It is a busy time in the garden right now as the May weather has provided perfect growing conditions.
Kim is busy looking after the perennial and shrub beds and preparing summer bedding for later displays…
My job is the vegetable plot where I am growing potatoes, beans and peas, tomatoes, onions and courgettes. All coming along very nicely indeed.
After a couple of hours labour each day, it is time to sit back and enjoy…
I mentioned this in a previous post – Bridlington is the lobster capital of Europe, landing over three hundred tonnes of North Sea lobster a year and this staggering amount is more than anywhere else in Europe.
According to the Government’s Marine Management Organisation, lobster fetches the highest average price of all species landed by the UK fleet at over £10 per kilogram, they account for only two per cent of the weight of shellfish landings, but twelve per cent of the value. Which is why Bridlington, which lands almost no actual fish, is Yorkshire’s most lucrative fishing port. The shellfish it lands is worth £7.2m more than all the fish and shellfish landed at Grimsby and Whitby combined £4m of which is accounted for by lobster.
As we completed the beach walk and entered the town via the harbour I thought that I might find a fishmonger and get some lobster to take home.
This proved to be rather more difficult than I imagined. Almost all of the lobster is exported to Europe because in the UK we don’t eat a lot of lobster and they certainly don’t eat a lot of lobster in Bridlington because it is just too expensive for a town teetering on the lower end of the UK deprivation scale – 5 out of 10, so just below average.
I found it difficult to even find a fishmonger and when I did the lobster for sale looked rather pathetic, not like a premier display of sea food that I was hoping for so I quickly abandoned the idea.
Instead I thought that we mind find a seafood restaurant and have some lobster for lunch. We found a likely promising place on the harbour and scanned the menu in the window. Plenty of fish on offer but by the lobster choices was a hand written note – not available today. That was the end of the quest for lobster in Bridlington.
So instead I will have to tell you about my disastrous lobster meal in La Rochelle in France twenty years ago in 2003.
To set the scene I have to go back five years when I was there on a business trip looking at Semat Refuse Collection Vehicles and the company salesman took us out in the evening to a restaurant called Andre’s, a top class sea food restaurant on the harbour.
Back to 2003 now and with the family I was showing off and booked a table at Andre’s with the intention of eating lobster. Everything was going to plan, I ordered, Sally my daughter, selected crab and Jonathan, my son, went for the steak and then the evening fell rapidly part.
The waiter came to the table and introduced me to a live lobster for my approval. I wasn’t expecting that and neither was Sally who immediately burst into tears. This really spoilt the evening, no one wanted the lobster after that and I had to eat the whole thing myself and most of the crab as well. Jonathan carried on as nothing had happened and made his way through his steak dinner.
For a few years after that every time Sally asked for money for this, that or the other and if I said no she would recall the expensive incident and just look me in the eye and blackmail me with the line – “Dad, do you remember – €50 for a lobster!”
On the final day at Skipsea Sands Holiday Park we drove north of Bridlington to Sewerby Hall, a Grade I listed Georgian country house set in fifty acres of landscaped gardens. There is a very good herbaceous garden that Gertrude Jekyll would have been proud of but it was too early in the year to see it at its absolute best.
The Hall itself was interesting with rooms decorated and furnished in keeping with the period, a film show, a dressing up room and some interesting reconstructions and story boards.
When we had finished with the Hall we walked three miles to Bridlington, this time along the North Beach. We planned to stop for a drink but there were some black clouds beginning to form so we walked the three miles back to Sewerby Hall in about half the time that it took to walk the opposite way.
This was our fourth time at Skipsea Sands Holiday Park and we agreed that it could well be our last but never say never again and who knows? It costs less than £10 a night to hire a holiday home (caravan) at this time of year. Maybe we will be back again same time next year.
Posted in Europe, Food, France, History, Portugal, Travel
Tagged Bridlington, Bridlington North Beach, east Yorkshire, La Rochelle, Lobster, Seweby Hall
Ten years ago today we were staying in the delightful town of Santillana del Mar in Northern Spain.
There is apparently an old saying that Santillana del Mar is The Town of Three Lies, since it is neither a Saint (Santo), nor flat (llana) and has no sea (Mar) as implied by the town’s name. However, the name actually derives from Santa Juliana (or Santa Illana) whose remains are in the kept in the Colegiata, a Romanesque church and former Benedictine monastery.
Posted in Cantabria, El Cid, Food, History, Natural Environment, Spain, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Cantabria, Cantabrian Mountains, Culture, Jean Paul Satre, Life, Santillana del Mar, Spain Festival
The market was about one hundred yards long and we made it to the top with only a couple of purchases but then of course we had to turn around and walk all of the way back and run the gauntlet of the stallholders for a second time. Sally seemed to pick up the knack of bartering much easier than I did and I think we bought some tee shirts and a couple of bracelets but to be honest I can’t be absolutely sure.
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Childhood, Europe, Food, Hotels, Morocco, Travel, Turkey, World Heritage
Tagged Culture, Efes Beer, Life, Market bartering, Market Shopping, Markets, Sarigerme, Suntopia Tropical Hotel
I decided to take the opportunity to seek out more ruins and set off to find the site of the Mausoleum of Mausolus, the origin of the word mausoleum and one of the original Wonders of the Ancient World. This was once a magnificent forty-five metre high marble tomb, decorated with statues and friezes and built in the third century BC as a burial chamber for King Mausolus of Caria.
