Christmas Pies

What do pie munchers do at Christmas? Munch pies of course! Josie had provided festive pies from the pie emporium at Bakers & Larners. Just as on other weeks of the year, we could not sample the pies until we had gone for our stroll around the countryside. Starting from the Victorian St. Peter's church at Haveringland, with it's round Norman tower, we headed westwards across the old wartime, Swannington aerodrome to St. Nicholas church at Brandiston. On past Guton Hall and Little Witchingham Hall to Ketts Lane – Robert Kett was captured in Swannington after the rebellion. We passed the lumpy bumpy yew hedging of the 1675 Swannington Manor as we approached our lunch stop, the church porch of St.Magaret. After recoding the church's fine scratch dial and eating our sandwiches we headed east, past Swannington Hall (scene of many Bystander parties, hosted by Bob Wyles, in the 60's). We continued passing fields of pie filling, before returning to the cars. No pub on the route this week, but our Walk Master soon got us into the festive spirit, producing a “bar in a car”,

to provide a tipple to go with mushroom quiches. Two types of “novelty” pork pies this week: Pork pies with Leeks and Stilton and Pork Pies with Smoked Lancashire cheese and piccalilli both from Lune Valley Real Foods – Yummy! No scores as these were just festive foray into non-mainstream porkie delights. Shortcakes completed proceedings.

Pork pies with Leeks and Stilton and Pies with Smoked Lanc. cheese & piccalilli

Bakers & Larners

Balloons were out to greet us at our chosen location to sample Bakers & Larners medium hand raised pies at North Creake village hall. We parked here and as we headed westwards on our pie enhancing walk, we noted large flocks of geese heading for the coast. Later we stopped at St. Mary's Abbey (1205-1504), first inspecting the craft centre, where we briefly misplaced Gill, then on to the abbey ruins for our lunch break. Large numbers of Bishy-barney-bees, both red with black spots, and black with large red spots, were sunning themselves on the stonewalls. After lunch we sampled a pint of Wherry at the Jolly Farmers and then had a look round St. Mary's Church, that boasted a splendid font cover and as well as a large table of preserves on sale. The church had no scratch dial, but a large sundial high on the tower and more Bishy-barney-bees in the sun. We returned to the village hall for Smoked Salmon Tsar Slices with Soy & Honey dip and Wasabi, followed by the Bakers & Larners pies. A good glossy exterior revealed a coarse filling. The pies were very tasty and the pastry good. Don’s special mustard, though very nice in itself, did not enhance this pie. This quality pie came in with a healthy sore of 8.35714, with a standard deviation of 0.69007. So a normalized sore of 8.5 for Bakers & Larners, equalling their score when we last sampled them at Baconsthorpe on the 4th February 2007. We finished off with Shortbread to conclude proceedings.

Bakers and Larners

Bakers and Larners of Holt provided the pork pie this Sunday. It was tasted following a walk from Baconsthorpe near by. The pie had a very good appearance and was very tasty scoring a normalised 8.5 - stealing the title of "Pie of the year" from Walkers fluted pie, last week.

The 1950's, 200,000 gallon water tower at Baconsthorpe, note unusual octagonal windows