An English Breakfast

 

In my last post I showed you a Cotswold kitchen, and today I'm going to tell you what we had for breakfast there - a typical English breakfast that prepares you for the day to come.

There was a fried egg as well as mushrooms (yum!), the typical grilled tomatoes and those sausages that I am not too crazy about.

I'm not a big fan of bacon either, but this version I actually liked. 

Don't forget the baked beans! I think no English breakfast is complete without baked beans (at least that's the impression I got).

Of course triangle toast is an inherent part - with orange marmelade or apricot jam.

And no English breakfast without a pot of tea - and milk.

I'm linking up to Kathy's Food Wednesdays.

Cotswold Kitchen

 

The Cotswolds is one of my favorite areas in England that I have visited often. I was a teenager when I went there for the very first time and already back then I was captured by its gently rolling hills and the honey colored houses. During the late 80s and early 90s and then again late 90s I spent time in the Cotswolds every year and got to know it quite well. After we had moved to California we traveled extensively in the US to get to know this country better. But in 2014 we visited the Cotswolds again and I found it quite changed. The once quiet and charming little villages had become bustling tourist destinations - thank you (not), Rick Steves!

But the area was still lovely. We stayed in a lovely farm house B&B in the countryside at the end of a narrow country lane.

There were lovely plants at the front entrance (that no one used, everyone got in through the back door). My clematis are never as gorgeous as this one.

Of course the heart of the house was the kitchen. And the heart of the kitchen was this old Aga.

In many English novels that are set in the countryside you can read about the Aga. When I was much younger I loved to read the novels by Rosamunde Pilcher (wonderful soft un-challenging feel good novels) and the kitchens in her books always have an Aga and a scrubbed wooden table. It was just like this kitchen!

The lady of the house didn't use this Aga anymore since she cooked our breakfast in a more modern kitchen. But I thouroughly enjoyed sitting in this kitchen right out of Rosamunde Pilcher's books!

The view out of the kitchen through those old windows was lovely as well.

And what do you drink in an English country kitchen? Tea of course - with milk! That's my ticket to Elizabeth's T Tuesday.

Knock Knock!

The picturesque villages and small towns in England's beautiful Cotswold Hills have a lot to offer for photographers. One of the places I went to often during my frequent visits to the Cotswolds is Chipping Campden. It was a rather sleepy village in the 70's when I walked along its sidewalks for the first time. When I returned in the late 80's and early as well as late 90's it wasn't as sleepy anymore but still a pleasant place where you could easily spend several hours wandering the streets and stopping in the afternoon for cream tea served in a gorgeous garden. However, when I brought my family to Chipping Campden in 2014 it had turned into a crowded and bustling tourist destination.

Still, we could take our time and take lots of photos. Since I had been there so often I skipped the usual sights and concentrated on other objects - like doors and windows. I noticed all the gorgeous and sometimes unusual knobs and knockers on many doors - some of them embellished and quite ornate, its own little piece of art.

The Dragon House's door knocker featured a dragon, of course - quite appropriate.

Others were more subtle but just as beautiful.

I really liked this one - elegant but not showy. Quite fitting for British understatement.

And it's always good to know where to put the letters.

Where Market Was Hold in the Olden Days

Chipping Campden is a very picturesque little medieval town in the heart of the Cotswold Hills in England. I first visited it back in 1974 when it was still more like a sleepy village out of a fairy tale. When I spent time here in the late 80's and early 90's it wasn't quite as sleepy anymore, but still rather quiet. Last year, however, it was a crowded tourist destination - but fortunately it still held its Old World charm.

The heart of Chipping Campden, right in the middle of High Street, is this old market hall. "Chipping" comes from the Old English for "market" or "market place" - so of course they have a market hall! Built in 1627 (so not quite that medieval!) in the typical honey colored limestone of the area, it stood in the town center mainly unused. This time, however, it was turned into some kind of market place again.

This, however, was the only change that I could notice, and I thought that it actually fit the location. I also imagined market people who yell and shout, offering their merchandise to the folks who would come into town on market day. I think it was quite lively back then. Not so much nowadays.

To my utter relief, the old floor was still the same rocky ground as centuries ago.

And so was the roof - don't you agree that it is lovely? Simple, but impressive.

Trapped in a Churchyard

A photo, a story - here we are for Wednesday Wit and Wisdom over at Senior Adventures with Linda Kay! 

It has been two hours since she had left the car in the small parking lot in Widford and followed the signs along the hiking trail through the lovely Windrush Valley. It was a beautiful day for a hike - not too hot, the sun was hidden in the overcast sky, the air was rather humid. She had started her hike midmorning, and a while ago the tiny church of St. Oswald had come into her view.

It was a picturesque old church in the middle of nowhere. It had a small walled-in churchyard with a few gravestones. The area around the church was mainly meadows with the hiking path going right through the middle of them. There was no one around - except for a herd of cows uphill from the church. It was the typical English countryside in the beautiful Cotswolds.

