A 2lb monster pie from Archers was our penultimate pie of the month, this was still warm when purchased on Friday and with the high meat to crust ratio, I had high hopes of this pie. We headed to Ludham to sample this pie, first visiting Ludham church then walking away from
the water tower, a stroll along a lane with baby ducks by a pond,
very pleasant. However, Ricky has a surprise for us – he’d pulled another extreme walk out of the bag! We were to walk along the riverbank to St. Benet’s Abbey – the footpath was on the other side of the river! Our route was two and a half miles through waste-high grass and stinging nettles on very rough ground in a gale force wind. After almost a mile of this, an alternative route that went along the side of a field was followed. It had been hard going, so much so that Giada had to go swimming several times to cool off. From St. Benet’s Abbey we followed footpaths to the King’s Arms for a well-earned pre pie pint. A short drive to Ludham village hall to sample the pie, but first instead of Canapés, Charles presented a Pancetta & Gruyère Flamé and a Polenta Cake. Then this weeks huge pie, similar in appearance to Mrs. King’s. This pie had a very tasty and crisp pie crust, but unfortunately lacked jelly and flavour, needing more seasoning, so this pie came in with a respectable, but not prize winning 7.1666 with quite a high standard deviation of 0.71774. So that’s a normalised score of 7 for Archers, a repeat of their scores from Reedham on 21/10/07 and West Harling Heath on 17/2/08 for their smaller pies. Just in case we were still hungry, Ricky brought out some Shortbread!
The mighty two pounder from Archers
The coplete feast: Pancetta & Gruyère Flamé, Polenta Cake, Pie and Shortbread
Ginsters pies made their debut with the pie munchers on the first Sunday of June. A clockwise walk around Ludham water tower would ready our palates. Parking at Ludham Village hall we headed north to Catfield, along footpaths to All Saints church, Catfield where we had lunch at two and a half miles. The church provided us with shelter from a shower that had just started 
and also provided scratch dial #150 for our collection. A swift half-mile walk, in light rain, to the welcoming Crown Inn public house, with a splendid map showing U-boats sunk in WWII, for a pint of Humpty Dumpty. Here the Pie Master bumped into an ex-work colleague, “Agent Perez”! Donning waterproofs all, the munchers headed south via roads and tracks to walk yards away from the 1980 wineglass style water tower. We finally joined the A1062 Yarmouth Road with cyclists streaming by, all taking part in the Norfolk 100-mile cycle event. We returned to the village hall, where the Bowling Green had been left unlocked, enabling us to utilise the table and sofa under the veranda for the partaking of tea and pie. No canapés today as Kink Canape was dining at the Artichoke in Broome. Cutting the pie revealed a pink meat filling that was pleasing to the eye, other than the fact that it had only the merest hint of jelly. Munching the pie revealed a pleasant crust and an under spiced meat filling. The scores resulted in an average of 6.1 with a standard deviation of 1.14018. So a normalised score of 6 for Ginsters of Cornwall.
