Eating in Glasshouses

There are a lot of excellent places to eat in Ambleside, and everyone who knows the place has a favourite. I have fond memories of Zeffirelli's(popularly known as "Zeff's"), a rather good Pizzeria on Compston road which has its own cinema. My sister, who lived in Ambleside for a while, will expound at length the virtues of the The Apple Pie, on Rydal Road. Both are excellent, and I highly recommend them to you.

They're not where we went for lunch, however.

Our lunch spot of choice on many recent visits to Ambleside has been the the Glasshouse Restaurant, also on Rydal Road, and in point of fact, just on the edge of the main car park in what used to be a fulling mill - don't ask me, something to do with textiles, given that it's situated in an area rather over blessed with sheep, I'm going to hazard a guess that it's something you do with wool. The water wheel that powered the operation is still there, presumably because the building - which dates from the fifteenth century - is listed.

 We discovered the place on a cold, dark, damp January day a few years ago when we were still new to caravan living. We'd spent New Year pitched up at the Troutbeck Camping and Caravanning Club site on the A66. (There is also a Troutbeck just outside Ambleside, whatever you do, don't mix the two up - the Ambleside Troutbeck is at the top of a steep hill that even after years of taking the Road Snail to the Highlands I still wouldn't fancy tacking with the 'van...)

Ambleside, like most places inside the Lake District National Park is mostly built from the local deep grey Cumbrian slate. On a cold drizzly afternoon in early January this architectural conformity does not in any way add to the gaiety of nations.  Something about the Glasshouse attracted us on that miserable winter afternoon and we were not disappointed. I recall an excellent meal, good service and a warm (in every sense of the word) welcome.

Also their bread, oil and balsamic vinegar is utterly irresistible.

This time around we were ushered  to a table on the first floor, with a rather nice view out onto the famous  Bridge House (about which, more later) and began to peruse the menu. We found it relatively unchanged from our last visit, and with the kind of reckless "let's try it and see" abandon that regular readers of this blog will have come to expect from me I did what I always do and plumped for a cheeseburger with bacon. (I always go for bacon when it's an option because, well, it's bacon, and bacon is awesome...)

Mrs Snail, who is rather more discerning in such matters actually read the menu and selected a chicken salad sandwich on focaccia bread with spring onion mayo. We sat back in the dazzling sunshine that streamed through the window and waited for the food to arrive while we inspected some of the artwork displayed on the wall.  I can't remember when restaurants started displaying artwork for sale on their walls - perhaps they always did and I only started noticing recently - but it makes sense, although I'd have to say the oil paintings displayed near our table were hideously over priced...

Anyway. I'm no art critic, so let's get back to the point.

The food duly arrived. My burger was fat and juicy in a bun stuffed with lettuce and tomato. The cheese was tangy, the bacon was perfectly cooked (and believe me when I say I'm really fussy about bacon) and the chips were deliciously crisp, thick and golden. All as expected - the burgers are always good at the Glasshouse. What I hadn't been expecting was the pot of Aioli that came along with it. I don't remember that from my last visit - the Glasshouse always seems to give just a little more each time. I'm going to guess that the Aioli was made on site, because I simply don't believe that you can buy it that strong - you could actually see the little bits of crushed garlic in there - it was awesome! I love garlic and having something this powerful to dip my chips in was the unctuous garlicy icing on the cake.

I pronounce myself to have been happy, happy, happy.

Mrs Snail's chicken sandwich was every bit as impressive - at least initially.

For a start, it was huge! I mean we didn't measure it or anything, but I reckon that focaccia rectangle it must've been about ten inches by six inches. That's a lot of sandwich. Inside were thickly sliced slabs of roasted chicken and plenty of salad. It all looked fantastic, but was pronounced to be merely "OK" by Mrs Snail, who was somewhat disappointed by the spring onion mayo which in her opinion was rather light on the spring onion. Given the punch packed by my Aioli this was quite surprising, but there you go...

Personally I was stuffed, but Mrs Snail was determined to have a desert because she remembered how good the Raspberry Creme Brulee was. She was right. While I sipped an excellent Latte she cracked open the amber gold sugar glazing covering a richly vanilla custard that sat atop a wonderfully sharp mush of raspberries at the bottom. This was declared to be "fabulous" - which coming from Mrs Snail is praise indeed as she's something of a brulee connoisseur.

