Bolton Castle and its gorgeous cafe

One of my new favourite places to go for a bite to eat and on the first visit, it was a yummy cream tea, is Bolton Castle. High up in the heart of Wenselydale, you can see the castle for miles and miles and the journey across the dales to get there is truly lovely. The tea room itself is so beautifully and simply styled - "EAT" in silver letters is framed by 2 sets of mounted antlers on the walls, and the medieval chandelier and imposing beams work surprisingly well against the duck egg blue wood panelling around the serving area, loaded with freshly made, delicious-looking cakes.

They also sell lots of local produce (road tested to the max by the Curtises - my family) like jars of traditional sweets from BahHumbugs in Masham (http://www.bahhumbugs.com/) and ice cream from Brymor (http://www.brymordairy.co.uk/) - the best icecream in the world EVER!

http://www.boltoncastle.co.uk/

English Country Garden Flowers

My dozens of daffodil arrangements dotted around the house and the lovely sunny London weather today have reminded me of a glorious flower arrangment (picked from the kitchen gardens at Swinton Castle) from last September's Alfresco Parkland Food Festival at Swinton Park (http://www.swintonpark.com/events/hotelevents.html) where we are lucky enough to go riding on ploddy but charming Highland ponies a few times a year:

Apologies for the not-particularly-great-quality "phone pics" - I will find my camera lead soon...

Desperate for some Yorkshire air!

I’m missing Yorkshire lots at the moment (even more since I gave in to getting an iPhone and saved Masham as one of the 3 areas I can view the weather forecast for at the touch of a button - 18 degrees C today!), and it’s a sad year when there’s not even time to head up to York for one day at the moment to do some trade craft-fairing! Anyway we’ll have to hold on until October where we’ve already booked up ¾ of the week with things we’d like to do and places we’d like to visit (more news on those soon). Looking back through some "phone pics" recently I found these of our extremely windy walk around Druids and Leighton Reservoir (http://www.yorkshirewalks.org/diary03/diary73.html) – check out the trees – “windswept” is an understatement!

Pheasant are blogging at last! We've a few bits of news to catch up on so keep an eye out here!