The Tao of Tash

The reasons why they are 3 storeys up whilst I am standing on the ground, describe the Croft dynamic perfectly. There are 4 boys almost constantly locked into some sort of competition. On Sunday morning we made the mistake of suggesting the group picture be taken outside the house, Tash, I think had a wonderful image of the family captured resplendent outside their country pile. Unfortunately there is the scaffolding, so in attempting the impossible (that is getting the 3 available boys and their partners outside with Mr and Mrs Croft at the same time) we got the usual dribble, drabble of people. Pete and Mark, stood outside for about a second and then disappeared up the scaffold, followed by Lucy and then Stephen, the youngest brother, who diagonally transversed up the building ignoring the ladders all together.

Sunday

Babington House

My God, it felt like we were in a music video, just full of beautiful stylish people, this image was helped by the random dance music that would fill the house at random times, why?, I don't know, but we are cool stylish people right, we don't ask questions, we just, you know, hang out, be groovy and won't ask why all the doors and windows are open (brrrrrrrr refreshing, hmm, I think not) . It had atmosphere and was very friendly, we struck up several conversations at the bar despite Mark's rule number 14B; Don't ever talk to strangers, they may want to talk back and then you'll most probably be stuck with them for the rest of the evening.

(14A by the way is; Don't make the mistake of thinking that you will save drying time on a pair of jeans by putting a hot air gun in them, it won't they will just catch fire right! - these rules may not have an order, but they are mighty useful).

As we were being part of the bourgeois classes we both had our first Bloody Mary's and it was a magnificent affair, but in our true style, Tash loved it (and the smooth talking Barman) and I hated every drop (and tolerated said barman), but persevered never the less, because you just have to. Post beauty treatments, post dinner, post night, post breakfast, came the bill - oh my! coolness evidently comes at a price.

This is one of two hotels we are staying in run by the mother and daughter combo of the late Lord Forte, so they know a thing or two. Had II bothered with any research before leaving I would have remembered to pack my non-existent fishing rod, shotgun and plummy accent. This hotel has only been open for a month, so we were outnumbered in the dinning room by journalists from the New Yorker, Homes and Gardens, a table of, as far as I could work out, the landed gentry and a local restaurateur. Nice, but strangely plagued by flies, the hotel, not the guests by the way.

Tuesday - Wednesday

Rick Steins - St Edmunds House

This is England after all and as such we had been lucky with the weather so far. As the lady who showed us to our room commented "it rains a lot here, but you get used to it" . The rooms were very nice and the town has an odd one way system, which was useful for orientation as the restaurant/hotel is at the start, giving just enough time for Tash to utter "oh there it is" as we sailed passed on our second rotation.

On the second day because it was raining, we took a mini tour of Polperro and Charlestown. Charlestown is where the Tall Ships are docked, though not on Tuesday's apparently. My abiding memory of that town is that we had to pay £2 (park for the whole day only) for the pleasure of realising that without the majesty of the tall ships, Charlestown is a two berth dock with lots of signs telling you that 'only food purchased on the premises can be consumed in this area' , 'toilets are for patrons only' and 'You have been warned, display a valid parking ticket or you will be clamped, £50 release fee' - yeah, really nice place, very inviting, very friendly, NOT!
Polperro on the other hand, is a small town with some shops, a harbour and a funny name, but then again, that is hardly out of the ordinary down here.

Rick Stein's restaurant in the evening was a causal affair, but this being one of the main reasons for this trip, there was some anticipation involved here. Tash rose to the challenge and whilst I choose carefully, not wanting to go to bed for another night with a 'well stocked' stomach, she elected to have 'hot shellfish' for starters and lobster for main. Some of you sharp eyed readers will already be putting two and two together over this. Shellfish takes up a lot of table space, so as we waited she came to notice the large plates of what looked to be cousins of 'Alien' making their way to other tables, 'oh you don't think that is what I have ordered do you?' - this was an academic question from her to me as I had the chair facing the wall and the only way I could turn to see put me in direct eye contact with the gentleman behind us who's wife had gone for the 'jolly roger' (scarf) head gear. To everyone else it must of looked like they were sitting in 'Chemo corner'.

Half the contents of the sea floor arrived soon after at our table and Tash valiantly dove into it like the new seasons collection at Selfridges, I had expected to be more involved, but the 'Crab Master' broke, chomped and ignored the right amount of crustacean to make a handsome pile in the shell bowl........and then realised that her main was lobster and so would have to go through the same sort of cracking, poking scenario again....oh how I laughed over my truncheon (or a word similar to that) of Turbot, curiously covered in what looked like custard, but turned out to be Hollandaise Sauce.

