juices and water for the drivers and light weights.

I may have forgotten something, but if I have it is only because I never got around to sampling it. It was a veritable feast, it was Wunderbar, and it was a fantastic feast for a fantastic day.

As we had had no need to pack up any food for home, Linda took the pie around the other picnickers at the other tables. Which they devoured with great gusto

Alas all things must come to an end, we cleared the decks, loaded up the victualing barges and I walked carol and Bill back to their car to swap goodies (Carol had made me some pickled eggs), they had also passed on the entrance badges for Blickling Hall. Linda and I had decided that as we had the chance we would do a tour of the wonderful grounds and gardens.

Blickling Hall and Linda

 The entrance to the Hall

The perfect lawns, borders anf bushes

Some wonderful double borders ( I only know that is what they are called because that is what it said on the lables)

 The fountain in tne centre of one of the many finely manacured lawns

Some flower or other, pretty, but unedible I'm sure

The giant chess set quietly waiting for a giant chess player

A flock of geese sheltering from the sweltering

The lake, if the geese had any sense they would have been in there cooling off

And leaving the hall for the car park and then to Sheringham

We then returned to our B&B in Sheringham"The Mullions", this was once again a pearl, what a find, it is not in the centre of town, but that was just what we wanted, but it had everything anyone could wish for, friendly hosts, a wonderful bedroom with mineral water and coffee/tea and biscuits at hand. Perfect!

We had a snooze and then decided to pop into town for a look around, we popped into the Lobster Pot pub for a pint and a crab sandwich, the pint was ok, but Linda found so much crab shell in her sandwich that she couldn’t eat it, I, by making sure I passed the well chewed food between my teeth and tongue managed to filter the shell and membrane out of mine. But it was a pretty poor showing and not a place that I would or could recommend to eat crab sandwiches at.

As we had been up early we decided to head back to the Mullions and watch the closing ceremony of the Olympics, I found it was absolutely fantastic, I know what the putting on of such a show entails having been on the production team of the Berlin Tattoos and military shows in the Waldbühne.

I watched it enthralled, I enjoyed every minute of it, even if some of the music wasn’t to my taste, it all came across wonderfully, well done and a fitting end to a wonderful Olympics.

We had arranged to have breakfast at 08:30, as we were heading across country to Dorset and My Brother and Sister in law to spend a week with them in Dorchester.

The full English was just that bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding, mushrooms, tomatoes and fried bread. We had started with müsli and fruit juice, but there was also all manner of cereals on offer as well as fruit. This is one B&B I would not hesitate to recommend to anyone wanting a quite (it is in a secluded cul-de-sac) stay on the North Norfolk coast. Well done Jeff and Annie, you are the most friendly hosts that I have met in a B&B for many a long year, you get the Gold Medal from me. Wildfood