Spanish Delights

A dozen pie munchers set off to Tivetshall St. Margaret on an extremely hot day, to sample Spanish delicacies brought back by José Luis. It was a pre-arranged no pie day, much to the Fuhrer’s delight! But first we needed to work up an appetite. So, leaving the cars parked at the community centre we headed north, and then west to the church of St. Margaret, visited on previous walks. The church was undergoing remedial work and covered in scaffolding. Continuing east and enjoying the numerous gliders circling overhead and also a buzzard. We were to have crossed the railway line by footpath, but finding it so overgrown as to be impassable, we had to detour by road. On reaching Gissing Common, we headed south, spotting several dozen broken egg shells along the path. Passing by Gissing Manor we eventually reached the welcome shade afforded by St. Mary’s church, Gissing. Here we ate our sandwiches before enjoying its marvellous hammerbeam roof. Outside we found a fine example of a scratch dial to add to our collection. I also liked the cast iron “grave stone” in the churchyard. Having eaten and viewed the church, we made our way over the road to the Crown for pints of various styles of beer from Adnams, in excellent condition. Refreshed and after pausing to view a vintage Fordson tractor, parked in a local’s front garden, we set off on a revised route back to the cars. Having our way over the railway line blocked earlier, the Walk Master thought it prudent to make a change to the planned walk. The footpath chosen took us passed a field with horses that watched as we tried to find the route across a clearing with a ditch running through it. Eventually we found our path and after walking through woods, we ended up is someone’s back garden! The lady of the house said we’d been following deer tracks. She kindly took us back to the horses and directed us on to the footpath. Now about a mile slog east, in ever-increasing heat, drinking the remains of our now, hot water, we made it back to the cars for tea. José Luis laid out a fine spread on the picnic tables provided and we consumed these wonderful tastes of Spain in Spanish weather along with Rosemary bread, baked by Margaret. Having given the feast eleven out of ten, we then had our traditional Scottish Shortbreads after which we made our way home, with the car indicating an outside temperature of 27º C.

Henry Walker & Son

The final pies to be sampled this month were Leicestershire pork pies from Henry Walker & Son ­ "the pride of Leicestershire since 1824" but new to us. To get us chomping at the bit, our walk Master took us down to Pulham Market and the heavy clay soil of south Norfolk. Finally, after a Spanish walker gave up his struggle to put on his waterproof trousers, we set off, first south from the car park at the village hall, then westwards to cross the A140. Continuing westwards to Tivetshall St. Margaret, across ploughed fields where our boots picked up a vast amount of clay, made it feel we were walking with lead boots. After scraping the detritus from our boots, we made it to the isolated church of St. Margaret for lunch. Failing to find a scratch dial, we pressed on to Tivetshall St. Mary, to visit the Old Ram. The lure was such that we did not detour to examine the ruined church of St. Mary. Cleaning our boots best we could, on route to the pub, Charles spotted a gentleman cleaning his car with a broom attached to a hose and requested he give his boots the once over. He duly obliged, but Charles had to finish off. Arriving in good order at the pub, we were served with a decent pint, or hot chocolate for some. Crossing the A140 we returned to Pulham Market, meeting "Dill" ­ the friendly Border Collie / Brown Labrador cross from the Crown. Today we sampled King Prawns with a Marie Rose sauce, before sampling our pies. Since we had ten munchers and only three pies, samples were small. The lattice pies released no aroma when cut and revealed a pale pink filling with a slight amount jelly. It's the munching that matters, the pastry was good and crisp, the filling pleasant with a good meaty texture. The flavour was OK rather than special, the addition of a little mustard bought out the flavour a little more and they scored a respectable 7.15 out of 10. Opinions varied widely so a high standard deviation of 1.22588 accompanies the normalised score of 7 for Henry Walker & Son. Shortcakes completed proceedings before we headed home in the dark.