In my previous post I talked about the Spalding Tulip Festival and it reminded me of one of my favourite Tulip stories…
… This is not a botanical story but one of linguistic misunderstanding…
The name Tulip was first applied to the plant by a man called Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq who was a Dutch ambassador in Turkey in the sixteenth century and was also a great floral enthusiast. One day he was talking to a sultan and he noticed that he was wearing an attractive flower in his head wear.
When I say talking what I mean is that they were communicating with each other in the way that people do when they can’t speak each other’s language with lots of funny faces and wild gesticulations and misunderstandings.
I digress here and give an example from my own experience…
Now, I know that like most English people my grasp of foreign languages is not that good but this experience in the Spanish city of Palencia was quite bizarre.
“Catedral?” I enquired and the poor man (victim) that I had selected just stared back at me with an expressionless face as though I was a visitor from another planet. So I tried again but this time, remembering that upside down question mark thing at the beginning of the sentence I tried to sound a bit more Spanish, “¿Catedral?” but his face went so blank that I though rigor mortis had set in. I have to say that Catedral sounds a bit like Cathedral to me so I don’t know why this was so difficult but his solution was to call someone else over who was an obviously educated man who spoke excellent English and with optimism I tried again “¿Catedral?”
To my astonishment he immediately adopted exactly the same blank face as the first man so I tried again in various different accents and voice inflections. “¿Catedral?” “¿Catedral?” “¿Catedral?” Nothing, Nothing, Nothing. I really cannot understand why this should be so difficult. If a Spanish man came up to me in Lincoln and asked for directions to the Cathedral – however he might pronounce it, I am fairly sure that I could make out what he was asking for. Eventually I gave up, added the h sound and just asked in English for directions to the Cathedral and amazingly I immediately made myself understood and the man smiled and said “Ah, Catedral!” which, I am fairly certain is exactly what I said in the first place.
To continue…
Busbecq was curious about the flower and pointed to it and enquired its name. In Turkey the name of the flower was a Lale (prounced lalay) but the Sultan thought he meant what is the name of his hat so he told him it was a Tulipan or turban and Busbeqc, who completely misunderstood, acquired some bulbs and sent them back to Europe with the information that they were called Tulipa.
A good job that he wasn’t wearing a pork pie hat or tulips would be porkies!
Now, this is important information in case we have another vegetable supply crisis.
All parts of tulips are edible and the bulb can be substituted for onions (although they are a little more expensive and less flavourful). The Dutch ate tulip bulbs in the hard times of World War Two even though the petals have little taste but could be used to garnish a dish, chop a few petals and throw them in a salad, sugar them to decorate a cake or use the entire flower for a fruit bowl, pinching out the pistil and stamen in the middle.
Incidentally the tulip is the national flower of Iran and Turkey where it is still called the Lale.
The island of Rhodes is one of the most interesting and has been inhabited for six thousand years and due to its geographical position on the major Mediterranean Sea trade routes is situated at a natural crossroads between Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and this has given the city and the island many different identities, cultures, architectures, and languages over its long and varied history.
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Beaches, Cathedrals, Europe, Food, Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, Knights of St John, Literature, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Culture, Dodecanese Islands, Holidays, Knights of St John, Lindos, Photography, rhodes, Travel
A bus ride to Piraeus is a truly unique experience.
The roads were busy but the driver of the blue Solaris flexibus seemed totally oblivious to other vehicles as he charged along at high speed, switching lanes, clattering over tram lines and tossing the passengers about like the Saturday night lottery balls on hard unyielding plastic seats. Luggage flew out of the overhead racks and passengers not gripping on tightly were thrown from their seats. Suitcases were scattered along the floor and little children were thrown into the air.
Posted in Athens, back packing, Europe, Food, Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, Postcards, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Culture, Food, Greek Bus Ride, Life, Motoring, Photography, piraeus, Travel, UNESCO Greece, World Heritage Site
The Talyllyn Railway is a narrow-gauge preserved railway in Wales that runs for nearly sixteen miles from the town of Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1866 to carry slate from the quarries at Bryn Eglwys to Tywyn, and was the first narrow gauge railway in Britain authorised by Act of Parliament to carry passengers using steam haulage.
Posted in Beaches, Childhood, Europe, Food, History, Literature, Natural Environment, Postcards, Travel, Wales
Tagged Catell y Bere Wales, Little Railways, Llanuwchllyn, postacrds, Talyllyn Railway, Towyn Wales, Welsh weather
Ouzo is an anise-flavoured liquor produced from grape must (the remnants of wine-making) and it can only be made in Greece and Cyprus . No other beverage is as uniquely Greek or as closely linked to a culture as ouzo is to Greece. Greeks drink the most ouzo and ouzeries serve it alongside appetisers called meze. Often drunk on its own or gently diluted, ouzo has a very strong anise flavour that takes some getting used to.
The ‘Boss Bar’ really had been an excellent place, the staff were attentive and friendly, the food was good, the beer was cold and the prices were reasonable. It has taken me a while to get to the point of this story but there was always complimentary ouzo to finish the evening (except when there was complimentary melon which quite frankly wasn’t so good) but the place had my fullest recommendation.
Posted in Athens, backpacking, Beaches, Europe, Food, Greece, Greek islands, Greek Taverna, History, Literature, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Greek Food, Greek islands, Life, Ouzo, Photography, Santorini, Travel
Have Bag, Will Travel 