G. Morris & Sons

This week with the Führer and the Walk Master away in France, José stepped into the breach to lead the ten pie munchers on a 6½ mile walk from Shropham to Great Hockham and back, before sampling medium pies from G. Morris & Sons. Parking by the parish church of Shropham, we followed Low Road a short distance before heading south by footpath, to complete one side of this rectangular walk. While walking on quiet roads, we passed by a house where Maisie, a rather skinny Pointer, came out to greet us. We then returned to footpaths to continue the journey west passing horses and woods. A quiet road then led us north to the village of Great Hockham. We left the village centre to visit the locked church of the Holy Trinity, with no scratch dial. Here we had our sandwiches at 4.2 miles and afterwards returned to the village and the Eagle public house. We were refreshed with pints of Old Speckled Hen and Adnams. After a good rest, we roused our leader and headed east back to Shropham, initially by road, purchasing herbs and Chilli products, and then finally via footpaths. Towards the end of the walk, José pretended he was lost - but he didn't fool us! We were soon out of the dead-end that he had taken us to and back on the devised route. A short walk north along Church Road reunited us with the cars. We then explored the church of St. Peter, again locked, finding a scratch dial on a buttress - a new one for the collection. After the girls had rested, tea was taken in the churchyard along with prawns and chilli sauce purchased on route. The two medium pies were sliced releasing very little aroma. The pies lacked jelly and while enjoyable, nothing special. Mustard did enhance them and they achieved a respectable score of 6.95 with a standard deviation of 0.59861. Oaties replaced the traditional Shortbreads to conclude proceedings. G. Morris & Sons scoring a normalised score of 7 this time, compared with their previous score of 6.5 on their last outing on September the 6^th 2009.

Banham’s of Gloucester Street

I was back for the second tasting session after the wombling good walk around Great Hockam, finding quite a few cans along the way. Stopping at the Eagle public house where they didn’t allow the dogs in, their outside bin yielded another ten cans. As we got back to Great Hockam Forrest the can collecting notched up a couple of gears, filling the first carrier bag and requiring a second. Don also found a car battery – luckily for Don this was near to the end of the walk and had a carrying handle. We were well served for the pie tasting by the provision of a picnic table. The pies this week were small pork pies with a good appearance from Banham’s the butcher in Gloucester Street. The pastry was very good and the greyish filling did the business but not exceptional giving an average score of 7.88888 with a standard deviation of 0.65085, so that’s a normalised 8 for Banham’s.