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55 | Spring/Summer 2016Yours to keep
ALSO IN THIS MAGAZINE:JAMES MARTINWEDGWOOD VISITOR CENTREHIGHLAND WILDLIFE PARK
Yours to keep
EASTERN AIRWAYS IN-FLIGHT
HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?Capability Brown remembered
The Emerson logo is a trademark and a service mark of Emerson Electric Co. © 2016 Emerson Electric Co.
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FÀILTETha Eastern Airways a’ cur fàilte air ar luchd-cleachdaidh gu lèir bho Bhreatainn agus an Roinn Eòrp.
Tha Eastern Airways am measg prìomh làn-sheirbheisean adhair clàraichte na RA. Tha sinn an dòchas gum meas sibh ar seirbheis, an dà chuid, cùramach agus beagan eadar-dhealaichte – tha sinn an-còmhnaidh toilichte ur beachdan mun t-seirbheis againn, is mu ar n-iris, a chluinntinn.
SGIOBA EASTERN
CROESOCroeso gan Eastern Airways magazine, i bob un o’n cwsmeriaid ym mhob rhan o Brydain Fawr ac Ewrop.
Mae Eastern Airways ymhlith y prif gwmnïau awyrennau yn y DU sy’n cynnig amserlen lawn o wasanaethau. Gobeithio y gwelwch chi fod ein gwasanaeth yn un gofalus ac ychydig bach yn wahanol – rydyn ni bob amser yn falch o gael eich sylwadau am ein gwasanaeth ac am ein cylchgrawn.
TÎM EASTERN
VELKOMMENEastern Airways magasinet ønsker våre kunder i Storbritannia og Europa velkommen.
Eastern Airways er et av Storbritannias ledende ruteflyselskap. Vi håper at du vil være fornøyd med servicen vår – og at den tilbyr deg det lille ekstra som er prikken over i-en. Vi setter alltid pris på å motta dine kommentarer om både servicen og magasinet.
EASTERN-TEAMET
BIENVENUEBienvenue à tous nos clients de Grande-Bretagne et d’Europe de la part de Eastern Airways magazine.
Eastern Airways figure parmi les principales compagnies aériennes britan niques offrant un service de vols réguliers. Nous espérons que vous nous trouverez attentifs à vos besoins, avec ce petit plus qui fait la différence, et sommes toujours heureux de recevoir vos comment aires sur notre service et notre magazine.
L’ÉQUIPE EASTERN
Our focus this issue is on getting out of doors.
Later this year will see the 300th anniversary of the birth of a humble man who became one of the biggest names in the shaping of the English landscape: Lancelot “Capability” Brown. Our Essential Guide identifies some of the many park and garden designs attributed to him. We also follow Olly Davy as he visits a “magnificent seven” gardens in Norfolk.
Kevin Pilley is on the road again: this time he’s visiting the new visitor centre at the Wedgwood pottery, near Stoke-on-Trent.
We have a couple of surprising features from Scotland, as Alison Daniels brings us the lowdown on Scottish tea-growing, yes Scottish tea-growing. She also goes to the Highlands to see polar bears, not to mention wolves, tigers, leopards, yak and lots of other creatures you might not expect to see near Aviemore.
There are smaller animals on display as we look at the new phenomenon of cat cafés. Still on food, our celebrity interview this issue is with TV chef James Martin, whose UK tour has turned out to be his Saturday Kitchen swansong.
Our news pages include details of Eastern Airways’ scheduled service debut in Paris, as our new French
operation links Rodez in the Aveyron with Paris Orly. There’s also news about our Norwegian partner, Widerøe, whose Explore Norway ticket offers great value for getting around that beautiful country.
On the business front we look at Newcastle city centre’s recipe for success.
Our columnist Harry Pearson pays homage to the traditional British jelly, as well as exploring the world of a new breed of quality magazines.
Our new Somewhere for the Weekend feature takes us to Rockliffe Hall Hotel and Spa, near Darlington.
Lynne Greenwood explores the Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle from a base near Wakefield, with its fine Hepworth gallery. There’s the opportunity for readers to visit the area themselves and organise their own tour, courtesy of our competition sponsor, Waterton Park Hotel & Spa.
We hope you enjoy your flight with Eastern Airways – do take your magazine away with you for family and friends to enjoy.
THE EASTERN TEAM
Welcome to Eastern Airways Magazine!
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34 CAT CAFÉS 22 WEDGWOOD31 GARDEN TRAIL
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REGULARS
07 NEWS What’s happening around Eastern
Airways destinations
17 BOOK REVIEW Favourite Scots choose their
favourite views
20 EXPLORATION EXPRESS Rhubarb and sculpture triangles
prove a winner for Lynne Greenwood in Wakefield
36 SOMEWHERE FOR THE WEEKEND
Rockliffe Hall in County Durham
38 BARE ESSENTIALS Eastern Airways’ network map, passenger information, essential goings-on and destination guides
47 ESSENTIAL GUIDE: CAPABILITY BROWN
Parks and gardens – all within easy reach of Eastern Airways destinations
50 THE LAST WORD Harry Pearson has a soft spot for jelly
COMPETITION
25 WAKE UP TO WAKEFIELD WIN a luxury break at the
Waterton Park Hotel and Walton Hall near Wakefield
FEATURES
13 A WEE DRAM OF TEA! Scotland’s fledgling tea
plantations
15 BID FOR GREATNESS Newcastle provides a model for
business improvement
18 PAGE TURNERS The rise of the independent
magazine
22 GOING POTTY Kevin Pilley has a turn at the new
Wedgwood Visitor Centre
26 FAST FOOD James Martin shares his love of
food and Ferraris
28 COLD CONSERVATION Animals are thriving in the Highland Wildlife Park
31 MAGNIFICENT SEVEN Olly Davy takes us on a trail around Norfolk’s favourite gardens
34 LAPPING IT UP The rise of the cat café
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Eastern Airways in-flight magazine is published for Eastern Airways by Gravity Magazines, Arch Workspace, Abbey Road, Pity Me, Durham, DH1 5JZ www.gravity-consulting.com e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 (0)191 383 2838
Publisher: Stan AbbottDesign: Barbara Allen Print: Buxton Press
© March 2016. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced by any means, without prior written permission of the copyright owners.Although every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information in this magazine, neither the publisher, nor Eastern Airways can accept any liability for errors or omissions.
ISSN: 2044-7124Previously known as e-magazine, ISSN 1477-3031.
Eastern Airways, Schiphol House, Humberside International Airport, Kirmington, North Lincolnshire DN39 6YH
Communications Manager: Darren Roberts
Telephone: + 44 (0)8703 669669 Reservations: + 44 (0)8703 669100 www.easternairways.com For magazine comments: [email protected]
To advertise in Eastern Airways Magazine, call Liz Reekie on +44 (0) 7563 796103 / +44 (0) 1434 240947 or email [email protected]
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in a controlled saltwater environment. The facility is used to perform equipment trials, prove installation techniques, conduct performance verification, and witness tests for the offshore energy sector. The simulated seabed has enabled ORE Catapult to play an instrumental role in the testing and trialling of novel cutting devices for trenching equipment, such as IHC Engineering Business Ltd’s Hi-Traq ROV trenching technology, and the still water docks are used to carry out submerged testing of ROVs and cable protection system trials for offshore wind projects.
Other projects have included the development of power take-off systems for marine renewable devices, and cable joint integrity tests, not to mention novel pipeline and cable infrastructure installations to help reduce the risk of failure offshore and accelerate the marine energy technology development cycle.
The 3MW drive train test facility is used for the testing of tidal turbine drive trains and individual components. Commissioning partner Atlantis Resources Ltd tested its AR1000 1MW turbine and in just two weeks of full testing, the marine energy developer
secured performance data equivalent to four months of tidal exchanges, enabling the development of the next generation AR1500 (1.5MW) tidal turbine. This will be installed in the world’s first multi-megawatt tidal array in the Pentland Firth, off the North Coast of Scotland, as part of the MeyGen Project.
ORE Catapult’s world-leading research, testing and demonstration facilities help to bring innovative technologies to market, reduce the costs of energy from offshore renewables, and provide the industry with confidence and reassurance. This in turn helps to encourage further investment and the wider supply chain to make the transition into the marine renewables industry.
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Southampton celebratesSouthampton Airport has celebrated the 80th anniversary of the first flight of the iconic Spitfire fighter. A Spitfire took to the skies from the airport where the aircraft’s prototype first flew, watched by aviators and entrepreneurs. They included war veteran Nathan Forster, RAF Air Cadets celebrating their 75th anniversary, and the team behind new Spitfire display team, Flying with Spitfires.
Southampton Airport has also marked the 21st birthday of its passenger terminal, opened in December 1994 by Prince Andrew. In 1994 Southampton Airport had 450,000 passengers flying to about 15 destinations. Now passen-ger figures have more than quadrupled, with 1.8 million passengers flying to around 40 destinations.
EASTERN AIRWAYS MAGAZINE COMPETITION WINNERThe winner of our competition to win at stay at Rockliffe Hall, near Darlington, in our last issue, was Susan Barr, of Grimsby.
EASTERN AIRWAYS LAUNCHES NEW PARIS ROUTE
IMES bucks the trendAberdeen-based marine and subsea business IMES has bucked cur-rent trends to secure contracts worth £750,000 with clients in the oil and gas industry. IMES provides inspection, monitoring and engineering services to the global energy, defence and industrial markets.
The new business includes a three-year contract for the provision of lifting inspection services for offshore survey company Fugro and a three-year con-tract for subsea inspection, for repair and maintenance company Harkand, to provide lifting and wire rope inspection and non-destructive testing services for vessels in Aberdeen and other UK ports.
Jason Smith, Chief Operating Officer,
pictured, said: “Despite the present challenging economic conditions, we are remaining upbeat about the year ahead. These latest strategic contract awards put us in a strong position to achieve our vision of becoming the leading subsea and marine company in our chosen sec-tor and we are looking forward to further developing these relationships.”
www.imes-group.com
Eastern Airways has launched a new route in France, linking the southern department of Aveyron with Paris Orly.
The all-jet service operates three times daily Monday to Friday from Rodez, in Aveyron, to the capital, with two return flights on Sundays and one on Saturdays. The primarily business route will be operated under a four-year Public Service Obligation contract.
Flights are bookable via Eastern Airways websites in both France and the UK and operate with 50-seat Embraer 145 aircraft.
n North East England has seen a surge in major property deals, with growth stronger than anywhere else in the UK, according to research by CoStar.
Investors snapped up more than £1bn worth of commercial property in the last year as investment volumes grew by 32 per cent. Overall, investment fig-ures rose by just eight per cent across the UK regions, with some seeing volumes fall.
See NE1 story page 15
n Teesside-based information management specialist Datum360 has delivered a contract to deploy its robust Software as a Service (SaaS) to standardise engineering information for the largest oilfield project in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian basin. Datum360, whose offices worldwide include Kuala Lumpur and Houston, has been awarded the
contract by BP to deliver a data warehouse to the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Guneshli project 100km east of Baku
BP’s “Category B” projects cover three major oilfields in the Azeri sector, with more than seven platforms, including Chirag, Central Azeri and Deepwater Gunashli, transforming Azerbaijan into a major global energy supplier.
La Grande Arche de la Défense, Paris
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Eastern Airways’ Norwegian partner, Widerøe, has announced details of its popular Explore Norway ticket for Summer 2016.
The “rover” ticket is valid for travel between June 20 and August 29 and enables discounted travel to some 40 destinations throughout Norway. Included in the price are return tickets to Norway from Aberdeen.
The Explore Norway ticket is divided into three zones – the Southern Zone extends as far north as Trondheim;
Nordland extends from Trondheim to Tromsø, in the Arctic; and the Finnmark zone extends from Tromsø to Kirkenes, near the Russian border.
The tickets are valid for two weeks and a single-zone ticket costs £270; two zones £325; and three zones £383. Eastern Airways offers connections via Aberdeen from destinations across the UK.
The ticket offers the opportunity to visit historic cities like Bergen and Trondheim or the stunning beauty of Arctic islands like Lofoten, pictured.
n Hilton Bournemouth has become the newest addition to the Hilton Hotels & Resorts portfolio. The hotel was developed by property company THAT Group, which owns the hotel and neighbouring Hampton by Hilton Bournemouth. Housed in a soaring glass structure, the 172-room property offers panoramic views to the coast and across the popular seaside town. Bespoke interiors and furnishings have been designed exclusively by Ray Kelvin.
n Wakefield has set its sights on becoming a major new creative industries hub, with more 100,000 sq ft of derelict waterfront buildings set to be transformed in a landmark deal.
Wakefield Council has sold Rutland Mills, adjacent to The Hepworth Wakefield, to developer, City & Provincial Properties, which plans to create a northern extension of its successful Tileyard Studios, a creative media hub in central London. See Wakefield feature page 20 n The new £8m Spa at Ramside Hall Hotel, near Durham, has launched two features – an outdoor Spa Garden and vitality pool and a first-floor infinity pool. The additions follow the recent award of a five-bubble rating by the Good Spa Guide.
Newcastle Airport has unveiled plans to transform the former airport’s former control tower into a £400,000 observation deck.
The tower was originally opened in 1967 by then Prime Minister Harold Wilson but has remained largely unused since 2007, when the airport’s new £8.2m Emirates air traffic control tower was opened.
Planned alterations would see the creation of a modern, covered walkway overlooking the airport apron and classrooms for visiting schools, while also opening up the top of the tower to the public, providing information boards with arrival and departure times so people can see what’s happening in real time.
The airport’s former observation area was closed in line with general airport security moves some years ago.