Thursday - Friday

Tresanton

Next on the list was the hotel Tresanton, the older sister hotel to Endsleigh House. On the way there and sensing a rare break in the rain, we stopped off at the Eden Project. Now it is fair to say that I am not a gardener, or a big fan of flowers, unless I have done something wrong. But this was a very good place, my interest was initially sparked when we parked in the car park designated 'Plum 2' - snigger, snigger. Using the digital camera memory to the full I snapped away like a trooper, erasing those painful art school memories of being only limited to 24 film pictures, 22 of which were out of focus and the other two were of my finger. I am beginning to appreciate that I am becoming a photo geek.

The Hotel Tresanton is the kind of hotel that would turn up on Bergerac, if it were in Jersey, all white paint work with maritime blue edging, we were the youngest couple in residence by about 15 years, but for another young couple who spent the first evening's dinner looking like they were about to break up, that supplied us with a good level of dinner conversation, on this occasion I was facing the window so could see what was happening behind me in the reflection. Also Chemo Club had continued, with a twist this time, as one of the male patrons was sporting what I would describe as an extreme tea-cosy during lunch and dinner.

Our second day in St Mawes, was spent first in Truro, populated almost entirely by people with 11 fingers it would seem and after we escaped St Ives beckoned. St Ives is lovely and the visit was almost entirely punctuated by Tash exclaiming ' My, why has no one told me about all these lovely beaches' I pointed out that if she had asked the Cornish Tourist board they would have gladly told her, we then decided that they were not the sort of people that she would normally associate with, so that was why she didn't know.

My Pirate accent made a brief but certainly over used appearance after St Ives as we made out way down to Lands End, it was too much to resist pointing out 'aye, there be the last post office/fish mongers/pub/petrol station/right hand bend/sheep/road sign/scary looking local that you be finding in England Jim lad' , oddly when we did come across the last post office, it was shut, as was the toilets and the shop and fortunately the car park attendance booth, so at least it didn't cost us anything to stand on the western most tip (which of course it isn't, but shhh don’t tell every one) of England and look out into the Atlantic for about 20 yards until things all got too foggy.

One the way home we used the quaint, sweet and slightly expensive King Harry Ferry, chain ferry to make out trip back to St Mawes quicker, all well and good until I strolled up to the viewing gallery and was greeted by the sight of two full sized cross channel ferries sitting in the estuary (left) - well I never!
That evening ended at 2am, after a monstrous drinking session with some of the other guests, as rule 14B suggests, I don't usually like to fraternise with other guests, perhaps after a week together we were starved of other people's company, so we met Fiona and Woody, PR maestros, who had relocated to Devon from London, this was about their 15th visit to Tresanton apparently, not a very creative holiday solution, but there you are;

Jilly and Mike, who as far as I could tell, owned most of the property in Devon and Cornwall and Nick and Lindsay, Nick being a London bar and club developer, who had brought Lindsay, a Californian hairdresser down on what we presumed to be, a leg over weekend, as she was travelling back to the US through the UK. Most of the evening was taken up laughing at Nick who either had worked out that no love love was going to be coming his way that evening or just simply couldn't keep his mouth shut as we got to hear all of the sly tricks that he had been playing on Lindsay all week to make her more, hmmm, pliable (these were mostly alcohol and curry related). She being a Septic, didn't pick up on any of this, despite sitting right next to him.

Saturday

The New Angel

Fitting my enormous hangover into the car, we headed off to Dartmouth via the very romantic sounding 'Lost Gardens of Heligan'. I am unsure how you would go about loosing a garden "Now I am sure that there was something outside the back door last night..." but happily they have found it again and have very generously opened it to us the lowly public.

It was at The New Angel that the wheels finally came off our wagon, as most of you are aware I balance up my carnivorous wife by not partaking of any land animals. This can be tricky on occasions and I am always impressed by how our friends accommodate this with ease. Eating out is a different proposition, I usually ignore those dishes whereby chicken stock or the like has been used, but up until last night had never encountered any real issues. The New Angel is a lovely place, very 'London' in style even though it's in Dartmouth. Typically I took the fish option whilst Tash took the Meat combo.

Looking back on the event I now realise that had I thought about it harder, I would have known that the restaurant is in fact a training ground for secret agents and even though the menu made no mention of the use of meat in either of my dishes, had I held the menu up over a steaming kettle I would have seen the words 'cooked with bacon' reveal themselves from the invisible ink in which it was written. To have it happen once was excusable, but when my main appeared the evening went down the pan. As it turned out the secret agent connection was limited as there were no secret passages to use to escape from this nightmare, so we politely complained and got a new meat free option.

The Maitre D's argument was that 'we can't list everything in the menu' was a bit odd considering that pork will manage to offend Pescetarians, Jews and Muslims alike, though I must be positive and be thankful that it was not ground glass.

Our little trip ended with a surprise visit to see my nephew who is at university in Exeter, it was the day before his 21st birthday, so my sister, her partner Jason and the Dean’s descended on him for lunch.