I love the Glasshouse. The service is friendly, the location is fantastic, the food is brilliant, what more could you wish for at lunchtime?

Wastwater to Ambleside - a view to a drive...

Just up the road from Ravenglass on the A595 is the turning for Wasdale Head and Wastwater. In 2007 viewers of ITV declared that this was the finest view in England and since it was a nice day we decided we'd take a look. The roads were gloriously narrow and twisty - and in places narrowed still further by drifts of still unmelted snow. It might well have been the beginning of April, but the temperature was still a degree below freezing and the snow that had fallen in that part of Cumbria in the previous couple of weeks had been unusually heavy.

We twisted our way towards the end of the lake, and were frankly beginning to wonder if we were on the right road when suddenly, just past the Youth Hostel, we rounded a corner and the magnificent sheet of deep blue water revealed itself to us.

The lake is very nearly three miles long, and at 79 metres is the deepest lake in England. Apparently once upon a time there was a little garden full of gnomes, complete with picket fence on the lake bed to give sub-aqua enthusiasts something to look at while they were down there. After a number of fatalities however, the relevant authorities had it removed. Rumours persist that in fact all that happened was that somebody moved the whole thing deeper into the lake, below the 50 metre limit beyond which the Police divers tasked with the garden's removal are not legally permitted to dive.

Part of me is quite prepared to believe this - I know a few diving enthusiasts and they can be, to put it mildly, right little scamps. However, I'm also aquainted with a couple of police divers. They're very good at what they do, and take a very dim view indeed of people doing things that encourage the taking of unnecessary risks underwater - generally they're the one who have to go and recover the bodies, apart from anything else. I strongly suspect that if the Police Diving unit really believed that the garden had been placed below their legal limit, they'd have gone back when they were off duty and made sure it was truly gone.

Still, it's a nice story.

We continued down the valley towards Wasdale Head, actually a little way beyond the end of the lake itself. There's not much there, but it is a good place to take in the great hills that surround it - Great Gable and Scafell Pike. On a warmer day, with perhaps less snow, I might've had a wander up one of them - the views would have been spectacular on such a clear day - but I didn't fancy trudging through the snow that was still clinging not just to the peaks, but most of the major routes up.

Oh alright, I was also feeling pretty lazy. Besides, we had plans for the afternoon, and the the morning was nearly over.

So, we pointed the car towards the top of Eskdale and headed for the Hardnott Pass, Wrynose, Langdale and Ambleside, that much loved, over visited, tourist choked honey trap at the heart of the Lake District. Except, presumably as a result of still uncleared snowfall - although the "ROAD AHEAD CLOSED" sign was rather lacking in ancillary detail - the Hardnott pass was closed. This led us to follow a somewhat random route through the little village of Ulpha, over some rather spectacular hills and finally approaching Ambleside via Coniston.

It was somewhat convoluted, but actually rather fun. There were times when the road ran through cuttings in snowdrifts that were taller than the car - and our car is taller than average - and the road gave the impression that we were level with the high peaks we could see in the distance. I'd love to tell you which road we were on, but we'd given up on the map and the TomTom satnav unit that came with the car (as tow jockeys we have little time for Satnav - for reasons we may go into at a later date - and would certainly never have got the thing if it hadn't been built in) rather unhelpfully told us we were driving along an "unnamed road".

Still, we eventually made it to the heaving metropolis that is downtown Ambleside and headed through the traditional traffic jam (Ambleside really wasn't built to deal with thousands of modern tourists  in hundreds of cars, and accordingly just doesn't) for the main car park, opposite what used to be the Charlotte Mason College, and is now something to do with the NHS. It's a large pay and display car park with a few hundred spaces. However, it was also a bright, sunny day in the middle of the Easter holidays, and predictably it was full to bursting. There were no free spaces, and about a dozen other cars prowling around waiting to spring if a space became available.