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9
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SSWEET POTATOES ARE NOW HOT POTATOES
n TV chef James Martin is leaving the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen Live show, which he has fronted for a decade. The announcement came as Martin – who is from Malton, Yorkshire, and lives in Hampshire – was on the road with his first ever UK tour. He will continue to present other recorded programmes. See feature page 26
n Home to some of Scotland’s most precious and rare whisky stocks, The Dalmore distillery, at Alness, Ross-shire, has created a one-of-a-kind exclusive bottle in celebration of Singapore’s Golden Jubilee, now being showcased at the city-state’s RWS Hotel Michael. The whisky is so precious, that only one bottle has been created – a snip at $105,645, or about £70,000.
n The highlight of any trip to Bergen is to take the boat to the celebrated Cornelius seafood restaurant (which fronts a sheltered fjord on its very own island) to enjoy its Meteorological fine-dining menu. A second highlight is to ask your host to show you the restaurant’s “cellar”, excavated from the cliff-face just behind the dining area. Admire rare bottles that are just too expensive to drink, including vintage Pomerol, from Bordeaux.
n Gin and Bear It is the name of a new gin bar in Sunderland’s attractive Sunniside Quarter. The pair behind the new venture is Sean Maddison and Helen Davies, owner of Bar Justice in Sunderland and organiser of the city’s first ever Sunniside Live festival this summer.www.ginandbearitbar.co.uk
n England’s most northerly wine is bowing out after five years. Northumbrian Wine is produced in Cumbria from grapes grown by amateurs, mostly in Durham and Northumberland. The impending retirement of wine-maker Ron Barker, of High Cup Winery, coupled with 2015’s poor harvest have prompted the team to call it a day. High Cup Winery’s visitor centre, near Appleby remains open.
n Birmingham’s Staying Cool at the Rotunda apartment complex has gone into partnership with Nomad restaurant and named Alex Claridge, as its Executive Chef.After its pop up successes of the summer, reaching number two on TripAdvisor for Birmingham restaurants, Nomad has opened in a permanent base on Dudley Street, just a couple of minutes from Staying Cool at the Rotunda. www.stayingcool.com
n Historic Burley Manor in the New Forest has opened as a restaurant with rooms. Just under 30 minutes from Southampton Airport, the Grade II listed building has enjoyed a £1.8m transformation, whose main focus is the restaurant featuring simple and delicious flavours of the Mediterranean. www.burleymanor.com
BREWERY EXHIBITS GREAT TASTEWylam Brewery, among the most successful independents in North East England, is going to town: quite literally. Wylam is set to move its brewing operation into beautiful new premises in Newcastle’s Exhibition Park as part of an ambitious project that is the brainchild of former Newcastle United Chairman Freddy Shepherd.
The brewery will invest £1.5 million in its move to the Grade II Listed building, which began life as the Palace of the Arts, centrepiece and only survivor of the North East Coast Exhibition, which attracted more than four million visitors in 1929.
The venue will host brewery tours, a brewery tap, outdoor drinking and dining and stage events, including live music and film screenings.
11
There’s a mini-boom in the cultivation of sweet potatoes in England, writes Kevin Pilley. The focus is on East Anglia, Worcestershire and Kent.
Joe Cottingham, director of Watts Farms, in Kent, Essex and Befordshire, has just produced the UK’s first crop of home-grown sweets. And Evesham-based Garry Smith has also founded the Sweet Potato Spirit Company, launching a range of sweet potato liqueurs distilled in copper stills in East Anglia.
Says Cottingham: “Sweets have a lower carbohydrate and calorific count than regular white, baking or new potatoes. They have higher fibre than regular potatoes and are nutrient dense, particularly in vitamin A.”
He lifted nearly three tonnes of sweet potatoes at Hill Farm, Farningham in north Kent.
“The UK’s first sweets are grown in light soils through a mulch, which allows us to get warmer soil temperatures, which produce good-sized potatoes. We give the potatoes all the water they need through drippers underneath the mulch, which takes them from small plants to much larger plants bearing fruit in five months.”
The Sweet Potato Spirit Company uses the triple-distilled flesh of American sweet potatoes. Also made with sugar cane molasses, Sweet Potato Spiced Rum is said to have a flavour of ginger, treacle, lemon blossom, warm spices and caramel.
Also available are Sweet Potato Orangecello, Sweet Potato Raspberry Liqueur and Sweet Po-tato Moonshine, which is said to have a taste of vanilla, warm peach, apricot skins and caramel.
www.lovesweetpotatoes.comwww.thesweetpotatospiritcompany.com
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The British have a thing about tea. There may be a Starbucks or Caffè Nero on almost every street corner, but practically half of what we buy to drink is tea. For many, a flat white can’t compete with a decent cuppa. We still get through 165 million cups every day – not bad for something that was first imported to the UK around 360 years ago by entrepreneurs like coffee house merchant Thomas Garway, who advertised it in 1660 as “making the body active and lusty”. Back then, Garway’s tea sold for up to £10 a pound, equivalent to £1,340 today; so no wonder it was kept locked up from the servants!
Oolong, Lapsang Souchong, Assam – the very names are redolent of exotic, sun-warmed Sri Lankan slopes, colonial bungalows overlooking neat rows of bushes in the uplands of India, misty hidden valleys in China. Now we can add
the rain-drizzled hills of Perthshire to the list, and not only Perthshire because a hardy bunch of pioneers are growing tea across Scotland, from Galloway to the Isle of Mull.
When Tam O’Brann returned to Scotland after a global career growing crops in marginal conditions, he started The Wee Tea Plantation. His decision was partly inspired by the work of Robert Fortune, a 19th century adventurous Scottish plant hunter and botanist, who managed to transport tea plants from China to India. When Tam became convinced that growing great tea didn’t require heat, he took a chance that has paid off handsomely.
“The original variety of tea plant comes from the foothills of the Himalayas and copes with temperatures down to -15C,” Tam explains. “In Scotland, the climate means our tea comes from plants that
have had longer to mature, so the leaves develop a real depth of flavour.”
Tam’s Dalreoch estate and other growers have just formed The Scottish Tea Association, with many members expecting their first harvests in 2018.
Tam adds: “Our plants are propagated from seed and we grow them in an unheated greenhouse until they are around 18 months old. Then we transplant them outside. Our plants are shorter and uglier than the commonly grown Asian cultivars, but we don’t care as it means they can deal with the cold and wind! We don’t harvest the leaf for tea until the plant is almost four years old, so it requires a bit of patience.
“Picking can be chilly work when we start on Valentine’s Day each February. Our first flush – as we call the harvest – is quite vegetative, so it is used for
TURNING OVER A NEW LEAFI wouldn’t do that for all the tea in Scotland. Not a riposte you might expect to hear, but that could be about to change, as Alison Daniels finds out on a visit to the country’s fledgling tea plantations…
Tam at Palm Court Tearooms The Balmoral Hotel
>>
making Gael Green, our green tea, which is high in anti-oxidants. We pick all the way through to September, with most of the harvesting done during the summer months.”
The result of all that hand-picking is a boutique collection of teas, such as Garrocher Grey, a black tea accented with Monarda flowers; Scottish Antlers, a sweet stem tea grown on a sustainable croft on Mull; and Tam’s own Dalreoch Rose Smoked, which blends rose petals with smoked black tea for an “uplifting experience”. The growers also produce a white tea and a Highland Chai, so there’s something for every palate.
All the growers process and market their tea through the Wee Tea Company, selling in such upmarket retailers as Fortnum & Mason and Mariage Frères tea room, in Paris, as well as being available at leading hotels, including Edinburgh’s Balmoral, and the Lowell and the Dorchester in London, where Tam has helped the hotel cultivate a tea garden on its roof.
Tam enthuses: “All our growers want to be recognised for the sheer quality of their teas. We’re not growing lower grade tea-bag style tea, but bespoke artisan blends. In other countries with similar tea quality, it attracts premium prices, so we formed the Scottish Tea Association so that our industry would be taken seriously. We don’t want our teas to be stocked as an oddity, or just a quirky idea, because no-one has heard of tea
being grown in Scotland. We work hard to gain recognition and respect – after all, if Scotland’s whisky is renowned for its quality and individual character drawn from the soil and water here, why not Scottish tea?”
For a fledgling industry, the growers are making remarkable inroads into the export market, with customers in Asia and the Middle East and the expectation that things will soon go full circle – from a Scottish plant hunter smuggling tea shrubs out of China, to Scottish tea being sold there.
Tea lovers can also find out more about Scottish teas by visiting one of the growers’ tea gardens. There are ten gardens open to visitors, with plans to double that number during 2016. As well as a chance to discover more about tea and how it is grown, visitors can enjoy great food and, unsurprisingly, an amazing cup of Scottish tea.
The Wee Tea Company sells every variety of tea grown in Scotland and ships worldwide.
www.weeteacompany.com
The Wee Tea Plantation. TOP Picking the leaves. Tea growing on the roof of The Dorchester
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15
The principle of a Business Improvement District is neither uniquely British nor is it a one-size-fits-all device. Put simply, a BID is about businesses acting in unison to improve their lot.
In Newcastle this initially meant a majority of city centre business agreeing to pay an extra penny in the pound on their business rates, with the proceeds dedicated to securing a return on that investment through increased trade. Not only did the BID require a majority of businesses to vote for its establishment, but it also needed a majority as expressed by rateable value. Back in 2008, 67 per cent of businesses voted to establish the BID but this figure rose to 78 per cent when it came up for renewal in 2013.
Sean Bullick is proud that businesses have recognised the value of the BID and endorsed NE1’s overarching ambition, which is to ensure that Newcastle can hold its own in comparison with other European regional capitals, like Lyon or Marseille. Closer to home, he says, its about regaining ground that may have been lost to its closest UK rivals, Leeds and Edinburgh.
The business rate levy generates about £2 million a year – a sum, says Bullick,
that is miniscule in comparison with, say, Newcastle City Council’s budget. The economic returns, however, have been impressive.
Perhaps the most transformational achievement has been Alive after Five, an evening opening initiative that is estimated to have pumped a cool £591 million into the city economy in five years. The premise was simple: keep the city centre trading during the “dead period” after 5.30 and before night-time revellers hit town.
The NE1 team faced scepticism that the idea of shops staying open every night until late would catch on, but, points out Bullick, the huge Metro Centre complex, a couple of miles away across the river in Gateshead, had been happily luring a mixture of shoppers, diners and drinkers every evening for a quarter of a century.
Now the great majority of city centre outlets stay open every evening and Bullick is proud that Newcastle is the only UK city that can make such a boast when taking its centre as a whole.
“We did some consumer research and the issue that kept coming up was free parking. We spoke to Eldon Square [the city centre’s premier shopping
destination] and 95 per cent of tenants voted to extend their hours in return for a marketing campaign and free parking. We launched Alive after Five in 2010 and it has continued to grow.”
The £2 million investment in Alive after Five has, in turn, spawned a huge tranche of new business, with nine million new city visitors needing places to eat, drink and stay. Nearly 50 new city centre restaurants have opened their doors, while new hotel openings in a city already well endowed in that respect have continued apace.
Bullick is particularly gratified that the beneficiaries have not just been national chains, but home-grown companies
BOAT COMES IN AT NEWCASTLEBusiness Improvement Districts are a bottom-up model for stimulating a local economy. Stan Abbott visits Newcastle to meet Sean Bullick, Chief Executive at NE1 Ltd, the BID recognised by government as among the most effective in the UK…
PROUD: Sean Bullick
>> 15
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GRUB UPA half century of new restaurants has arrived in Newcastle. These range from “chain names” like Jamie Oliver’s, Carluccio’s and Botanist to home-grown products. Here are some of our favourites among the newer arrivals.
Kenny Atkinsons’s Michelin Star House of Tides in a Grade I Quayside building has been wowing fine diners in its first year and is a must for foodies.
One of the North of England’s leading restaurateurs, Terry Laybourne, is the man behind the new food offers in Fenwick’s department store, with dining now till 8pm (7pm Saturday and 5pm Sunday). Try the excellent Pan-Asian Ko Sai noodle bar.
Don’t miss the Gin Bar at the new Crowne Plaza Hotel, on Forth Street – super staff and great gins, of course.
Bealim House, Gallowgate, distils its own gin in-house and you can even see the still. Excellent and varied food menu and friendly service.
Dacantus, on sophisticated Grey Street, is a good port of call to catch a bight in cocktail bar surroundings.
Pleased to Meet You on resurgent High Bridge boasts 50 different gins on its menu.
For inventive cocktails and live music, try Tiger Hornsby or to discover spirits you never knew existed, visit Popollo, both on the Quayside.
The highly innovative Herb Garden, which grows its own on the premises in hydroponic globes, and the Sausage Emporium are great little restaurants inhabiting converted railway archways on Westgate Road, near Central Station.
n Newcastle has the UK’s highest concentration of cat cafés, the new kitty diner craze that’s arrived from the Far East – Page 34.
and small entrepreneurs creating an ever greater variety of innovative eating and drinking options. That in turn is stimulating the growth of city centre living: not just students at the two universities and one college within the BID, but also affluent professionals.
“There is a demand for city living in Newcastle and it seems to work very well compared with the challenges that are faced in other cities,” says Bullick. “For example, Newcastle is one of the safest cities in the country and there’s a strong residential sector market, particularly for early-30s professionals.”
He cites a proposed new upmarket 12 to15-storey tower near the huge Science City development on the former Newcastle Breweries site.
NE1 is not just about shopping, eating, drinking – or even city living – however. Also within the BID is the Royal Victoria Infirmary and Bullick accepts that the arguments for an NHS hospital paying extra rates may not be immediately obvious. The benefits, however, are twofold for a hospital that is a UK and world leader. Firstly, there’s a direct benefit in work that the BID has been doing to improve connectivity between the hospital site – one of the biggest city centre employers – and city centre shops, and then there’s the general spin-off benefit that comes from improvements to the city’s image.
