Monday, July 12, 2010

Perfect Weather, Gourmet Food, Farmhouse Lodging, Glorious Scenery – and No Cars










Perfect Weather, Gourmet Food, Farmhouse Lodging, Glorious Scenery – and No Cars
Note: apologies once again for the delays; my nifty little netbook has decided it doesn’t speak Wireless anymore. However, as there seems to be lots of computer cafes in England, these final posts will keep coming !

Venturing into the unknown for our next stop, neither Anne-Marie nor really knew what to expect but whatever that was, it was definitely not as wonderful as Sark turned out to be. I was a bit grumpy about leaving Brittany (and am delighted to find that my thirty year old perceptions of France as insular and rude to foreigners has been completely stood on its head) so I was ready to be hypercritical and took that attitude to the island of Guernsey, our transit point between the flight on a teeny weeny Air Aurigny plane from Dinard and the ferry to the island of Sark. Sure enough, I thought as we drug our bags along the touristy waterfront and dined on instant mashed potatoes while waiting for the ferry. I’ve often found that the places you can only reach by ferry have a certain magic to them, but the 45 minute boat ride to Sark clearly passed through a space-time continuum directly to paradise. The scenery is breathtaking, and while luggage and goods are motored around via carts and diesel tractors, there are no cars – everyone walks, bikes, or rides in horse-drawn carriages to get where they are going. The return visitor trade here is enormous; the minute you leave Sark you start plotting how to get back and who you’ll bring with you to experience this wonderland. Of course, we did have perfect weather throughout our 48 hours here – tshirts and suntanning all day, and snuggled under quilts in the evening with the windows wide open. We spent our two nights in deeply comfortable beds at the Hotel Petit Champ, which is a sort of gourmet boutique farmhouse with spectacular ocean views, horses and sheep in the fields, icy cold swimming pool, easy access to the steep cliff paths, and a cook in the kitchen who could give the Iron Chefs a run for their money. We walked, we bicycled, we clambered up and down cliffs to explore rocky beaches, ventured across the vertiginous isthmus to Little Sark for a luscious afternoon cream tea (tea, cucumber sandwiches, raisin scones, strawberry jam, and rich local clotted cream – unbelievably good), and generally thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. And truly – the food at the Petit Champ was such that if you stayed longer than a couple of days you’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe – irresistible pre-dinner bite-sized appetizers like a poached quail egg inside a tiny nest of crispy fried shaved potatoes on a savory drop of red pepper coulis, followed by tempura squid with tiny pickled eggplants followed by a creamy white onion soup followed by a saffron hazelnut risotto followed by a plate of homemade raspberry, passion fruit, and lemon sorbet and you’ll be pleased to know that Anne-Marie and I shared this five course meal rather than eating the whole thing oneself and you’d better believe we still walked (staggered ?) away from the table fully replete.

After two days so full of marvelousness they felt like two weeks we regretfully left those comfy beds, and began our multi-staged peregrination to our next destination. We bicycled into town, walked the forested footpath down to the port, rode the ferry back to Guernsey, took a bus to the airport, flew to London Gatwick, six minutes later took a train to Red Hill, then ten minutes later took another train to Tonbridge, then three minutes later took another train to Canterbury in a display of British transit efficiency unrivaled in the Western world. Thankfully, our 600 year old Falstaff Hotel was quite close to the train station so we rolled our bags along to a surprisingly charming twin room in one of the maze of ancient buildings that make up the old coaching inn. Soon it was off through the West Gate to Canterbury proper, the walled pedestrian town surrounding the cathedral which was closed to visitors by then but not to these intrepid travelers who shortly discovered that there would be a performance of Bach’s Magnificat and Mozart’s Requiem by the Whitstable Choral Society to be held later that evening in the central choir of the cathedral. What else to do in the interim but eat – we found a terrific pub where we could taste all the ales before ordering our favorite half pint, paired up with seriously tasty individual stuffed pastry pies (steak and ale for SMB, butternut squash for me – the UK is something like 25% vegetarian now) plus mashed potatoes (real this time) and perfectly cooked vegetables (no mushy peas in sight). Then it was back to the cathedral for lovely music – I got to sit in the choir seat reserved for the Lord Mayor of Canterbury – afterwhich we roamed the mighty lively Saturday night streets of this university town, checking out various options for tomorrow’s activities and watching the entertaining revels of the young crowd which included a robust young man dressed up as a pink fairy in fluffy tutu, pink plastic sandals, and a sparkly tiara being refused entry into one bar after another because the bouncers thought that he and his bachelor party mates might cause a scene.

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