I'm an impatient sort of chap and was ready to give in and seek parking elsewhere (not sure where I thought we'd go - Ambleside is not overly blessed with parking spaces) but Mrs Snail reminded me that this is a car park which always rewards patience. Sure enough less than five minutes had passed before we spotted illuminated brake lights on a vehicle parked a few rows ahead of us. Since we knew the car had not recently arrived, brake lights meant only one thing - it was getting ready to depart! With a joyful cry we accelerated forwards and swung neatly into the spot just as the Land Rover Discovery pulled out of it. Perfect.

So, there we were. After a significantly longer drive than we'd anticipated, and much later than we'd planned, we were parked up in Ambleside - tourism capital of the Lakes. It was gone lunchtime and most certainly a long time since breakfast. We were starving and desperate for some decent food. Fortunately, we know the town well and knew that in Ambleside a decent meal is never far away - about which, more next time!

Ravenglass - Romans and Railways

Ravenglass is a small village perched precariously between the mountains of the western Lake District and the Irish Sea. Once, a very long time ago it was a very important place but these days you'd be hard pressed to call it a backwater. In truth it's little more now that a handful of houses and a train station - which for the likes of me and Mrs Snail is the essence of its attraction.

The village dates back to the Romans, who maintained a naval base here in what was - at the time - the large sheltered harbour at the mouth of the River Esk. Evidence for the Romano-British presence is still easily visible; our pitch, on the Ravenglass Camping and Caravanning Club site, was within five minutes walk of a reasonably well preserved Roman Bath House and a slightly less obvious Roman fort.  In the years since the legions left, the importance of the port began to diminish, as the Esk slowly but steadily washed silt down from the hills and the harbour silted up. These days there are only a handful of small boats calling Ravenglass home and most of these seemed to spend most of the time we were there resting forlornly on sand banks some way from the water.

Still, I wouldn't want you to get the impression that the place is in any way forlorn or forgotten - because it isn't. In fact, it's rather beautiful, and in spite of its "off the beaten track" location in the far west of the Lake District, far from the crowded stomping grounds of Ambleside and Windermere, there is a huge amount to do here. 

There is the previously mentioned Roman fort and bath house - both of which can be visited at any time, and a few minutes walk further on from there stands Muncaster Castle. Still the home of the Pennington family, who began work on the place in 1208, the castle stands on Roman foundations and is purportedly haunted. Reading the leaflet and perusing the website, we got the impression that this was a smaller scale, more intimate version of Warwick Castle. Had we been around the area longer we would probably have gone and checked it out, but for now it remains on our "to do next time we're in the area" list.

One Ravenglass attraction we couldn't resist, however, was the brilliant Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway also known as "La'al Ratty".  This charming little Railway was originally opened with a full sized three foot gauge track all the way back in 1875 (on 24th, as the website helpfully points out, although the first passenger were apparently not carried until that November, because the line was actually intended to bring Iron Ore from workings near Boot at the top of the valley down to the coast) and, it must be said, things did not initially go well.

It turns out that there wasn't all that much iron ore to be had there, and the line was declared bankrupt as early as 1877 - although it staggered on into the early twentieth century, finally closing in 1913. All was not lost, however. In 1915 the line was purchased by two narrow gauge railway engineers who wanted to test their pocket sized locomotives under the testing conditions provided by the journey up Eskdale. I presume they had business reasons for doing this and they weren't just pursuing their giant train set fantasies in the middle of the Great War. Whatever, by 1917 their narrow gauge tracks ran to the top of the line and the railway began to come back to life.

To cut a long story short, "stuff happened" and while the purely industrial side of the railway never really took off, the passenger services proved popular. Although there was a bit of a scare at the end of the fifties, the future of the line now seems secure - something I'm immensely pleased about because a ride on this little railway line is an excellent way to see Eskdale.

We walked to the Ravenglass Station from our pitch on the C&CC site - it's less than 500 yards - and bought our return tickets to the Dalegarth for Boot station at the top of the line. These are a seriously good deal, let me tell you. For a mere £12.80 an adult can ride up and down the line all day, hopping on and off as you please. By virtue of staying at the C&CC site was also qualified for a 10% discount - and if that wasn't enough we were also presented with a 50% off voucher for the Ullswater Steamers, which we didn't get a change to use on this trip out, but it's valid for a full year, so we'll doubtless get around to it.