“We have been spending a lot of money on positioning Newcastle as a centre of leading edge research and medicine. We had a group of 13 Arab Ambassadors here in summer and showed them the RVI and described how world leading they are, for example in heart and lung transplants for children, which, besides Newcastle, are only practised in Philadelphia.”
Bullick can point to a number of other very visible NE1 achievements, pride of place among which belongs to the near £25 million rejuvenation of the Grade I listed Central Station, towards which NE1 secured £5 million Regional Growth Fund investment towards a partnership scheme that also involved Virgin Trains, Network Rail and Newcastle City Council.
Not only did this secure a worthy gateway to the city but it has also helped to open up the new Stephenson Quarter, to the south of the station,
with a new pedestrian link direct from station platforms now imminent.
Key to the prosperity of the new quarter, where 2,000 new jobs are being created, is the 251-bed four-star Crowne Plaza Hotel, a public-private partnership by Clouston Group with the city council.
Then there’s the new city centre marina, which has lured craft from small cruisers to mega-yachts into the heart of the city.
NE1 isn’t resting on its laurels: among capital projects in the pipeline is a facelift for the iconic Bigg Market area, which has lost its lustre since the rise of cheap supermarket booze dented its popularity for younger partygoers. A £1.6 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund will help a near £3 million initiative in the neighbourhood, which boasts 31 listed buildings.
And NE1 is working with representatives from London’s Brixton Market to explore the scope for creating pop-up evening street-food venues in the Grade I listed Grainger Market to complement the historic space’s “day job”.
On a more distant horizon is meeting the demand for prime shopping space by redeveloping the Pilgrim Street area north of the Tyne Bridge, where, says Bullick, “opportunities have been missed” over the last 20 years.
NE1’s delivery has not gone unnoticed in higher circles. “We had a meeting at Number 10 recently with the retail property organisation, the British Guild of Shopping Centres, and David Cameron’s special advisers,” says Bullick.
“NE1 would be considered to be one of the highest achieving BIDs and one of the strengths of the BID model is that it can be applied to many different circumstances, from installing CCTV on an industrial estate in Northumberland, to attracting American tourists to Leicester Square.
“What we have set out to do is take it beyond the more pedestrian things that BIDs do and see how the business community can provide an effective lead in positioning Newcastle as a worthy capital of a significant European region.”
www.newcastlene1ltd.com
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When Anne Graham and Michael Hamilton (an occasional writer on these pages) published My North East – By Its Favourite Sons And Daughters it became an instant bestseller.
The pair, now based closer to Scotland, on Holy Island, off the Northumberland coast, have exported the successful formula north of the border to create, no prizes here, My Scotland – By Its Favourite Sons And Daughters.
The premise is very simple: 58 of Scotland’s great and good – from celebs to sports figures, to people in business to (wait for it) Oor Wullie – present their thoughts, in first person transcript style, on their Scottish upbringing and careers, and then this is illustrated with cameo pictures and a favourite full-page land or cityscape.
Unlike some coffee table books, this is one that you will never tire of, because every interview holds its little nuggets. Just imagine a young wee Denis Law carrying his washing home in a parcel to his mum in Aberdeen! Denis chooses the magnificent coastal fortress of Dunnotar Castle as his “big picture” and one of my delights is how many
of these favourite views are also my own – the tombolo beach at St Ninian’s Isle (seen often of late in TV’s Shetland), selected by the poet, Christine de Luca; Rory Bremner’s choice of Smailholm Tower, in the Borders; Val McDermid’s towering Suilven Mountain, in Sutherland; or Oor Wullie’s Urquhart Castle by night.
Somehow the choice of a picture seems so much more insightful than mere words and my fascination with this is matched only by my admiration for Anne and Michael in securing so many interviews with busy people – you may imagine that the famous spend their time queuing up to share their ideas and opinions but take it from me that this is far from the case!
This book is also a great leveller as all the interviews are in alphabetical order, bookended, as it were, by Ronni Ancona and Irvine Welsh. With 90 per cent of profits going to Scottish charities, what’s not to like?
My Scotland – By Its Favourite Sons And Daughters, published by Kingfisher Reach, £25. ISBN 978-0-9576897-1-8.
BOOK REVIEW by Stan Abbott
FAVOURITE FORMAT A WINNER
DENIS CHOSE THE MAGNIFICENT COASTAL FORTRESS OF DUNNOTAR CASTLE AS HIS “BIG PICTURE”
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Ten years ago, when the words “digital first” were the slogan of every news media executive with Clark Kent glasses and a MacBook, it seemed that we were listening to the death rattle of what the newly triumphant nerds of the internet Age dubbed the “deadwood press”. With editors fixated on websites and downloadable content, old-style magazines appeared destined for the car boot fair of history – alongside fax machines, video-recorders and cassette-players.
It seems, however, that predictions of the demise of magazines were as off the mark as those of the death of vinyl records. In the past few years, as magazine staples from Loaded to FHM and Newsweek have printed their last ever copies, independent magazines have enjoyed a resurgence in fortunes comparable to that of LPs, hand-pulled ale, and artisan gin. New titles seem to pop up every month with some, such as Bristol-based travel magazine Cereal and women’s style title The Gentlewoman, gaining a place in mainstream newsagents.
NICHE AUDIENCEMany of the titles have a distinct, and often narrow, niche audience. Alongside independents devoted to fashion (Lulu, Tank), design (Hole & Corner), food (Cherry Bombe), sports and travel, there are esoteric titles such as The Recorder (typography), Dumbo Feather (mindfulness), Benji Knewman (Latvia), Chickpea (veganism), Kindling (modern fathers), Pom Pom (knitting) and Pretty Nostalgic (Britishness).
The new independent magazines are beautifully produced on high quality, usually matt, paper. They are not cheap. The Gentlewoman sells around 100,000 per issue and retails for £12. “High quality paper is a luxury material and I think that consuming our magazine is a luxury experience,” says editor, Penny Martin,
The cost not only reflects the production values, but also a revised business model. “The price covers the entire cost of production including the photography and the writing,” says Martin.
In the past magazines were heavily funded by advertising, but with advertising revenue shrinking (page rates have dropped through the floor) magazines that continue to pursue that approach risk becoming so heavy with commercial pages the editorial content
gets swamped. The independents have shown a way around that problem.
Despite the sometimes specialist nature of the content and the high cover price, there’s no denying the new wave’s popularity with the public. In 2014 independent magazine subscription service, Stack, reported a 78 per cent increase in revenue, with subscription figures rising by 79 per cent.
OLD FASHIONED Newcastle-based former Guardian staffer Ian Wylie launched The Northern Correspondent in the spring of 2014. Now approaching publication of its ninth issue, The Northern Correspondent offers long-form journalism, poetry, illustrations and photo essays about North East England.
While some trace the new trend back to the launch of US title Kinfolk back in 2011, Wylie points out that independent magazines have a long and influential history going back to the counter-culture scene of the 1960s, through the punk music fanzines of the 1970s and the football ’zine boom of the 1980s. “When you come up to more recent times you look at magazines like Tyler Brulee’s Monocle, which is stylish and determinedly old-fashioned in its approach,” he says. “I think in some ways it’s a reaction to modern life. These days we spend half our waking hours staring at screens. I think people want a break. They want something they can feel in their hands, something tangible.”
The renewed interest in vinyl and other
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apparently obsolete leisure items such as board games (sales of which have risen 25 per cent year on year for the past four years) all reinforce that view.
“There’s also an interest in things that are not mass produced, whether that’s micro-breweries or artisanal bread.”
It’s a comparison with which the owner of Stack, Steve Watson, concurs. He has described the monthly independent magazine day he organises in (where else?) Shoreditch as “a print media farmers’ market”.
One of the inspirations for The Northern Correspondent is Delayed Gratification, a quarterly news magazine whose creators boldly state: “We have no interest in creating throw-away media. We want to make something that is treasured, which ends its days making the bookshelf, coffee table or toilet just that little bit prettier and more civilised.”
SLOW READERS While web journalism is driven by the rush to be first with the news (even if accuracy suffers – witness the number of celebrities reported to have died when they are very much alive, or have been dead for several years already), magazines can respond in a slower, more considered fashion.
Delayed Gratification makes a virtue of the magazine’s traditional long lead-in time and boasts of being “last with the news”. Its writers have time to absorb and digest what has happened. There is no swift rush to judgement, or the furious “reverse ferreting” that follows the inevitable mistakes that occur when speed takes precedence. The
result is deeper and more textured than the sort of superficial clickbait journalism the web has come to specialise in. “It’s informed,” Wylie says. “It’s got great info-graphics. It’s always interesting. You feel when you read it you are learning something new.”
Ironically, it is the Internet – the very thing that is killing traditional print media – that has helped the indie magazine scene thrive. “At one time if you didn’t have a shop presence, then you were effectively dead,” Wylie says. “Now you can sell direct to your readers through a website and promote your title via social media. Suddenly you have easy access to a market – not just nationally, but also globally.”
The result is that even niche magazines, such as Australia’s Wooden Toy Quarterly,
can find sufficient audience to be sustainable.
“Something like the cycling magazine Rouleur, or the football title The Blizzard, have an obvious worldwide appeal, especially as English becomes more and more widely spoken and understood,” Wylie says. Proof of that can be found in the men’s style magazine, Fantastic Man, produced in Amsterdam and the biannual German fashion and art magazine 032c, both highly influential and written in English.
ON DEMAND Another Internet development, Kickstarter, which allows backers to pledge money to fund a project, has also helped. On top of that, computerisation has seen print costs tumble, especially for short-run orders, with some systems also offering a print-on-demand service that means no magazine editor need end up with boxes of unsold issues sitting in the loft and threatening to break the roof beams.
Magazine editors have always understood their readers better than newspaper editors. That is certainly true of most of the independents, which tend to have a very well defined niche audience in mind. Doubts have been raised about sustainability once the novelty wears off, or the hipster trend towards the homespun fizzles out. Wylie however remains optimistic: “Some titles will inevitably go to the wall, either through lack of sales, or because the people running them simply run out of energy or ideas, but I see it as a sustainable industry, definitely.”
Harry Pearson examines the rise of the independent magazine
IRONICALLY, IT IS THE INTERNET –
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It could be a crossword clue or a Mastermind question: which city is now known by two triangles – one sculpture, the other rhubarb? There’s even an artwork which celebrates both in Wakefield, best known in medieval times, rather more prosaically, as the Merrie City and from the late 19th century onwards as the administrative centre of the former West Riding of Yorkshire.
But now Wakefield, which lies at one corner of the Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle, is luring thousands of visitors who love art… and rhubarb! And it is aiming to extend its appeal to a wider international audience as the county bids to become known as the Sculpture Triangle of Europe.
The city’s waterfront gallery, The Hepworth, which opened in 2011 as the largest purpose-built exhibition space outside London, is a key part of that bid. Designed by award-winning architect David Chipperfield, it is named after Barbara Hepworth, the sculptress who was born in Wakefield in1903 but spent her later life in Cornwall, where her St Ives studio has attracted visitors for many years.
So what would I recommend to any visitor, including those from overseas, lured to a place whose Merrie City epithet was recently revived by Clark’s brewery, active in the city for more than 100 years, for its popular range of craft beers?
Well, if you can make it before June 12 this year, you could experience a taste of both triangles under one roof. Head to The Hepworth, which appears to rise out of the River Calder, where the Spring exhibition is entitled The Rhubarb Triangle and Other Stories. It is a collection of fascinating images by British photographer Martin Parr, who has spent the last 12 months capturing all aspects of the business in the nine-square-mile area between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell, known for producing early-forced rhubarb.
His photographs, the centrepiece of a much larger exhibition of his work over many years, show the back-breaking work of moving the rhubarb from field to shed, the picking of the vegetable – and yes it is a vegetable – by candlelight or head-torch and a variety of end-product goodies, including rhubarb-topped pork pies, rhubarb truffles and rhubarb and custard cupcakes, all rustled up by inventive cooks. Most are on offer at an annual weekend festival held in February.
After the viewing, I headed to the gallery’s café to sample rhubarb scones before making the short walk into the city centre to check out other menus. I avoided the inevitable chains in the new shopping centre and instead tried the rather more staid café at Wakefield Cathedral, whose recent multi-million pound refurbishment is due for completion in May.
The newly-fashioned Cathedral interior is worth a look and includes an intriguing stone labyrinth now used regularly in services – but as a visitor I took the advice to take off my shoes and walk the path in my stockinged-feet! And if you’re there on a Tuesday, you could catch a regular free lunchtime concert.
Then it’s time to head out to another point of the triangle, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, at Bretton, less than eight miles south on the M1, not forgetting to catch a glimpse of the admittedly now rather tired-looking 4-metre stick of rhubarb sculpture, in Thornes Park on the outskirts of the city. Regular buses run to the YSP too.
The Park is set in 500 acres of the Bretton Estate, designed in the 18th century, and has been attracting art lovers to the area since it opened in 1977. And you don’t need to be an aficionado to enjoy exploring the stunning parkland, grazed by sheep, the huge lake, former estate chapel and the many artworks set in the landscape.
For lots of visitors, wandering in the fresh air and rubbing your hands across the giant bronze Henry Moore sculptures on the grassy slopes, is as enjoyable as exploring one or more of the five internal galleries. As a regular visitor over many years I can honestly say that the Park, which not only changes with the seasons but looks different in every type of weather, never disappoints.
Lynne Greenwood visits the city at the centre of the Sculpture Triangle of Europe
The Hepworth, Wakefield. © Hufton + Crow.20
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And before too long, it will be possible to actually stay there. Planning permission has been granted for the development of the original Grade ll-listed Bretton Hall to be converted into a 120-bed luxury hotel, on which work is due to begin shortly.