She entered the churchyard through a kissing gate - it made a squeaky noise when she opened it to the one side, slipped in and then closed it again to the other side. She just loved these gates that you couldn't find outside of Britain. Slowly she walked around the churchyard and then entered the church. The old church smell that she met in each and every one of the old parish churches welcomed her at the door. She sat in one of the pews and took in the interior of the church until she decided that it was time to continue her hike.

When she stepped out into the churchyard she realized that her way out to the meadow was cut off - by the cows. While she had lingered inside, the cows had come down the hill and gathered right in front of the kissing gate.

She went closer, talking soothingly to the cows, hoping that they would run away when they saw her. But alas! - they seemed to be interested in her, stretching their big heads over the wall and trying to reach her with their long tongues. Usually she wasn't afraid of cows - on the contrary, she loved cows. But these were a few too many and she just didn't dare to open the gate and march right among them.

Slightly panicked she looked around, searching for another way out. There wasn't any. She imagined how she would be trapped for hours here, with no one coming by. Slowly she walked to the other end of the churchyard and decided then and there that she had to climb the wall. She knew that this wouldn't happen without any bruises, but she didn't really have a choice. So she scrambled - rather ungracefully - over the rough wall and walked down to the lower meadow, turning around every now and then and checking over her shoulder whether the cows followed her or not.

They didn't. But she couldn't shake off the feeling that the cows were whispering to each other about this strange young woman who hiked alone through their valley without any fear, but felt the cows were a menace. Only when she thought she was safe did she slow down and started to laugh hysterically.

*********

I'm afraid this is a true story...

Country "Fences" (August Break 2014)

"Today is..." - our prompt.

Well, today is Thursday, and in my book that means fences and linking up with Theresa's 'Good Fences'. And exactly that I am doing today.

Only, that my fences are actually not real fences. They are...

 ... walls. Same function as a fence - to either keep someone in or out. All of these fences are in the Cotswolds whose landscape is criss-crossed by walls.

It's a beautiful landscape, really, and the walls just add some extra charm.

Sometimes they separate a cemetery from the nettles outside.

Sometimes the cemetery itself is covered in weeds and the sheep are right next door - that's a pretty common picture. It's a pastoral setting, after all.

The walls are rather rough and irregular - another charming detail about them.

Evening Reflection (August Break 2014)

Today's prompt - "reflection".

We found Stanway House in the Cotswolds after we had our lovely dinner in the pub. This is a Jacobean manor house located near our farmhouse bed and breakfast that we stayed in for the night. It was around 8:30pm, but still light - I love those long summer days. The sun wasn't too low to the horizon yet (that happened after 9:30pm), but its light was already warm and golden. Given that the Cotswold stone is golden as well, this makes for a gorgeous color in the evening.

The pond reflected all these beautiful hues. A photographer's paradise, pretty much. We loved to walk around the estate which was mainly this park-like side of the house.

Behind the house there is a huge fountain which rises to over 300 ft. - you can see it in the last photo, on the left half, behind the tree. It reminded me a little bit of Old Faithful in Yellowstone when it erupts.

Better Than Its Reputation - British Food (August Break 2014)

I have decided to join in Susannah Conway's August Break again, but a little differently. She has offered an entire list of prompts that we can use or not. I will try to work along those prompts although this might not work for every day. And other than she supposed, I will not take a photo each day but use most of these prompts as an inspiration for telling you more about my trip to Europe.

Today's prompt is "lunch" - so let's talk about British food! We're not starting with lunch but with breakfast.
This is a Scottish breakfast that we had in Edinburgh - with haggis, black pudding, sausage, bacon and fried egg. It was pretty good, I liked both the haggis and the black pudding (blood sausage).

The breakfast in our farmhouse bed and breakfast in the Cotswolds looked like this - fried egg, sausage and bacon like in Scotland, but also baked beans and mushrooms, plus grilled tomatoes (the tomatoes in Scotland weren't grilled).

Both to go with tea, of course, served in a beautiful pot. Oh, that is tea with milk - the only way I can stomach tea (I am not a tea drinker - except on the British Isles).

While in England we often skipped lunch and had a real cream tea instead - sinfully rich! Scones with clotted cream and jam - heavenly!

If you don't like tea there's always the option to have a latte instead.

Which leaves us with dinner. Most of the time we had our dinner in a pub since we really like pub food. You can have traditional fish and chips,

served with beer of course (this is a pint of bitter).

In Scotland the Geek tried Haggis which is so much better than you would think. Haggis is a savory pudding containing sheep's pluck; minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally encased  in the animal's stomach and simmered for approx. three hours. As you can easily see, we had a different version, but it was still Haggis, and most people cringe when they hear of it - probably because they've never tried it. This was the first time that I tried Haggis as well, and I thought it was pretty tasty.

Kaefer had bangers and mash.

while I ordered the Shepherd's Pie.

In England we enjoyed food like steak pie

and seafood platter,

all accompanied by a pint of bitter.