A. H. Butler & Son

The pie munchers ventured over the border to Yaxley in Suffolk to sample a foreign pie from over another border: pies from A. H. Butler & Son of March, Cambridgeshire. Sourced when the Pie Master was at “ Ear Ache”. Parking at the village hall, where later a fete would be held, 13 munchers and a conchie set off on a 6-mile appetiser, first visiting St. Mary’s church, Yaxley with an interesting grave stone and a gem of a scratch dial, with half hour graduations! After a few yards along a road, we followed footpaths eastwards, south, then west for about three and a third miles before a short walk along roads to St. Mary’s Thornham Parva. This small church without a porch, was our lunch stop at just shy of four miles. The church had no scratch dials that we could find, and when everyone had been corralled, we headed north, then east and north again to reach Yaxley. Then despair! As we approached the Cherry Tree – it was closed. Then, carefully reading the sign outside, we found that the pub had relocated to the village hall to support the fete. Returning to the cars, the fete was underway with tug-o-war taking place. The bar was open, selling Adnams Bitter and Mauldons Mid Summer Gold – a pint of this in the hot sunshine could go to your head! After purchasing a cake we retired to the cars for cups of tea and King prawns with a Marie Rose Sauce. Then the two large pies from March: a reasonable appearance and when cut yielded a pleasant aroma and revealed a nice amount of jelly. This found favour with the pie munchers coming in with a score of 8.34615 with a standard deviation of 0.98710. Don then produced a second pie that when sliced revealed a bright pink filling with plenty of seasoning but no jelly. Only some of the munchers sampled this as some had been tucking into the tasty cake and thought their palates were no longer fit for objective tasting. This pie from the King’s Head in Magdalen Street, Norwich scored 7.58333 with a small standard deviation of only 0.37639. So A. H. Butler scored a normalised 8.5 and the King’s Head a normalised 7.5.

      A. H. Butler & Son pies                         remains of the King’s Head pie

All that remained was to have a group photograph of the massed munchers.

Large Vale of Mowbray pie

The final pie to be sampled this month was a large Vale of Mowbray pie – after a confused start! Eventually, about half the pie munchers set off for Flordon with no tea ladies or tea! To get ourselves in prime pie munching condition, we set off on our designated route, once we eventually established exactly where on the route we were! From Flordon, we headed south down the Upper Tas Valley Walk to Hapton and the church of St. Margaret. This was locked and we didn’t spot the scratch dial we photographed when we visited in June of last year. We then headed west towards Fundenhall where we all got involved in harvesting the abundant supply of fungi for Charles. St. Nicholas church was closed so not investigated. Heading north to Ashwellthorpe, we made a little diversion into the village to have lunch in the porch of All Saints church. This not only provided a lunch location but a new scratch dial for the collection. This church too was locked. We then headed east where our attention switched from collecting fungi to collecting cans for Don. We made a short diversion down the B1113 for a rather poor pint of Wherry at the Kings Head. Resuming our can collecting, we continued our walk back to the car at Flordon. We ended our walk with a carrier bag full of cans and a good haul of fungi plus a new scratch dial. We then commenced the tea-less tasting, first nairn’s mini oatcakes with Waitrose supreme houmous and their supreme red pepper & feta dip. Don then produced a large Vale of Mowbray pie sourced from the Co-op, we had sampled small Vale of Mowbray pies in North Walsham back in March where they did not fare well. This pie when cut revealed a pleasing pink filling with a little jelly. The piecrust was OK, the filling odourless but having an OK flavour, slightly salt and enhanced by the application of mustard. The average score of 7.25 gets ‘normalised’ to 7.5, the standard deviation was of 0.28868 and completes this months pie tasting.

R T Harvey Ltd

Today we had another gamey pork pie from R T Harvey Ltd. Our pre-pie walk started at the church in Ormesby St. Michael, that boasted a scratch dial. From here we walked via Ormesby St. Margaret, where the church there also had a scratch dial, to the King's Head for Birthday beers. Returning to Ormesby St. Michael, we had canapés and champagne (supplied by Josie), pork pie, judged to score a normalised 7.5 (the same score as it received on the 17th of December at Gunton) followed by birthday cake! Meanwhile Don had gone into the church yard to let off a few celebratory fireworks!!! Is it any wonder I can't recall too much detail about the pie!

Scratch dial at Ormesby St. Michael                        Scratch dial at Ormesby St. Margaret