The third corner of the Sculpture Triangle is 18 miles away, in Leeds city centre at the City Art Gallery and nearby Henry Moore Institute. And although easily reached by car, or by bus or train from Wakefield, I decided that Leeds was worth saving for a separate trip.
Instead I opted to stay at Wakefield’s Waterton Park Hotel, a Georgian mansion surrounded by a lake and parkland, acres of which have been converted into a golf course. The Walton Hall fly fishery is next door, but if you’re not the outdoor type the spa and pool are equally inviting. Either way you can eat and drink in Charlie’s Bar, which
opens on to a terrace, all day long or opt for the more formal Bridgewalk Restaurant for dinner. From a room at the back of the hotel, we watched a proud mother duck, followed by her large family of ten ducklings!
I ended the visit with a drive out to the National Coal Mining Museum for England, based at the former Caphouse Colliery a few miles west of Wakefield and a reminder of how the city was once surrounded by pit villages, home to generations of miners’ families.
For just a taste of that life, I opted for the hard hat and battery lamp kit before heading 140 metres underground in the cage for a Meet a Miner tour, which lasts up to 90 minutes, depending on how many questions your party asks. It is an intriguing clamber through the old workings of the colliery but when you finally land back above ground, you may just want to head outside to the
nature trail for some fresh air.
It’s worth going back inside to the above-ground permanent exhibitions illustrating the lives of mining families – including mock-ups of their terraced houses, complete with outside toilets, equipped with newspaper squares conveniently placed on a nail!
If you want a souvenir of your trip underground, £3 buys you the traditional miners’ brass check, which every visitor must take below ground with them.
www.experiencewakefield.co.uk
Eastern Airways flies to Leeds Bradford from Aberdeen and Southampton – approximately 45 minutes’ drive from Wakefield.
WIN a two-night break at wonderful Waterton Park Hotel, near Wakefield. PAGE 25.
Clockwise from top: Wakefield Cathedral; The Rhubarb Triangle and Other Stories: “GB. England. West Yorkshire. Wakefield. David Asquith. The Rhubarb Triangle. 2015”; National Coalmining Museum; Barbara Hepworth’s Square with Two Circles, Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
visityorkshire.com
© Martin Parr/Magnum Photos. Courtesy Martin Parr and The Hepworth Wakefield/hepworthwakefield.org
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Clay is in Dave Barker’s blood. So is infinite patience – and tact.
He became quickly obsessed with my bottom. He was afraid I was losing it.
“Watch your bottom now! Apply constant pressure to your bottom! Your bottom is far too big! Compress your bottom. Squeeze and lift it!”
He sponged me down. It was almost too late.
It was meant to be a work of art. It could very nearly – but for his masterly and timely intrusion – has turned out like a transporter malfunction on Star Trek.
More woebegone than Minoan, it had the potential to be worthy of the Generation Game. Looking more thrown-up than thrown. Certainly no priceless Borghese vase.
“It’s a slow day when someone doesn’t mention Brucie, the Generation Game and the famous potter’s wheel! Or the film, Ghost, added Barker, a third-generation potter from Stoke-on Trent, who teaches people to throw in the Master Craft Studio at the new £34m World of Wedgwood Visitors Centre, in Barlaston, Staffordshire.
The Finnish-owned manufacturing facility and complex still accounts for half of the total production of the iconic ceramic UK brand, founded in 1759.
At the new centre, guided soft-handedly by resident artisans like Dave, you can try your hand making a pencil box, a bud vase or a simple and sometimes even classically watertight bowl. Using balls of gooey Cornish clay, as used in traditional Wedgwood ware.
“If your cup fails it can be quickly turned over and turned into a Christmas tree bauble!” added David, whose father and grandfather were both local Pot Bank and Slip House (pottery factory) workers.
Your handiwork is dried and then put in a kiln for 24 hours and, a fortnight later, sent to you. You can also ornament it. A 250-year-old family business allows you to make your own family heirloom.
In the decorating studio you can create your own medium coffee saucer, votive plate or bespoke butter dish. Visiting the home of Wedgwood is a very hands-on experience.
Dave Barker continues the division of labour, which the company’s founder espoused. “Some people panic and are very nervous. Having seen the disasters on TV! And remembering school pottery classes. But they’re all amazed how good they can be. And what they can produce – with a bit of encouragement. I taught a Colombian family. And an elderly
lady who couldn’t believe what she had made. She was so scared of the wheel!”
In the adjoining Wedgwood Museum, saved largely by a public fund-raising campaign and grants, you can see one of the world’s finest ceramics collections – including the Apotheosis of Homer vase. For sale in the shop are repro items like a First Day vase (£3,250), a Chinoiserie Ginger Jar (£3,000), Pot Pourri Jar (a lot cheaper than the original) and a black basalt Three Graces table lamp at £2,550.
Wedgwood is very collectible. In 2009, one five-inch high chipped Wedgwood teapot was sold for $130,000. On it, it had No Stamp Act and Success to Trade In America. As well as a prominent abolitionist, Josiah was a supporter of free trade.
You can now go on an escorted or self-guided tour of the factory, chatting freely to tradespeople, like prestige raiser and gilder Christine Hughes who has worked for Wedgwood for 41 years. You meet prestige painters who introduce you to their squirrel hair brushes and 22ct German gold.
You walk through the factory floor, passing en route master handle-casters, engine turners, prestige throwers, stacked battes, Willet pumps and ex-Royal Doulton casting machines, as well as learning all about black stone bodies, fettling, saggars, biscuitware, caneware, jiggery, jolley, blungers and knockers.
As well as, of course, all you want to know but were afraid to ask about… diddling sticks.
What is now an international “luxurious and home lifestyle brand” is still essentially a community, with craftsmen and women using age-old manual skills. The factory is currently producing 20,000 pieces for the Presidential Palace in Dubai. US President Roosevelt commissioned Wedgwood to supply the White House. The Russian Government more recently too. Catherine the Great was a great fan of Wedgwood, placing an order worth £2,700 in 1773.
The new centre also has one of the best museum restaurants in the country. Manager Mike Keane and chef Tom Sawyer’s The Dining Hall is based on the original staff canteen. Its walls are decorated with original moulds, black and white photographs and original clocking-in machines.
With a little help from his wife’s dowry, Josiah Wedgwood originally founded the company in the Ivy House works, in Burslem. His father was a potter. The business moved in 1762, relocating to Etruria, where you can still see the bone and flint grinding mill. Wedgwood was inspired by ancient pottery collected by his friend , Sir William Hamilton, British Ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples. Designers like
Kevin Pilley visits the Potteries to try his hand at fashioning clay at the new Wedgwood Visitor Centre…
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John Flaxman reworked ancient motifs.
Josiah perfected “cream ware” earthenware, which took the eye of Queen consort, Charlotte, wife of George III. The Queensware range is typified by an embossed ivy leaf or similar border.
Wedgwood opened its first London showroom in 1765. By 1790 the company was exporting all over Europe. Josiah died in 1795, having had a leg amputated after smallpox
Inspired by the first century BC Portland Vase, he invented his signature jasperware (barium sulphate) with neo-classical reliefs in the 1770s.
In the early days, a third of the factory’s output was stolen by highwaymen. In 1812 came bone china. In 1865, majolica. Then tiles. The family became a dynasty, and still holds the royal warrants for tableware and giftware.
The Etruria Works, on the Trent and Mersey Canal, ran for 180 years. The motto of the works was Artes Etruriae Renascuntur (Arts of Etruria are reborn). The Barlaston factory was built in 1938.
The best place to stay is a mile up the road at The Upper House. The area was originally famous for its barge-building. Built in 1845 for Josiah’s grandson, Francis, who died in 1888, it has a
Portland stone cantilevered staircase, landscaped gardens, a woodland walk and rooms named after regular visitors
Ivor Novello and Charles Darwin, who was Wedgwood’s grandson.
Passing out of the family in 1913, the Upper House became a home for the elderly and the blind.
In the dining-room is a triptych of paintings by Rob Pointon, depicting Francis leaving for work on his horse, Jackdaw, and
his grandson Cecil playing in the grounds. Cecil grew up to become
the first mayor of Stoke. Six towns comprised the early 17th century
Potteries – Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton.
Thanks to the availability of clay, lead and coal – as well as the advent of the railways – the Wedgwoods became the fathers of commercial English potters. They were “Vase Makers General to the Universe”, their every work “a composition of excellence”, based on “purity, simplicity and antiquity”.
Their work continues to this day. For professionals and visitors alike.
I obeyed instructions. I listened to Dave. I concentrated on my crab claw grip. I tried to keep my elbows anchored into my side. Passionate about my art, my face turned a distinctive Staffordshire red-brown. And then, in the throes of the creative process, to an authentic pale Florentine blue.
And throughout it all, my teacher’s eyes never for one moment became glazed.
www.worldofwedgwood.comwww.theupperhouse.com
World of Wedgwood is about 40 miles from either Birmingham or East Midlands airports, both served by Eastern Airways.
Craftsman J Rhodes who worked at the old Wedgwood factory in Etruria for 57 years
World of Wedgwood Museum exterior
Museum dining hallPlate from the Wedgwood Prestige collection
Wedgwood Portland Vase
WIN a fabulous break at the heart of the sculpture triangle
Eastern Airways flies to Leeds Bradford from Aberdeen and Southampton
Eastern Airways Magazine has teamed up with the four-star Waterton Park Hotel & Spa and Walton Hall to offer one lucky reader and their companion a two-night break at the heart of Yorkshire’s “Sculpture Triangle”.
The hotel is set in rolling parkland with its own lake, a backdrop of ancient woodland and a championship golf course. It is the perfect place to relax, or to use as a base for sightseeing, or for a business meeting or event in tranquil surroundings.
Walton Hall is a gracious Georgian mansion on an island surrounded by a lake. It hosts the AA rosette Bridgewalk restaurant, excellent private dining and conference rooms, the relaxed and informal Charlie’s Bar, offering casual all-day dining, and excellent leisure facilities at lake level.
Waterton Park Hotel is a modern purpose-built hotel on the “mainland” with extensive conference and banqueting facilities.
The hotel boasts 63 wonderfully appointed bedrooms, most with excellent views over the grounds – 22 bedrooms are on the island, in Walton Hall, and 41 in the modern hotel. There are five meeting and conference rooms and even a romantic hideaway cottage in the hotel grounds.
The hotel’s luxurious new spa offers five treatment rooms and beauty and relaxation areas.
Waterton Park is well located, just four miles from the M1, six from the M62 or a short taxi ride from the centre of Wakefield. Leeds Bradford Airport is 26 miles, or an hour’s drive away.
Besides being at the very centre of the Sculpture Triangle, comprising The Hepworth Wakefield, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Henry Moore Galley, in Leeds, the National Trust’s magnificent Nostell Priory is also close by.
www.watertonparkhotel.co.uk
Our prize includes two nights bed and breakfast for two, plus dinner in the Bridgewalk restaurant including a complimentary bottle of house wine. Eastern Airways return flights to Leeds Bradford are also included if required. Please note that ground transfers are not included in the prize.
For your chance to win this great prize, just answer this easy question: in which building is Waterton Park Hotel’s Bridgewalk restaurant?
The first correct entry drawn at random will win. Send your answer to [email protected] with “Waterton Park competition” in the subject field. Please provide name, address and phone number and the flight number and date of your last flight with Eastern Airways. Closing date Friday June 24, 2016.
Prize to be taken by December 31, 2016, subject to availability of accommodation and flights. Public holidays and peak periods may be excluded. The stay will be in either Waterton Park Hotel or Walton Hall, subject to availability.
COMPETITIONAlex and Janet Durasow Chris Chambers
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It was eight years ago that James Martin recalled in an interview how, aged seven, he had told his grandfather he wanted to be a head chef by the time he was 30, have his own restaurant at 35 and own a Ferrari by 40. By the time he was just 24 he had realised all three childhood goals and today he shows no signs of slowing down, either in the kitchen or on the racetrack.
The TV chef – who lives near Winchester – has been busy with his latest project, Plates, Mates and Automobiles, a 20-date tour of the UK, which represents an accumulation of everything he’s learned and everything he loves. It is, says Martin, “the biggest thing I’ve ever done” – and though it’s a long way from his humble upbringing, it’s evident in his continuing love for hearty, homely meals and a good pud that Martin hasn’t forgotten his farmhouse food heritage.
Unsurprisingly, given his subsequent astronomical success as a chef and TV personality, Martin began to immerse himself in cooking as soon as he was able to hold a spoon. Demonstrating his culinary talents at a tender age, he was almost asked to leave a cookery class when he was 12 for serving flambéed chicken and mange-tout while his pre-pubescent classmates struggled to create fairy cakes. He went on to study catering at Scarborough College, coming top of his class for three consecutive years and being offered a job in London with Antony Worrall Thompson, one of the judges for his final exam.
His accomplishments, however, weren’t served up to him on a plate – as a Yorkshireman, Martin was taught from birth that you don’t get “owt for nowt” and “if you can walk you can work”. The hard graft paid off, it seems, as Martin was made head chef of the first Hotel du Vin, in Winchester, when he was just 22. Two years later, he began to appear on our screens in shows such as James Martin: Yorkshire’s Finest, and Ready, Steady, Cook. His affable nature and dry, self-deprecating humour made him an instant hit with viewers.
Martin’s big break came in 2006, when he began to front Saturday Kitchen on BBC One. Although he recently announced his intention of leaving, and bows out at the
end of March, the show attracted a weekly audience of around 3.5 million, and he described working on it as “the best job in the world”. He keeps his feet on the ground with his dishes, refusing to submit to the modern trend of what he calls “using liquid nitrogen and scaring people”. His work as executive chef at the Talbot Hotel in his home town of Malton, a position he held from 2012 to 2015, not only cemented Malton’s burgeoning reputation as a foodie destination but also allowed Martin the chance to source his favourite ingredients – from “Wakefield rhubarb to Whitby crab”– from local suppliers.
