Hewitt's, Mattishall

Yet another new pie to sample on our second week of June! Our Walk Master & Weather Wizard took us to Sheringham Park to enjoy the Rhododendrons in bloom and the cool sea breeze this hot Sunday. Parking at Beeston Regis where a car boot sale was in progress and parking was at a premium, we headed south to Sheringwood eventually ending up in the park and walking paths we had not previously used. The assembled elected not to climb the viewing platform “Gazebo” and Ricky didn’t enforce a march to the top and an abseil down! I ventured half way up the platform to spot the Sheringham Park water tower after a tip off. Venturing through the Rhododendrons to the tower, I managed to photograph it with a wide-angle lens – another one for the collection. We returned to Sheringham along the beach for a relaxed pint at the Lobster before tackling the 3/4 of a mile route back to the pork pies. This week we were sampling small hand raised pork pies from Hewitt's of church plain, Mattishall. A crisp pastry enclosed a very tasty, not overly spiced, smoothish meat filling that pleased, resulting in a score of 8.7 and a standard deviation of 0.44721, so that’s a normalised 8.5 for Hewitt's smalls.

Jarrold’s deli and Brays

The second Sunday we sampled an old favourite: Jarrold’s deli Pork Pie – last sampled on the 29th October 2006 when it scored a healthy 8.5 with a standard deviation of only 0.5. Had the quality been maintained or have our taste buds become more discerning? We hossed out to Holkham, to hopefully see the Geese migration and because there wouldn’t be too many people about... Wrong! There were hoards of people enjoying the good weather. We thought there were a lot of dogs on our last walk – this week there were 100’s on the beach! Our stroll along the beach took us to the Globe, in Wells next-the Sea for a pint of Wherry, we then came back for pie tasting inland... A horrendous noise then started at the car park – I was worried that we would not be able to concentrate on the pie scores. Eventually the noise increased and a Sea King Helicopter rose from behind the trees and then left us in peace. So, had Jarrold’s produced the goods? The pie had good hand raised appearance and a firm smooth filling with pleasant aroma. It tasted good too... scoring 8.28571, so a normalised 8.5 and a standard deviation of 0.48795 – the quality had been maintained. Paul then produced two Brays pork pies – completely different in appearance being similar in shape to an overgrown mince pie. Internally to, the filling of Saddleback rare breed pigs had a pleasant course texture rather than the smooth filling. A good pie, slightly gamy with an onion marmalade complementing the meat. This pie didn’t score quite so highly coming in with very respectable 7.33333 and standard deviation of 0.40825. So, that’s a normalised 7.5 for Brays this time. This pie featured in the first PPN when we sampled it in Sheringham Park mid walk on the 8th July, then it scored 8.5625 with a standard deviation of 0.6781, previously it had scored 8.16667 with a 0.25 standard deviation when we sampled them in Binham on the 22nd April 2006. No water towers on this weeks walk but we did see an incredible eight towers from the car!

Brays

The first pie consumed in July, on the 8th, was the wonderfully Gamy Brays pork pie, that Paul produced in Sheringham Park mid walk, made from Saddleback rare breed pigs with a touch of onion marmalade, this scored a very welcome 8.5625 with a standard deviation of 0.678101341 - so that's a normalised 8.5 for Brays. We had consumed a Brays pork pie in Binham on the 22nd April where it scored a normalised 8 - we're developing a taste for them...