A Sunday Roast on Easter in the Cotswolds

The last time we were in London, we had tried to achieve Taylor's dream of enjoying a Sunday roast, a traditional British dish with roast meat, mashed potatoes, vegetables, and a Yorkshire pudding. Unfortunately, the pub in which we tried to eat said roast had abysmal service and after well over an hour with no food, we had to leave to make our entry time at Winter Wonderland. On this trip, though, Taylor would not be denied his roast--he booked a fancy Easter meal at Cowley Manor, a beautiful hotel in the Cotswolds.
  

 

The original manor was built in 1695, though the current buildings are only about 100 years old; it has 55 acres of grounds and a lovely garden. It was the first private home in England to use concrete and even had a spa complex--and most exciting to me, Lewis Carroll was allegedly inspired by his time there to write Alice in Wonderland (and the hotel has a subtle Alice and rabbit theme today).





 

    
Elowen is always excited to find a wish

 


 


 

 

Since everything is closed on Easter except restaurants, this post is mainly pictures and food. I wish I'd taken a picture of the menu, but I didn't, so while I remember what we ate was delicious, I don't recall exactly what it was other than the warm truffle gougeres.

 



    

I do remember that the cocktail was a "milk punch," which is made of clarified brandy with sugar, vanilla extract, and other spices. It was delicious and could have been dangerous if I'd let myself have several--it tasted like Christmas in the very best way.

    



  

I also learned that in England, they don't do an egg hunt with a bunch of little candy-stuffed egg--the kids get one GIANT egg that should take them days to eat, but Elowen had it finished in 24 hours. She was VERY pleased with it.

 


And for lack of somewhere else to put these pics, when we first checked into our Cotswolds hotel we had the bright idea to go to Bibury and Bourton-on-the-Water, two of the most popular towns, and check those off the list. What we weren't aware of was that ) it was England's Spring Break and 2) the Cotswolds are insane on bank holiday weekends. We ended up parking a mile from Bibury and walking in, and it was as crowded as DisneyWorld, no exaggeration. The sidewalks were so packed the only place to walk was the street, but of course there are cars in the street (in bumper-to-bumper traffic). So we turned around and walked right back! Bourton-on-the-Water wasn't any better (see pics below) and we didn't even try to park there...we just kept on driving through, wondering if we needed to just pick a different part of England for the rest of the trip. Of course, you've read the other posts so you know it worked out...but we were pretty anxious about it after that experience.



 

Doesn't it look beautiful though? I hope to go back one day.  

And to close the post out, these gorgeous yellow fields are all over the Cotswolds. Sadly for me, I didn't know about stinging nettle, which is a vile plant that causes painful itching, swelling, and rash if you just brush up against it--and when I walked into the field to get a picture, brush up against it I did. It took almost 48 hours for the pain to stop and I was suspicious of all greenery for the rest of the trip. But the pics were probably worth it. 

  


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Christmas Magic in London, Part One

Image
Since London is a huge and historic city with endless things to do, you can't visit without doing something new (even if you're staying for fewer than 48 hours). So first up on the agenda--the Dickens Museum! Dickens lived there for two years, from 1837 to 1839, and it's the only house in which he lived that's left standing. Also he wrote Oliver Twist there! And while Dickens isn't my personal top-tier Victorian author, I'm up for any literary site and especially any insight into Victorian times. In another life, I'm a Victorianist at an East Coast college, wearing wooly sweaters while I read in my toasty office. I don't know why so many of these are sideways...just tilt your head. Anyway, on the lower level you can wander through the kitchen and Dickens' wine cellar, where I learned that Victorian families kept pet hedgehogs to eat bugs. Elowen enjoyed drawing "Bill Spikes" (puns!) while I looked around. On the next floor, Elowen charged ...
Read more

Otherworldly Magic in the Puzzlewood and a Visit to Hereford

Image
Our second full day in the Cotswolds was supposed to be rainy and also it was a bank holiday, so we didn't think we'd be able to find parking or enjoy the little towns we had slated for the day. Instead, we decided to drive to Puzzlewood (which was actually very close to our hotel in Wales) and then visit the Cider Museum in Hereford, both things I'd really wanted to do and was feeling angsty about missing.      Puzzlewood is an ancient woodland (dating back at least 10,000 years) in the Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire England. A local landowner laid down a mile of windy, maze-like pathways in the 1800s for his children, friends, and neighbors, and it later opened as a tourist attraction in the 1900s.  I wanted to make sure we had it mostly to ourselves, so we were there and in line at the ticket office before the gates even opened--then we dashed in!       It's even more glowy-green and otherworldly than it looks in the pictures, and it truly feels...
Read more

Mdina, the Silent City

Another highlight of Malta (perhaps more legitimate than Popeye's Village) was Mdina, known as the silent city both because no cars are allowed other than those of residents and also because it has only a few hundred residents.  The city gate I'm sure in summer it's pretty packed, but we had the city largely to ourselves...just a few other tourists and some horse and carriages. And it's truly lovely...the streets shine, smoothed by hundreds of years of feet walking through history before you, and there are so many narrow, winding alleys in which to get lost.  It's been inhabited since prehistory, with a Phoenician settlement in 8 BC. Then the Romans captured it and it kept passing hands through the centuries until the Order of St. John (a Catholic military order) took the city over in 1530. It later belonged to the French and then of course the British got it back, and then MUCH more recently it was used as a filming location for King's Landing in the first seas...
Read more