In everything he does, it’s clear that the spirit of Yorkshire still pounds through Martin’s veins, whether it’s during his aptly titled Home Comforts show or tackling Christmas dinner – or, as he calls it, “a glamourous Sunday lunch”. While he eschews extravagance, such as “fancy duck fat”, Martin’s happy to reply on traditional favourites, such as sage and onion stuffing and dripping.
If Martin remains staunchly traditional in the kitchen, in terms of his other all-consuming passion as an unrepentant petrol-head, he’s anything but. “I’ve been into cars ever since I was a small boy,” he once told The Daily Telegraph. “The bug really bit the first time I was allowed to drive a tractor… after that, there was no holding me back.” His first car,
an old Mini, cost him just £20, and as he was too young to drive on the roads, Martin “painted some flames on the side” and spent his days “rallying it” around the farm.
Once he acquired his first big pay cheque, he splashed out on an Audi S4 and a Lotus Elise – but his real passion remained Ferraris, and soon afterwards, aged 24, he bought his first – a 360. Six months later that Ferrari was gone, sold “to pay a tax bill”, but Martin had still achieved his dream well before his original target age.
He currently owns two Ferrari Daytonas and a 275 GTB/C, an ex-Le Mans car which is one of only seven ever made and the only model ever created with right-hand drive. He’s also known to take to the track, achieving his first ever race win at Brands Hatch Mini Festival, in 2013. It’s no wonder then that his name cropped up in discussions surrounding Jeremy Clarkson’s replacement at the head of BBC flagship show Top Gear, a position that eventually went to his long-term friend, Chris Evans. His ultimate motor? The Ferrari 250 SWB – a car whose asking price can run up to “ten million quid”, much to the wistful Yorkshireman’s chagrin.
Despite Martin’s continued insistence that “women were a distraction” when compared to his culinary successes and fervent automobile obsession, the 43-year-old has still managed to garner a bit of a reputation as a party boy. Martin’s past flames may well include movie mogul Barbara Broccoli and former Miss England Sally Kettle, but he’s adamant that his status as an eligible bachelor is undeserved.
“If people want to tag you a playboy then that’s up to them,” he told the Yorkshire Evening Post, “but the reality is different.” Indeed, Martin is more likely to have “slept on the sofa at my mum’s place after watching Coronation Street” than been seen bleary-eyed and stumbling outside a nightclub at 4am. “My private life is my private life,” he concludes, and the vagaries of fame are unlikely to change this dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshireman any time soon. “I’ve got a house in the country and you just make sure they’ve got gates… bloody big gates!”
FACT FILEJames Martin’s current food offerings are his Manchester restaurant and a premium bakery at Stansted Airport. He has previously owned a restaurant in Leeds and until recently fronted the kitchen at the Talbot Hotel, Malton. He is the Face of the Cookery Club on P&O’s Britannia and one of the cruise line’s Food Heroes.
Plates, Mates and Automobiles, James Martin’s UK tour, hit the road in February and has visited Newcastle, Harrogate, York, Bridlington, Grimsby, Nottingham, Sheffield, Bradford, Birmingham, Stoke, Croydon, Bournemouth, Brighton and Portsmouth.
Having been raised on a pig farm near Malton, North Yorkshire, James Martin may not have found brass among the muck, but the celebrity chef, host of BBC’s Saturday Kitchen and one-time Strictly semi-finalist hasn’t done too badly for himself. He talks to Jake Taylor about realising his goals and indulging in his passion for cookery and cars…
‘THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD’
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capital to see some of the most exotic animals in the Edinburgh Zoo collection, as Alison Daniels found on a visit to the Highland Wildlife Park, near Aviemore…
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The team’s reintroduction work is on a global scale, with chicks from the park’s resident species of Asian pheasants regularly being released into the wild in northern India in partnership with a World Pheasant Association project. Several park-bred European bison have been reintroduced into a historic habitat in Romania where they became extinct in the wild 90 years ago.
The park’s Head of Living Collections, Doug Richardson, explains the delicate balance between running the park as a viable business and its conservation work. “Globally, conservation is about making the most of limited resources. It’s much easier to raise funds for charismatic mammals, like pandas or tigers, than for an obscure Planarian flatworm, though they may be just as important. We look to conserve larger mammals and key species and hope that in doing so there’s a trickle-down benefit for other species sharing the same habitat.
“Some private breeders aid conservation efforts, but in other cases, a lack of understanding leads to serious inbreeding. For example, there are now more tigers being kept by private individuals in Texas than there are tigers in the wild. Most of them are hybrids and couldn’t be used in managed breeding programmes because they are a mix of species. Many are so inbred that their eyesight is so poor that they couldn’t hunt in the wild.
“Conservation means we need to increase a species’ numbers carefully. At the park, we maintain the European stud books for several species, allowing zoos and conservation programmes to draw on the widest possible gene pool.”
One of the most interesting breeding programmes planned by the park exemplifies this delicate balance between the need for scientific conservation and generating funding from the public’s insatiable desire to coo over baby animals. Doug and his team are currently exploring the possibility of bringing Amur leopards to the site. These animals are happy with extreme climates and would have a special unheated, low-carbon footprint enclosure built from the park’s own timber. Should they breed, the cubs would be raised without ever seeing a keeper, making them good candidates to be released into the wild in the Russian Far East. Visitors would be able to see the cubs via a video feed, rather than in an enclosure. It’s another example of the way the Highland Wildlife Park puts the needs of animals and conservation first.
Because captive populations and social structures need to be balanced and groups of animals should not be too closely related, there’s a trade in surplus animals throughout reputable zoos and wildlife parks. Aside from the costs associated with transportation, the animals are freely traded, being rehomed into the best environment for any given individual.
The park’s staff take their conservation role seriously, and the venue boasts the lowest carbon footprint of any similarly sized wildlife preserve and encourages local industries and forestry businesses and nearby villages to donate food and timber by-products that would otherwise go to landfill. Instead, the elk gleefully strip the bark from felled branches, while the polar bears enjoy giant ice lollies made from unwanted sand eel and salmon scraps from a nearby fish-processing company, and chunks of fat courtesy of a local butcher’s trimmings. The polar bears also welcome donations of safety helmets, which make great pool toys.
It’s 30 years since the Royal Scottish Zoological Society, which also runs Edinburgh Zoo, took over the Highland Wildlife Park. Since expanding the collection to include species from across the world eight years ago, visitor numbers have more than doubled, allowing the park’s team to improve facilities and increase their conservation efforts.
Indeed the park has been transformed over the past decade from a ramshackle private attraction to a world leader in the conservation of animals and birds, which thrive in cold-weather climates. Nestled in the heart of the Cairngorms, just south of Aviemore, the 85-hectare park is home to more than 30 cold weather adapted species, with the staff managing active conservation and educational programmes.
There’s a fascinating range of animals and birds for the casual visitor or school groups to discover. The major attractions – known in the conservation world as “charismatic mammals” – include polar bears, European grey wolves, Amur tigers, lynx and snow leopards, as well as appealing little bundles of fur like Arctic foxes, red pandas, Scottish wildcats and a playful troupes of Japanese macaques.
Herds of forest reindeer, yak, deer, elk, Bactrian camels and the unpronounceable Przewalski’s wild horse stroll alongside the vehicles driving round the park’s viewing circuit, randomly causing minor traffic jams. Alongside the big names, there are some remarkable lesser known creatures, such as the goat-like Himalayan tahr and the Mishmi takin, a shambling goat-antelope apparently assembled from a mammalian spare parts box.
Despite a considerable amount of academic research and valuable fieldwork, legitimate zoos in the UK are in the unenviable position of being excluded from government funding. Even national animal collections are reliant on visitors, charitable donations and occasional research grant funding.
In the wildlife park, each species is afforded a much larger run of space than that found in urban zoos, allowing the animals to stay away from visitors unless they choose to be seen, meaning the park’s inhabitants don’t suffer the stresses that can be associated with being on constant show. It’s clear that they enjoy the interaction with their keepers, who know each animal by name and individual temperament, and are unafraid by the park’s many visitors.
Aside from the day-to-day running of the park, with its timetable of feeding, vet visits, and the less glamourous activities of mucking out and “poo picking”, the park is deeply involved in breeding and restocking programmes across the world.
The first beavers to live in the wild in Scotland for more than 400 years came from the park in 2009. Following a careful reintroduction, they are now thriving on Forestry Commission land, in Knapdale, Argyll, and have successfully bred. The reintroduction has also improved the environment for other species through the beavers’ coppicing of trees and dam-building to improve water quality. The Scottish Government is currently deciding whether the beaver can be reintroduced into the country permanently.
The park is also involved in action plans to preserve the native Scottish wildcat, aiding the capture and reintroduction programme into isolated areas where domestic and hybrid cats have been removed, since interbreeding is the main cause of the reduction in the population of pure-bred wildcats. >>
The park maintains a wish-list of animal enrichment items on its website, seeking donations of everything from old sheds to jam, perfume, unwanted bungee ropes, traffic cones, huge pipes and even a portable x-ray machine. It’s about drawing on local resources to sustain a global conservation effort and the park punches well above its weight.
In the future, the team wants to bring in more cold weather adapted species, with the golden takin and the West Caucasian tur (a nocturnal mountain dwelling goat-antelope whose
numbers are down to between 4,000 and 6,000 in the wild) being top of Doug’s list.
In the meantime, nature is taking its course and the park is hoping for a bumper crop of bouncing babies this year, ensuring an increase in visitor numbers and providing valuable funds for conservation work. As Doug puts it: “We’re a zoo, but offer a very different visitor experience from most zoos. The scenery alone is worth the price of admission!”
www.highlandwildlifepark.org.uk
IT’S ABOUT DRAWING ON LOCAL RESOURCES TO SUSTAIN A GLOBAL CONSERVATION EFFORT AND THE PARK PUNCHES WELL ABOVE ITS WEIGHT.
Bactrian camel, red panda, polar bear and, below, northern lynx
The Scottish Wildlife Park is about two hours’ drive west from Aberdeen Airport, with Eastern Airways flights from
across the UK and Norway.
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With 2016 marking the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, VisitEngland has decided it should also be the Year of the English Garden. Olly Davy headed for Norfolk to explore its “magnificent seven” .
NORFOLK’S MAGNIFICENT SEVENThe low light, warmth of the room and gentle instrumental music conspire against my busy brain. Rosemary vapours waft beneath my nose, clearing my head like a rush of cool air, before the expert hands of the massage therapist transport me from cares of the world to a realm of utter relaxation. I was a massage newbie but now I understand what the fuss is about; the pampering session relaxes both body and mind and leaves me floating on air.
I’m in the Secret Garden Spa at Congham Hall Hotel, near King’s Lynn, Norfolk. The hotel’s garden contains more than 400 varieties of herb, including goat’s rue, once used to treat the plague. Many of the herbs, such as the rosemary I inhaled, are put to good use in scrubs and wraps for treating a common modern affliction – stress. Not that the previous two days had been stressful, mind you.
In this Year of the English Garden events are taking place across the country. To mark this celebration of horticulture, Congham Hall has devised a trail to help guests discover seven of the most magnificent gardens in Norfolk. Not one to shy from an exploration of the natural world, I followed the trail to experience the gardens for myself. As I slowly came around from my slumber-inducing massage, I cast my mind back over a wonderful weekend…
My adventure had begun at Gooderstone Water Gardens; a magical enclave of ponds, bridges and sprawling naturalistic planting,
where I hoped to spot a kingfisher but lacked the patience to stick it out in the hide. This haven was created in 1970 by local farmer Billy Knight from a meadow too damp to graze cattle. Now an eclectic selection of plants, including bamboos and rare trees, grace the gardens and provide a splendid retreat from the sharp edges of city life. My stroll led me to the tearoom, where choosing from the selection of cakes proved tough. “The plastic lids are to keep the drool off,” explained tea lady and baker, Jane, referring to the containers that held her wares.
A 30-minute drive away I found West Acre Gardens, a traditional walled garden in the grounds of a grand house. Wandering among the vibrant blooms, trees and shrubs I fancied myself a Victorian gentleman, lord of the manor, enjoying the results of green-fingered labour. Not my own, of course, though the on-site nursery provides inspiration for those with gardens and the sun clock, which I used to tell the time with my shadow, was an interesting diversion.
The day spent, I retreated to Congham Hall for dinner and was impressed by the opportunity to browse and order wine using a far more recent invention; a touchscreen tablet. I ate beef from the herd of Red Poll visible from the grounds of the hotel and chatted to the head chef, Nick, who described the pleasure of using the hotel garden’s produce in his cooking.
“We use fresh herbs in our dishes, and also to infuse oils and vinegars. Vegetables like pak choi and chard
Houghton Hall with Zhan Wang’s Scholar Rock inset
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make great accompaniments and we turn our apples into chutney. I hate wasting good food so I use as much of what we grow as possible and give away the rest.”
The following day kicked off in aromatic fashion at Norfolk Lavender, started in 1932 by local florist Linn Chilvers and now home to the national collection of lavenders. The aim of the project is to eventually include all known varieties of the plant. The swaying purple fields are a glorious sight when they flower in summer. Many lotions and potions are concocted with lavender oil extracted at the on-site distillery and sold in the shop.
I tucked my shirt in on arrival at the next destination – Sandringham – famous as the winter residence of the Queen. I didn’t want to be caught looking scruffy in the
splendid surroundings of the Georgian mansion, bought by George VII in 1862. While the house can be congested, with lines of shuffling sightseers, the gardens, lakes and woodland walks are an uncrowded delight. I was moved by the row of plaques on a wall in a quiet corner of the woods, erected in memory of favourite royal hounds.
