Fig Rolls at Trunch

No pies for the Munchers this week: Friday evening, the Walk Master and Weather Wizard called a walk on Saturday, in order to miss the forecast bad weather on the Sunday. We headed to Trunch, parking at the Village Hall, with its fine chimney. From here we walked west passing St. Botolph’s church on our right. After passing through the village we headed north by footpath before heading further west, passing Howard’s Close. We then made our way north to Gimingham, passing sheep being rounded up, before getting on the Paston Way. On reaching Heath Lane we then followed it east to central Gimingham, and turned south to eat our sandwiches in the porch of All Saints church with its single scratch dial, previously recorded. Post lunch, we continued south a little way before heading west to Hall Farm, to complete the first loop of the figure of 8 walk. Now it was a zigzag route in a southeasterly direction to Trunch church. Having visited several times before, and recording its scratch dial, we just walked through the grounds to the Crown. Here we enjoyed pints of Batemans G.H.A. – a very good brew. We left the warmth of the pub to walk the short distance to the cars for a cup of tea. We had only a few spots of light rain, but it had been very bracing! The Pie Master did not have time to get a pie and we didn’t pass any butchers, so we had to make do with Fig rolls. We ended with the customary Shortbread.

Morrison in store bakery

We ventured into Suffolk for our pie tasting this week, parking at White House Farm, Wild Life Centre in Carlton Colville – this having the luxury of seats & tables at which to sample our pies. First, we headed east to Oulton Broad where Giada had a swim in the broad, before we headed west along the south side of the broad, where we watched a kestrel being harassed by a crow and a flock of eight swans in flight. Our lunch stop was at Share drainage mill where a family of swans were also dining. We crossed Share Marsh to visit the Crown at Carlton Colville, on the Lowestoft Road, but this had no real ale! We gave it a miss and continued back to cars, finding parasol mushrooms that Charles added to his fungus collection. Today’s delicacies were Edamame bean, artichoke & lemon pesto Tortilla and Chilli & coriander King Prawns. Next, our pies from Wm Morrison in store bakery, these were small pies baked in foil cups. They had a good appearance and slicing revealed there was no jelly and a rather suspect pink filling. The pastry tasted good but there was no taste or any real texture to the filling, resulting in a poor score of 5.09091 with a standard deviation of 1.64040. Finally, we had Shortbread to accompany any remaining tea. So a normalised 5.0 for Morrison in store bakery. Following a “Yellow Stainer” demonstration, we headed for home calling in at the George & Dragon at Thurton for a pint of “Mad Bob” – a very pleasant pint at 3.8% from the Nethergate Brewery.

   

Brays

No dogs and no scratch dials, despite visiting three churches on our pre-pie appetiser walk around Aldborough on the last Sunday of the month. We did find a wonderful welcoming pub: The Crown in Aldborough, it served a good pint of Wherry and had very comfortable seats – so comfortable Josie nodded off! Returning to the car for this month’s second sampling of Brays pork pies – Ricky had spotted a Deli in Norwich selling pork pies so purchased a brace. Sampling the pies this time, the onion marmalade didn’t feature so prominently, allowing the full flavour of the Saddleback to be enjoyed, scoring an 8.11111, so a normalised 8 with a standard deviation of 0.6. Following the canapés and pork pie tasting, we were treated to a lovely Ginger Birthday cake cooked by the Führer herself (we won’t ask what oven she used) to celebrate the Pie Masters forthcoming birthday – Thank you Margaret!

Walkers fluted pie

The pre pie amble on Sunday the 20th, started from Pulham Market and took us across ploughed fields of heavy clay to Pulham St. Mary. Despite visiting a brace of churches, scratch dials were as common as flying pigs! At least we ended up at the dog friendly Crown that served a good pint of Adnams, and had a Border Collie / Brown Labrador cross, pub dog who was very friendly. Following the beer and a walk across the road, we had our canapés and then the pie: The pie today was a Walkers fluted pie from the Deli at Waitrose, we had one of these (that time from Tesco’s Deli) almost a year ago – on the 28th January. This had a good aroma once sliced and a nice peppery after taste, scoring 7.3125 with quite a high standard deviation of 0.99777, so that’s a normalised 7.5 for Walkers fluted, previously it scored a normalised 8.