The little blue steam train "Wroxham Broad" (actually on loan from Bure Valley Railway Company) was waiting on Platform 3 with a collection of fully enclosed carriages - somewhat reminiscent of the type that used to be pulled by British Rail in the seventies, only much much smaller, some semi open carriages, which had a roof but no doors or windows, and one fully open carriage. Now. This was Easter Monday 2013. It was -2 degrees. Clearly we went for the fully open carriage.

What? Look, we were on holiday and tourists are the only tribe of people who will willingly pay full price for a train ticket and then choose to travel third class because "it's a more authentic experience". It might have been cold, but we were equipped with hats and coats, and after what had felt like fourteen or fifteen months trapped below relentlessly overcast skies there was no way we were going to sit indoors on a sunny day.

So we took our seats in the little carriage and as the very enthusiastic young Train Guard blew a blast on his whistle and the plucky little engine tooted its whistle in reply we chugged slowly out of the station on our voyage up the dale.

It might well have been the first day of April, but it was the first day of April after the coldest March since records began, so the hills that towered above us were still capped with snow. As the train sped up the wind chill increased and our faces - the only exposed skin we had - were stinging. Some warmth seemed to be offered by the plumes of steam belching forth from the engine. Logic tells me that we couldn't possibly have felt any heat from the rapidly dissipating cloud of steam, and I'm prepared to believe that it was entirely psychosomatic , but whether the benefits were real or imagined that fluffy cloud of water vapour was a powerful comfort on a cold day.

It took about forty minutes to reach the top of the line, travelling through some spectacular countryside with truly unique views across Eskdale. We got to the top of the line, watched the engine turn around on a very simple human powered turntable, sat for a bit basking in the sun, then headed back down the line. That was it really. It doesn't sound like much perhaps, but I can honestly say that it was one of the most enjoyable mornings I've spent in a while. Should you ever find yourself in the area I heartily recommend it.

Food, glorious food!

Whenever I talk about caravan living with people who don't indulge in the pleasures of a life well towed, there are two things that always come up.

The first is toilets - either chemical or of the "toilet block" variety. I freely acknowledge my own dislike of toilet/shower blocks and I seldom use them, although this is more to do with my own anti-social tendencies than any worry about cleanliness. Indeed, particularly on site operated by the two big clubs the facilities are generally spotless, comfortable and rather nicer than my own bathroom at home. It's just that I have a toilet and a shower in my caravan, both of which are significantly nicer than the ones in my first house. Why on earth would I want to share?

I equally will freely acknowledge that chemical toilets are a little bit strange if you let yourself think about it too much, and there is most certainly something rather eccentric about walking across a field carrying a box full of your own poo. Although this is, on reflection, not really any stranger than walking across a field carrying a little bag full of your dog's poo...

Anyway, however proud I might of fixing the flush mechanism of our Thetford unit without any help from anybody who actually knew what they were doing, I don't really want to talk about toilets. The other thing people usually comment on is the food. "All you can cook is sausages and beans" is one of the more common views expressed.  Indeed, it's not just non-towers who have this attitude. There was a letter in the Caravan Club Magazine a year or so ago which questioned the need for an oven in a caravan, arguing that such an appliance was a waste of storage space because "surely nobody uses it".

Regular readers might well remember that I had a conversation along these lines with Mick, co-proprietor of the Peak Weavers, a fabulous restaurant and guest house in the fine Staffordshire town of Leek.  I said then that I'd be coming back to the issue of caravan food, and now seems to be as good a time as any. Because I can tell you that some people use the oven in the 'van because we hardly ever turn the damn thing off!

As a kid I went on caravan holidays with my parents and my big sister in a caravan initially designed as a terribly, terribly small three berth which my dad gutted and turned into a four berth. There wasn't room to swing a microbe, let alone a cat. But my mother - who I think will forgive me if I describe her as "not really a foodie" turned out meals made with real food that hardly ever came out of a tin. And this was in the seventies and early eighties, when the range of fresh vegetables currently available in even the smallest supermarkets was basically unheard of.