My next stop was Pensthorpe Natural Park, former home of BBC’s Springwatch, where I met head gardener, Jonathan, in the Millennium Garden, designed by Piet Oudolf. He explained the challenge of preventing wildlife running amok through the formal garden.
“You only need to turn your back for a minute and there’s a new rabbit run or goose’s nest. It’s constant work stopping
those thugs taking over.”
The rest of the park is a wonderland of lakes and nature trails, with an abundance of wildlife.
I completed the trail at what turned out to be my favourite garden – Houghton Hall. This imposing Palladian mansion was built for the first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and the gardens are now home to an impressive collection of contemporary sculpture. Richard Long’s Full Moon Circle rests in the grass at the end of a sweeping lawn, while James Turrell’s Skyspace is an epic construction from which to contemplate the heavens. Walking towards the walled garden, I noticed something gleaming through the trees – Zhan Wang’s masterfully bonkers Scholar Rock.
Norfolk Lavender
Sandringham House
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Pensthorpe Natural Park
Back at Congham Hall I stumbled on an unexpected treat. The hotel’s night porter, and part-time falconer, was giving a display. I was overjoyed to get up close to the Transformer Owl, of viral video fame. This creature, more accurately known as the northern white-faced owl, has the uncanny ability, when threatened, to pull its feathers in and narrow its eyes, transforming its face in a terrifying way. Despite this spooky performance my weekend on the Norfolk Garden Trail was superb and left me feeling refreshed, invigorated and decidedly unruffled.
Eastern Airways flies to Norwich from Aberdeen.
The Congham Hall Summer Garden Offer includes two nights with dinner, bed and breakfast for two, two tickets to Sandringham, and a pot of herbs from Congham’s plot. The price is £499 per room, and it is available Sunday to Thursday, April 11 to June 30 2016, subject to availability.
www.conghamhallhotel.co.uk
Gooderstone Water Gardens
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As post-War austerity gave way to more adventurous ways in Britain, the Far East was at the vanguard in changing what we liked to eat. Now that oriental influence is changing conventions as to whom we choose to eat WITH.
If your perfect dining companion likes licking his or her lips, prefers not to use cutlery and has conversational skills limited to Miaow, then a new type of café that first appeared in Taiwan may be for you.
It was in 1998 that the Cat Flower Garden became the world’s first café in which humans share their dining space with feline friends. The concept was copied in Japan, where – stimulated by the difficulty of keeping pets in crowded cities – it became a craze, with an estimated 40 or so cafés in Tokyo alone.
Although in its relative infancy in the UK, the craze is catching on: Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium, in London, was probably the first, in 2014, and it now has a two-month waiting list for tables. But the UK’s cat café capitals are Newcastle and Edinburgh, each with two. Elsewhere, there are cafés in Nottingham and Manchester and a cat pub in Bristol. Enthusiasts are trying to get cafés off the ground in Birmingham and Llandudno. However Leicester’s first café closed its doors amid concerns over cat wellbeing and hygiene.
Newcastle’s two cat cafés reflect opposite ends of the feline spectrum: Mog on the Tyne is the brainchild of flamboyant owner Katie Jane Glazier, who spent a year researching cat cafés worldwide before drawing on best practice to open the city’s first such venture, on Pudding Chare, a narrow lane off the famous Bigg Market.
Mog on the Tyne shares a collection of ten assorted moggies with human guests. The city’s second cat café, CatPawCino, was opened by business student Sarah Zong with her own pedigree pussies after she came
A PURRFECT CUP OF COFFEE Britain is a nation of both cat and dog-lovers – we have about 8.5 million of each. But now you don’t have to own a cat to share its company – you can eat your lunch or tea with several of them as a new café craze sweeps in from the East. Stan Abbott reports…
across a cat café on a visit home to family in China.
Unlike Mog on the Tyne, CatPawCino is open to walk-in customers and so its attractive premises – on Newcastle Quayside, close to the Law Courts – provided me with my first taste of cat café living.
Entry is by payment of £5 up front towards kitty upkeep and this seems to be about the norm. Negotiating a kind of double-door cat “airlock” brought us into a very restful wood-floored space, with sofas and tables – and a lot of feline furniture, courtesy of interior designer, Krista Puranen Wilson. There were scratching posts, high-rise cat baskets and elevated walkways designed to keep the cats either amused or, should they prefer a bit of P & Q, out of the reach of human guests! Downstairs is a feline-free zone, with kitty merchandise.
We enjoyed elegant afternoon tea, which arrived from separate kitchen quarters, downstairs, through a hatch at the back of the café. It was a treat to hear Sarah share her
passion for the cats she has raised herself and for her
adopted home city.
The cats – conveniently alphabetically named Alfie, Betty,
Chocolate, Darvin and Ebby – choose to spread their affections
fairly frugally, but enough to both tease and captivate their human admirers. They are, respectively, a Ragdoll, British Blue, Point Birman (twins Chocolate and Darvin) and a rare Scottish Fold. A cat beginning with F was set to move in once old enough.
Sarah, who enjoyed the support of Newcastle University’s RISE UP careers service to help get CatPawCino off the ground, isn’t ruling out adding rescue cats to her aristocratic collection. However, she also has a human social mission. “I really want to give something back to the community that accepted me into its heart, so we donate a percentage of our profits to the local cat and dog shelter, and since research has shown that interaction with cats and other pets can improve the social skills and confidence of kids with autism, we offer free entry to autistic children,” she says.
The following day we report for our appointment at Mog on the Tyne – somewhere between late lunch and early afternoon tea and the last slot before the daily cat nap closure when the blinds are drawn. It’s raining, er, cats and dogs and we’re allowed entry just a little early.
Mog on the Tyne is probably better known than the slightly newer kid on the block, thanks in no small measure to Katie Jane having featured on a Channel 5 documentary about
Katie Jane at Mog on the Tyne and, right, Sarah from CatPawCino
crazy cat ladies. I’m delighted to discover that the star of the show in the busy café is a cat tastefully called Stan, who came from the rescue centre after a serious road accident. He’s hogging a human seat, while most of his mates are whizzing round at ceiling height. All have been rehomed from Westgate Ark rescue centre.
We liked the warm atmosphere and I realised that cats were acting as a great catalyst for human interaction. Yes, the food was lovely, especially the delicious speciality hot chocolate. Yes, the cat’s paw choccy print on the cappuccino was a nice touch and, of course, it was great fun engaging with all the moggies. But we got talking to fellow diners in a way we simply wouldn’t have had this been a humans-only venue.
Some were cat-lovers; some were cat-lovers
looking to share their interest with friends; some were families with children. We all found ourselves comparing notes about cat cafés and our own cats at home.
So, a good experience at both cafés and there does indeed appear to be room for two in one city. Indeed Mog on the Tyne welcomed 10,000 guests in its first five months, 4,000 ahead of the business plan.
But what do the cats make of it? After all, cats are supposed to be loners who enjoy pacing their own beat. But then I remind myself that cats certainly enjoy human company and can also be pretty gregarious – even in the wild or in their feral state – as anyone who has seen the street cats in Rome can testify. And although my own cats come and go as they please via the cat-flap, I know others whose cats never venture
outside. So I can see no real concerns about cat welfare and cats at both Newcastle cafés are monitored day and night.
I’m just a little surprised, given this commercial success (and the longer-standing popularity of the London cat café), that ventures in other cities seem to be relying on crowd-funding to get going.
Behind Katie Jane’s business model is some pretty savvy use of social media and some nifty commercial devices, like a contactless card machine linked to an iPad.
Indeed Katie Jane is so buoyed by her suc-cess that she now has her eyes on a second venue in “another northern city”. All, as they say, will no doubt be revealed in due course.
www.catpawcino.comwww.mogonthetyne.com
CatPawCino
When Stan Abbott last visited the intended site of England’s newest whisky distillery, it called for a good imagination. He found himself delighted with the transformation when he returned earlier this summer…
Rockliffe Hall – set in extensive riverside grounds – provides proof you don’t have to go far out of town to get right away from it all, as Stan Abbott found out…
SOMEWHERE FOR THE WEEKEND with Stan Abbott
ROCKLIFFE HALL: R&R within easy reach
Because Darlington claims it is “in the Tees Valley” you might expect the mighty river to enjoy a prominent position in the town as it heads across the plains on the final few miles of its route from the Pennines to the North Sea.
The fact that river actually forms only the southern boundary of the borough is surely good news, however, not least if you are sampling the delights of Rockliffe Hall.
While technically “in Darlington”, this distinctive golf and spa hotel stands at the edge of the village of Hurworth, just the length of an old stone bridge from Yorkshire, which begins on the far bank of the Tees.
Darlington 1883, the phoenix that rose from the ashes of the insolvent Darlington Football Club, retains the nickname, the Quakers, after the town’s strong Quaker tradition – a tradition that in some ways makes Darlington a bit of a curious hybrid. The north and east of the town are steeped in industrial tradition, while the south and west are typified by leafy avenues and substantial houses, many built under the influence of powerful Quaker Victorian entrepreneurs.
One such was the banker, Arthur Backhouse, and it was he who built Rockliffe Hall (originally named Pilmore Hall) amid extensive parkland in 1861. Both the hall and the parkland enjoyed, or suffered, a chequered 20th century, before Steve Gibson, owner of another football club – Middlesbrough FC – acquired them in 1997 to create a state-of-the-art training complex.
Plans for the renovation and extension of
the original hall to create a luxury hotel and spa, and golf course got the nod in 2006.
Choosing Rockliffe as the ideal easy-to-reach destination for a powerful injection of rest and relaxation, I was first impressed by how many others had made precisely the same choice on a chilly Sunday in the run-up to Christmas.
The attraction may well have been the hotel’s new Spa Garden, for which we had booked afternoon slots, alongside Neom Organics treatments, exclusive to Rockliffe.
The Spa Garden’s key feature is a pair of outdoor hot pools, one of which offers infinity views across parkland towards the river, with a variety of vigorous water massages to make you feel virtuous, even if only slightly. There’s something quite special about immersing yourself in warm water while all around you is cold, cold, cold.
Indoors, the glass-fronted sauna offers its own vistas, while there’s nothing quite like enjoying personal service while lying on a heated lounger. It was the perfect entrée to an hour-long full body massage.
What impresses most at Rockliffe is the real attention to service and this proves true across all facilities: hotel, spa, restaurant, and bar.
Rockliffe’s celebrated Orangery restaurant, under Chef Richard Allen boasts three AA rosettes and offers, in addition to à la carte, a variety of specialist menus, including seven-course tasting, pescetarian or vegetarian menus, as well as the Surprise, which is a bespoke seven-course offering customised to the tastes of your own table.
The Orangery is open Tuesday to Saturday and so we ate in the less formal surroundings of the Brasserie, where the real challenge lay in making a selection from so many tempting options, from which I will commend the black pudding Scotch egg and the Whitby crab from among the starters, and the venison loin and Moroccan lamb from the mains. Although Sunday night, the Brasserie too was busy, helping to create a very enjoyable atmosphere.
Just as enjoyable, though with low lighting and sumptuous seating rather than the Brasserie’s light airiness, was the drawing room bar, to which we retired for digestifs and banter with the friendly staff.
Rockliffe’s 350 acres are far more than merely decorative: there is, of course, the golf course, which is one of the longest and most challenging in the country and features three lakes, as well as reed beds and lots and lots of trees.
But if golf isn’t your bag, you could try your hand at the increasingly popular sport of Nordic walking, which – if you didn’t know – combines purposeful striding with the use of fixed-length walking poles to deliver the fitness kick to your whole body. Less demanding are fishing on the Tees or, in summer, croquet on the lawn.
Worth a mention are the hotel’s Woodland Mews, which offer the chance to combine the privacy of a self-catering cottage sleeping up to seven with the opportunity to use all the hotel and spa facilities, including the 50-piece Technogym.
You’ll gather that if chilling out is your primary objective, then Rockliffe’s extensive grounds, spa and lounges can speak for themselves. However, if you suffer from itchy feet, then there are plenty of places to visit within easy striking distance. Darlington is, of course synonymous with the birth of railways and the town’s Head of Steam museum at North Road station is
well worth a visit, as is the National Railway Museum’s number two site, at Shildon, a few miles out of town.
Head 15 miles south-west for the attractive historic market town of Richmond at the “gateway” to the northern Yorkshire Dales of Swaledale and Wensleydale, or a similar distance south-east to the Cleveland Hills. The city of Durham, with its magnificent cathedral is about 40 minutes away.
Rockliffe Hall is seven miles from Durham Tees Valley Airport, with frequent Eastern Airways flights to and from Aberdeen. Newcastle Airport is about an hour’s drive.
The hotel also offers a full business product, with fully-equipped meeting and conference rooms for ten to 250 delegates.
www.rockliffehall.com
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SCATSTA
STORNOWAY
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LEEDS BRADFORD
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JETSTREAM 41
Eighteen aircraft Seats 29 passengers Two turboprop engines Wingspan 19m (60ft)
Length 20m (63ft) Typical cruising speed,280 knots, at 20,000ft
SAAB 2000
Nine aircraft Seats 50 passengers Two jetprop engines Wingspan 24.3m (81ft)
Length 26.7m (89ft) Typical cruising speed, 370 knots, at 28,000ft
EMBR AER ERJ145
Three aircraft Seats 50 passengers Two turbofan engines Wingspan, 20m (65ft)
Length 30m (98ft) Typical cruising speed, 450 knots, at 35,000ft
THE FLEET
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Besides the airline’s scheduled service network in the UK and Norway, Eastern Airways also operates domestic services within France from Paris Orly to Rodez, in the department of Aveyron, in the south.
Our customers choose Eastern Airways because they want their journey to be as convenient, speedy and hassle-free as possible.
We aim to satisfy these key requirements by offering frequent services (up to four weekday departures, plus Sunday services), same day returns on most routes, and free hand lug-gage and hold baggage allowance.
Our highly trained cabin attendants also offer a fully complimentary in-flight drinks and branded snacks service, while customers with fully flexible tickets can enjoy complimentary lounge access at selected airports.
Our 30-minute check-in time, along with fast track security at selected airports, are a big plus when time is of the essence and queues at both will be short, enabling you to make the most of your ticketless travel, pioneered by Eastern Airways a decade ago.
Fast Track is currently available at Aberdeen,
Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds Bradford, South-ampton, East Midlands and Newcastle, and is a dedicated security channel for Eastern Airways passengers to use and avoid busy airport terminal security queues.
With Eastern Airways operating the largest number of scheduled services from Aberdeen, we offer exclusive use of our dedicated busi-ness lounge, located next to our departure gates. Executive lounge access is also offered at Birmingham, Cardiff, East Midlands, Leeds Bradford, Norwich and Southampton for pas-sengers travelling on fully flexible tickets.
As you board your aircraft you will see our liveried valet baggage cart for you to place larger items of hand luggage by the aircraft steps. Your hand luggage will be there for you on the valet baggage cart at your destination.
Once again our aim is to make your travel as pleasant an experience as possible and we wish you a most enjoyable trip.
…we'll make your journey easier and more enjoyable
FLY FOR LESSThe Eastern Airways 4-4-3 Route Pass offers savings for frequent flyers of up to 25 per cent when you buy four return tickets for the price of three.
The 4-4-3 Route Pass offers maximum flexibility, lounge access and fee-free changes, and is available on all Eastern Airways UK domestic services – as is our Zonal Route Pass, which offers even bigger savings of up to 40 per cent.
The Zonal Route Pass is for customers buying six return flights, or 12 one-way sectors, on the same route. You can pick and choose your flights, making as many changes as you need (subject to availability). The Zonal Route Pass is available on all domestic Eastern Airways routes and also comes with complimentary lounge access, where available.
The Air Discount Scheme (ADS) was brought in by the Scottish Government for the benefit of the remotest communi-ties in the Highlands and Islands and provides a discount of 50 per cent on the core air fare on eligible routes. Routes eligible with Eastern Airways are Stornoway to Aberdeen and Wick to Aberdeen.
For more information on flying for less, see www.easternairways.com, or contact your travel agent or our reservations team on 08703 669100.
LASER DEVICESA safety issue that has been raised in the airline industry and which has attracted some wider publicity recently is the number of laser attacks against aircraft. It is a matter about which the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is very concerned.
Targeting an aircraft with a laser is reckless, dangerous and also illegal. Just a microsec-ond of laser energy from a powerful laser source is enough to permanently damage the eye.
If you do happen to see a laser beam from the cabin or if it enters the cabin, you may be tempted to look at it. However, you should not look at the beam or try to locate its source. Just look away or look down towards the floor of the cabin. Do report the incident to your cabin crew.
Thanks for your attention.
SAFETY AND SECURITYAbove all else, we want you to enjoy flying with us and we’re confident that in the overwhelming majority of cases you will do so. However, while the vast majority of passengers flying in the world today behave impeccably, there is a greater awareness of isolated incidents of disruptive behaviour, sometimes dubbed “air rage”. While this isn’t a major problem at Eastern Airways, the safety and security of our passengers and crew is our number one priority and we don’t want our customers to experience any behaviour that makes them feel uncomfortable, or to be put in a situation that compromises safety.
Our Zero Tolerance policy is directed at disruptive behaviour, which might include smoking, drunkenness, aggression or abusive language towards a customer or a member of crew.
Our crews are fully trained to deal with this kind of incident and therefore we remind customers that to disobey a lawful com-mand given by a crew member is to commit an offence under the UK Air Navigation Or-der. Offenders who persistently misbehave on a flight will be handed to the appropriate
authorities on arrival and may face arrest and a heavy fine – or up to two years in jail. Severe restrictions will also be placed on their future travel with Eastern Airways.
Similarly, we remind customers that there is a strict No Smoking policy on board all of our aircraft and in all of our lounges. This includes the use of electronic cigarettes or any cigarette substitute device that emits a vapour or has a power source or produces heat and or a light. We do not permit electronic cigarettes to be charged in our lounges. Electronic cigarettes may be carried on board subject to the following conditions:• Carried on the person only • No refills • Strictly not permitted for use
ESSENTIAL TRAVEL
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SHAKESPEAR E TAKES CENTR E STAGEWilliam Shakespeare is synonymous with Stratford upon Avon and the legendary playwright and actor will be commemorated in his birthplace this year to mark the 400th anniversary of his death.
His family home in Stratford upon Avon, New Place, will be transformed and reimagined for a 21st century audience this Spring, telling the missing story of Shakespeare’s mature years as a successful writer and citizen of his home town.
The Royal Shakespeare Company is also opening a major new exhibition, aimed at immersing visitors in its history, and work has started to restore the Grade II listed Swan Wing of the company’s Stratford theatre, which dates back to 1879.
King Edward VI School is reopening Shakespeare’s school room and Guildhall, where the Bard was educated and watched his first piece of theatre.
www.shakespeares-england.co.uk
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Historic Black Gate keeps up with the times
n The exhibition SOS – Heroes of the Humber at Hull Martitime Museum looks at the individuals, volunteers and organisations that over the years have braved the elements to save lives and fought to improve safety at sea. Objects from Hull Museums’ collections illustrate individual acts of courage, notorious tragedies and rescues alongside major advances in the techniques used. The exhibition runs until Jun 5.
n In Our Own Words is the title of a special exhibition running at the National Coal Mining Museum for England, Wakefield, to May 8. The exhibition looks at the intriguing world of mining language and invites visitors to add their own words to the glossary and learn new ones from the museum’s team of former miners. www.ncm.org.uk
n The Tour de Yorkshire returns for a second year over the weekend of April 29-May 1. The 320-mile cycling race is split over three stages beginning in Beverley and finishing in Scarborough.Eighteen teams of eight riders will take part.
Well worth a visit since its comprehensive makeover is Newcastle’s Black Gate Museum, which now makes up a combined attraction with the Castle Keep, the two buildings being the surviving elements of the 12th century castle.
The venues also now boast a regular events programme, including, on April 3, a special screening in the Castle Keep of Robin Hood’s Prince of Thieves in honour of the late Alan Rickman, with all proceeds going to Marie Curie. The Black Gate hosts a seasonal Easter talk about Newcastle’s celebrated Vampire Rabbit, which can be found
above a doorway to the rear of St Nicholas’s Cathedral. Gail-Nina Anderson explores the strange traditions concerning rabbits and hares in folklore, religion and art, and speculates as to why Newcastle should have found itself with such a ferocious specimen.
The Castle Keep is the venue on June 4 and 5 for the British Othello championships. You might be forgiven in this anniversary year for thinking this might have something to do with Shakespeare. Othello is, however, a board game.
www.newcastlecastle.co.uk
Architect’s model of Shakespeare’s New Place
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n There’s a chance to catch a look at some of the best natural history photography while the National History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition makes its UK tour. The inspiring collection is at the Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry, to April 10; the National Museum Wales, to April 24; at Rheged, Penrith, from May 15 to July 3 and Gosport Museum, near Portsmouth, from July 9 to September 3. Wildlife Photographer of the Year is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London. Pictured above is the 2015 winner of the Birds category, The Company of Three, by Amir Ben-Dov. www.nhm.ac.uk
Nights at the Museums If you enjoyed Night at the Museum and its sequels, then you may fancy putting the nights of May 11-14 in your diary as that’s when museums across the country will open their doors to after-hours visitors.
Participating venues include Cusworth Hall, Doncaster, where you can find out how the servants lived during the First World War. You can enjoy a twilight tour of Erasmus Darwin’s Georgian house, at Lichfield; a torchlight tour of Bursledon Brickworks Industrial Museum, Southampton; or enjoy the chance to explore Fort Nelson and its armouries, at Fareham. Compton Verney, Warwick, will be opening its Shakespeare in Art exhibition or you can enjoy Transports of Delight at Cannock Chase. Blood on the Beach promises a night of intrigue and murder at RNLI Henry Blogg Musuem, Cromer, while Newcastle and Gateshead’s Late Shows promise a cultural trail across the city.
www.museumsatnight.org.uk
Attenshun!The world’s first Sergeant Bilko museum has opened – in Coventry.
The museum, located in the Fargo Creative Village and devoted to the famous bald, bespectacled fast-talking American army motor pool sergeant, is the brainchild of 50-year-old Bilko superfan and Phil Silvers memorabilia collector, Steve Everitt.
Exhibits include an authentic pair of Bilko spectacles (worn by Silvers privately off-stage), a velvet smoking jacket and red waistcoat, as well as a signed Master Sergeant Army uniform, scripts, books, photographs, merchandising and even Silvers’s membership card for the Automobile Club of South California. KP
www.fargovillage.co.uk
LOOK AGAIN IN ABERDEENLook Again is Aberdeen’s visual art and design festival showcasing innovative and imaginative artwork. The new festival first ran in 2015, when a highlight was the Look at Me sculpture trail, which saw seven artists commissioned to re-dress six of the city centre’s civic Victorian sculptures.
In 2016, Look Again will turn architectural and urban features in the city into new pieces of artwork.
Six new urban interventions will be commissioned in response to the architectural heritage of the city, highlighting architectural and urban features. Each of the commissioned artists will be invited to respond to the architecture itself, to a street name, to architectural terminology, to historical references, material, scale, light and reflection and also to the internal workings of a space and its place.
A temporary mirrored pavilion will also be placed in the city’s Castlegate, reflecting the historical architecture of the area.
www.lookagainfestival.co.uk
LEFT ‘Guardian’ William Wallace Rosemount Viaduct, Aberdeen, redressed by Helen Schell – part of last year’s Look at Me sculpture trail
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Airport 0844 481 6666 www.aberdeenairport.com
Eastern Airways flights to Bergen, Cardiff, Durham Tees Valley, East Midlands, Humberside, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle, Norwich, Southampton, Stavanger, Stornoway, Wick
Tourist/Local Info 01224 900490 www.visitaberdeen.com
ABERDEEN
WHERESeven miles north-west of the city centre, off the A96. Regular buses into the city centre. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT Aberdeen Maritime Museum, Shiprow; Tolbooth Museum, Castle St; Rendezvous Gallery, Forest Ave.
STAY AT Rox Hotel, Market St; Skene House Hotel suites, various locations; Malmaison; Park Inn by Radisson; Raemoir House Hotel, Banchory; Crowne Plaza Aberdeen Airport Hotel
SHOP AT Juniper (gifts, jewellery), Belmont St; Aberdeen Antique Centre, South College St.
DRINK AT The Monkey House, Union Terr; Pearl Lounge, Dee St; The Globe, North Silver St; The Prince of Wales, St Nicholas Lane.
EAT AT Prohibition, Langstane Pl; Stage Door Restaurant, North Silver St; Cinnamon, Union St; Manzil, King St; Soul, Union St; The Tippling House, Belmont St.
WHAT’S ON Aberdeen Fashion Week, Crowne Plaza Aberdeen Airport, Apr 23-24; Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival, Apr 28-May 2; Aberdeen 30th CAMRA Beer Festival, May 19-21.
Spirit of Speyside
Airport 0871 882 1121 www.newcastleinternational.co.uk
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen, Birmingham, Cardiff. Onward connections to Bergen, Stavanger, Stornoway, Wick
Tourist/Local Info 0191 277 8000 / 0191 478 4222 www.visitnewcastlegateshead.com
NEWCASTLE
WHERESeven miles north-west of the city centre. Metro rail link every few minutes to the city, Gateshead, the coast and Sunderland. Half-hourly bus service. Taxi fare to city, approx £12. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT Great North Museum, Centre for Life, Newcastle; Gateshead Quays for the Baltic and Sage Gateshead.
STAY AT Sandman Signature, Hotel Indigo, Jesmond Dene House, all Newcastle; Hilton, Gateshead.
SHOP AT Jules B, Jesmond; Cruise, Princess Square, Newcastle; Van Mildert, MetroCentre and Durham.
DRINK AT Crown Posada, Side; The Forth, Pink Lane; Bridge Hotel, Castle Garth – all Newcastle.
EAT AT House of Tides, Quayside; Blackfriars; Caffè Vivo (Live Theatre); Red Mezze, Leazes Park Rd; Peace and Loaf, Jesmond – all Newcastle.
WHAT’S ON Gateshead International Jazz Festival 2016, Sage Gateshead, Apr 15-17; Investec Test Match – England v Sri Lanka, Chester-le-Street, May 27-31.
WHEREOne mile from the centre of Wick, half an hour’s drive from Thurso. Main bus and rail stations are near to Wick centre serving most places in Caithness. Trains to Thurso and Inverness. Post bus operates Thurso-Wick-Airport. Car hire: Dunnets offers airport pick-up and drop-off, 01955 602103.
VISIT Wick Heritage Museum; St Fergus Gallery, Sinclair Terr; Pulteney Distillery, Huddart St.
STAY AT Ackergill Tower, Wick; Mackays Hotel, Wick; The Brown Trout Hotel, Station Rd, Watten, near Wick.
SHOP AT John O’Groats (pottery, knitwear); Rotterdam St, Thurso (20 miles).
DRINK AT Cocktail Bar, Mackay’s Hotel, Wick; the Alexander Bain Wetherspoons, Wick.
EAT AT Bord de l’Eau, Market St, Wick; Le Bistro, Thurso; Captain’s Galley, Scrabster (22 miles).
WHAT’S ON Spring Exhibition, The Blue Tree Gallery, Wick, Apr 7; Watten Spring Craft Fair, Watten Village Hall, Apr 10; The New Caithness Armed Forces Gala, Riverside Park, Wick, Jun 25.