When I was eventually persuaded to become a tow jockey I was determined that tins would also be a last resort in our 'van too. Canned food is useful as a standby, but let's be honest, it's not as good as real food.  It's only advantage is its shelf life, and unless you're planning a very long trip in Outer Mongolia, that's hardly going to be an issue. For a start, gammon joints have outrageously long shelf lives - a handy trait when you're planning to be a long way from a shop for a couple of weeks. There's something very comforting about a steaming plate of roast gammon and cauliflower cheese on a cold evening. Chuck in some dauphinoise potatoes and you've got what amounts to a big hug on a plate.

It's not a difficult thing to do in a caravan, it really isn't. Most of the prep is just chopping things and putting them in an oven proof dish - with maybe a bit of par-boiling to speed things up. Then it just goes into the oven while you're doing something else.

It's not just comfort food mind you. Cut some chicken breasts into more or less bite-sized chunks and fry them until they're cooked through. Splash on a good glug of balsamic vinegar (we always used to carefully measure out a table spoon, but who wants to faff about measuring stuff on holiday?) then the juice of an orange, about half a chicken stock cube and some fresh rosemary. (Dried might well do as well, although we've never tried it.) Reduce that down until the sauce has thickened up a bit and gone slightly sticky, and you're done. We tend to serve it with fried potatoes and whatever green vegetable we've managed to get our hands on.

Or, place some fresh sage leaves onto whole chicken breasts, wrap the chicken and sage up in either bacon or Parma Ham and fry - preferably in butter. A minute or two before they're ready glug in a couple of tablespoons of white wine and let it deglaze the pan and evaporate down into a bit of a sauce.

All in all, food like that isn't really a lot more hassle than making sausages and beans - it just takes more forward planning. Unless you're in the middle of nowhere you shouldn't be too far from a shop that can furnish you with basics like chicken, potatoes and vegetables. Fresh herbs can be more of an issue, so we always take some rosemary and sage with us - remembering to cut some from the garden is generally one of Mrs Snail's final jobs before setting off, because there's no way I'd remember. Whack it in the fridge and it's usable for about a week.

You also need to be canny about your cooking kit. We travel with two saucepans (one large one small), two frying pans (one large one small), a small casserole dish and two baking trays. Given that, in spite of having three rings on the hob you can only really fit one pan at a time on there it doesn't seem sensible to carry more, and it seems to serve our needs well.

We do also carry a selection of enamelled metal bowls, of the white and blue type so favoured by the campers of yesteryear, because they're so massively useful. They're light, pretty much unbreakable and oven-proof, which means that they can be used to roast potatoes in the oven and then take them to the table without dirtying another dish. Because the last thing you want to do in a caravan is create extra washing up. It takes up space, for a start, and besides - you're on holiday, washing up needs to be kept to a minimum!

That's not hard either though. If we've used a saucepan to parboil potatoes prior to roasting, then that's the pan that's going to be used to boil any of the other vegetables we're having with the meal. If we're planning a picnic for the following day, then that same pan is going to hard boil some eggs too before it gets a proper wash. If I've* fried bacon for breakfast**then that pan is getting covered up and saved for frying something else later, because everything tastes better when fried in bacon fat.

Except probably ice-cream. I've never been able to make that work...

So. What was my point?

Ah yes.

Cooking in the caravan is not limited by the facilities. I can't think of anything that I cook in my kitchen at home that I can't cook in the caravan. Sure, there's less space in the caravan so you need to be tidier, and you need to plan ahead a little bit more. But to be honest that planning ahead is part of the anticipation for me. In the end there is no place I want to go to if I can't eat a really good meal when I get there. For me a holiday eating nothing but sausages and beans is more of a chore than a joy - and where is the fun in chores?

*Notice most of the time in this post I've said "we". Me and Mrs Snail share cooking duties most of the time. But what we've come to call the "Caravan Breakfast" of bacon, egg, fried bread, tomatoes and (occasionally) mushrooms is my domain.

**And of course I've fried bacon for breakfast. We're on holiday! If you can't at least have a bacon sarnie for breakfast, what on Earth are Holidays for?!