Airport 01955 602215 www.hial.co.uk/wick-airport.html
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen. Onward connections to Bergen, Durham Tees Valley, East Midlands, Humberside, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle, Norwich, Stavanger, Stornoway
Tourist/Local Info 0845 22 55 121 www.wicktown.co.uk
WICK JOHN O’GROATS
Ackergill TowerHebridean Celtic Festival
Airport 01851 702256 www.hial.co.uk/stornoway-airport
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen. Onward connections to Bergen, Cardiff, Durham Tees Valley, Humberside, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle, Norwich, Stavanger, Wick
Tourist/Local Info 01851 703088 www.visitouterhebrides.co.uk
STORNOWAY
Jesmond Dene House
WHERETo the east of the town. Taxis and car hire are available at the airport. No weekend flights. Carhire Hebrides: 01851 706 500.
VISIT Stornoway Fish Smokers, Shell St; Woodlands Centre, Lews Castle grounds; An Lanntair Arts Centre, Kenneth Street, Stornoway.
STAY AT Hotel Hebrides, Tarbert; Royal Hotel, Cromwell St, Stornoway; Scarista House, west Harris; Auberge Carnish, Uig.
SHOP AT Callanish Jewellery, Point St; This ’n That, Cromwell St; Borgh Pottery, Borgh (20 miles).
DRINK AT Chili Chili cocktail and vodka bar, Era, South Beach; The Carlton Lounge, Francis St. (Both in Stornoway)
EAT AT Digby Chick, Bank St; Golden Ocean, Cromwell St; Thai, Church St. (All in Stornoway)
WHAT’S ON Stornoway 10k, Half Marathon and Fun Run, May 28; Uig Gala Day, July 2; Hebridean Celtic Festival, various venues, July 13-16.
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Airport 01325 332811 www.durhamteesvalleyairport.com
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen. Onward connections to Bergen, Stavanger, Stornoway, Wick
Tourist/Local Info01642 729700 / 264957 www.visitmiddlesbrough.com
DURHAM TEES VALLEY
Rockliffe Hall
Airport 0844 887 7747 www.humbersideairport.com
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen. Onward connections to Bergen, Stavanger, Stornoway, Wick
Tourist/Local Info 01482 486600 www.visithullandeastyorkshire.com www.visitlincolnshire.comwww.yorkshire.com
HUMBERSIDE
WHEREFifteen miles east of Scun-thorpe, 20 miles south of Hull, 16 miles west of Grimsby, 30 miles north of Lincoln. Regular bus services to major towns. Barnetby Station three miles from airport with Intercity con-nections via Don caster. Approx taxi fare to Hull £26. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT Museums Quarter, Hull; The Deep, Hull; Lincoln Castle and Cathedral; Ferens Art Gallery, Hull.
STAY AT Forest Pines Hotel, Broughton; Cave Castle Hotel, Brough; Willerby Manor, Willerby; The White Hart, Lincoln.
SHOP AT Bailgate and Steep Hill area, Lincoln; Henri Beene, Abbeygate, Grimsby.
DRINK AT The Wig & Mitre, Steep Hill, Lincoln; Ye Olde Black Boy, High St, Hull.
EAT AT Figs Restaurant, Cleethorpes; Brackenborough Hotel & Restaurant, Louth; Wintering-ham Field, Winteringham; Pipe and Glass, South Dalton.
WHAT’S ON Heart of the Wolds Cycle Sportive, Driffield Showground, Apr 24; 1940s Summer Festival, Bridlington, Jun 12; Beverley Folk Festival, Jun 17-19.
Lincoln Castle and Cathedral National Civil War CentreEngland v Sri Lanka
WHERENine miles north-west of Leeds centre, seven miles from Bradford. Regular Airlink 757 bus from bus and rail stations to terminal. Taxi time 25 mins. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT Royal Armouries, Leeds; Leeds City Museum, Millennium Square; National Media Museum, Bradford; Salts Mill, Saltaire.
STAY AT DoubleTree by Hilton, Leeds; Radisson Blu, The Headrow, Leeds; the New Ellington, Leeds; Dubrovnik boutique hotel, Oak Avenue, Bradford.
SHOP AT Retro Boutique, Headingley Lane, Leeds; Harvey Nichols, Briggate, Leeds; Victoria Quarter, Leeds.
DRINK AT Baby Jupiter, York Place, Leeds; Haigys, Lumb Lane, Bradford.
EAT AT Chandelier by Mumtaz, Clarence Dock, Leeds; Brasserie Blanc, Sovereign St, Leeds.
WHAT’S ON Handbags and Gladrags exhibition, Bradford Industrial Museum, until April 17; Leeds Indie Food Festival, May 12-30; Investec Test Match - England v Sri Lanka, Headingley, May 19; Ale Trail at Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, May 28-30.
Airport 0871 919 9000 www.eastmidlandsairport.com
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen. Onward connections to Bergen, Stavanger, Wick
Tourist/Local Info 08444 775678 www.visitderby.co.uk www.experiencenottinghamshire.comwww.visitleicester.info
Airport 0871 288 2288 www.leedsbradfordairport.co.uk
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen and Southampton. Onward connections to Bergen, Stavanger, Stornoway, Wick
Tourist/Local Info 0113 242 5242 www.visitleeds.co.ukwww.yorkshire.com
EAST MIDLANDSLEEDS BRADFORD
WHERETwelve miles from both Derby and Nottingham, just off the M1 junction 24. Rail stations Lough borough, Long Eaton, Not tingham and Derby are a short bus/taxi ride from EMA. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT King Richard III Visitor Centre, Leicester; National Civil War Centre, Newark; Nottingham Contemporary, Weekday Cross; Creswell Crags, Worksop; QUAD, Cathedral Quarter, Derby.
STAY AT Radisson Blu at airport; Cathedral Quarter Hotel, St Mary’s Gate, Derby.
SHOP AT Paul Smith, Low Pavement, Nottingham; The Artisan’s Studio, Arnold, Nottingham.
DRINK AT Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, below Nottingham Castle; The Water-front, Canal St, Nottingham.
EAT AT Loch Fyne, King St, Nottingham; Red Hot World buffet and bar, Corner House, Nottingham; Chef and Spice, Andrewes St, Leicester.
WHAT’S ON St George’s Festival, Leicester, Apr 23; European Archery Championship, Nottingham, May 24-29; Bearded Theory festival, Catton Hall, Derbyshire, May 26-29; Aegon Open Nottingham Tennis Tournament, Jun 4-25.
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WHEREFive miles east of Darlington and ten miles west of Middlesbrough. Taxi fare to Darlington approx £8. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) Centre Square; Locomotion, the National Railway Museum at Shildon; Hartlepool’s Maritime Experience, Historic Quay.
STAY AT Rockliffe Hall, Hurworth on Tees; Headlam Hall, near Darlington; Crathorne Hall Hotel, Yarm; Wynyard Hall.
SHOP AT Psyche, Linthorpe Rd, Middles brough; The House, Yarm High Street; Leggs, Skinnergate, Darlington.
DRINK AT George and Dragon, Yarm; Black Bull, Frosterley.
EAT AT Raby Hunt, Summerhouse; Sardis, Northgate, Darlington; Dun Cow Inn, Sedgefield; The Orangery, Rockliffe Hall.
WHAT’S ON Indigenous Australians, Captain Cook Birthplace Museum, Mar 22-Oct 30; Teesside Festival 2016, dance festival for Salsa, Bachata & Kizomba, Apr 15-17; Middlesbrough Mela 2016, Jul 16-17.
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Airport 01446 711111 www.cardiff-airport.com
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen, Newcastle. Onward connections to Bergen, Stavanger, Stornoway, Wick
Tourist/Local Info 02920 873573 www.visitcardiff.com www.southernwales.com
CARDIFF
WHERETwelve miles west of Cardiff, ten miles from Junction 33 on M4. Rail link, every hour, connects airport to Cardiff Central and Bridg end. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT Cardiff Castle; Cardiff Bay Visitor Centre, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay; Norwegian Church Arts Centre, Cardiff Bay; Dr Who Experience, Cardiff Bay.
STAY AT Peterstone Court, in the Usk Valley; St David’s Hotel & Spa, Havannah St, Cardiff Bay.
SHOP AT St Mary Street for specialist shops; Splott Market (weekends), SE of city centre.
DRINK AT Pen and Wig, Park Grove; Park Vaults, Park Place.
EAT AT The Potted Pig, High St; ffresh, Wales Millennium Centre; Purple Poppadom, Cowbridge Rd East.
WHAT’S ON Cardiff Kids Literary Festival, Apr 16-24; Joust!, Cardiff Castle, Jun 18-19; Cardiff International Food and Drink Festival, Roald Dahl Plass, Jul 8-10.
Dr Who Experience
Airport 0870 040 0009 www.southamptonairport.com
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen and Leeds Bradford.
Tourist/Local Info 023 8083 3333 www.discoversouthampton.co.uk
SOUTHAMPTON
WHEREFive miles north of city. Parkway Station beside terminal, three trains hourly to Southam pton and London Waterloo. Buses hourly to the city. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT SeaCity Museum, Havelock Rd; Tudor House & Garden, Bugle St; Solent Sky, Hall of Aviation, Gilbert Rd South.
STAY AT The White Star Tavern and Dining Rooms, Oxford St; Grand Harbour Hotel, West Quay Rd; Best Western Chilworth Manor.
SHOP AT WestQuay Shopping Centre, city centre; Antiques Quarter, Old Northam Rd; The Marlands Shopping Centre, Civic Centre Rd.
DRINK AT The Cellar, West Marland Rd; The Duke of Wellington, Bugle St; The Pig in the Wall, Western Esplanade.
EAT AT Olive Tree, Oxford St; SeaCity Museum café, Havelock Road; Coriander Lounge, Below Bar.
WHAT’S ON Common People festival, Southampton Common, May 28-29; Beasts or Best Friends: Animals in Art, City Art Gallery, Apr 2-Sep 14.
Tudor House
Airport 01603 411923 www.norwichairport.co.uk
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen. Onward connections to Bergen, Stavanger, Stornoway, Wick
Tourist/Local Info 01603 213999 www.visitnorwich.co.uk
NORWICH
WHEREThree miles north of the city. Hourly bus service into the city centre. Approx taxi fare to Norwich £7. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT Norwich Cathedral, The Close; Norwich Castle, Elm Hill; Sandringham Estate, Norfolk; Norwich Puppet Theatre, Whitefriars, Norwich.
STAY AT The Maids Head Hotel, Tombland; De Vere Dunston Hall Hotel & Golf Club, Ipswich Rd; Marriott Sprowston Manor Hotel & Country Club; Barnham Broom Hotel & Spa, Honingham Rd; Norfolk Mead Hotel, Coltishall.
SHOP AT Jarrold’s, London St; Ginger Ladies Wear, Timberhill.
DRINK AT The Fat Cat, West End St; The Adam & Eve, Bishopgate; The Wine Press, Woburn Court, Guildhall Hill; The Last Wine Bar, St Georges St.
EAT AT Tatlers, Tombland; Mambo Jambo, Lower Goat Lane; Umberto’s Trattoria Italia, St Benedicts St.
WHAT’S ON Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2016, May 13-29; Norfolk & Norwich Open Studios, May 28-Jun 8; Shakespeare Festival, Norwich Cathedral, Jul 15-16.
Norwich Cathedral
WHERESix miles east of the city, off Junction 6 of the M42. Connected by free Air-Rail Link monorail system to Birmingham International Station for trains to Birmingham and Coventry. For car hire see Europcar.co.uk
VISIT Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, (BMAG), Chamberlain Sq; Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, Vyse St, Hockley; Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum, Millennium Point.
STAY AT Hotel Indigo, The Cube; Radisson Blu, Holloway Circus, Queensway; Marriott, Hagley Rd; Staying Cool, Rotunda.
SHOP AT Selfridges (Bullring); Harvey Nichols (Mailbox).
DRINK AT Bank, Brindley Pl; The Tap and Spile, Gas St.
EAT AT San Carlo, Temple St; Opus, Cornwall St.
WHAT’S ON Flatpack Film Festival, city wide, Apr 18-24; International Dance Festival, various venues, Birmingham, May 1-22; City of Colours Street Art Festival, Birmingham, Jun 18; BE (Theatre) Festival, Birmingham, Jun 21-25.
Airport 0871 282 7117 www.bhx.co.uk
Eastern Airways flights to Newcastle
Tourist/Local Info 0844 888 3883 www.visitbirmingham.com
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Classic Motor Show
WHEREEastern Airways operates under contract for the oil industry to both Scatsta and Sumburgh Airports. Scatsta is 24 miles north-west of Lerwick, a few miles from the Sullom Voe oil terminal. Sumburgh is the islands’ commercial airport, located at the southern tip of Mainland, and also 24 miles from Lerwick. For hire car visit www.boltscarhire.co.uk or call 01595 693 636 (note that there are no on-airport facilities at Scatsta).
VISIT Mareel, Lerwick; Muckle Flugga, Unst, the northernmost tip of Britain; Shetland Museum, Lerwick; Jarlshof, Grutness (both Mainland).
STAY AT Busta House Hotel, Brae; Saxa Vord Resort, Unst; Scalloway Hotel, Central mainland.
SHOP AT Shetland Fudge, Lerwick; Jamieson & Son Knitwear, Lerwick; Valhalla Brewery, Saxa Vord.
DRINK AT Mid Brae Inn, Brae; The Lounge Bar, Lerwick; Kiln Bar, Scalloway.
EAT AT Busta House Hotel, Brae; Saxa Vord Resort, Unst.
WHAT’S ON Shetland Folk Festival, Apr 28-May 1; Shetland Classic Motor Show, Lerwick, Jun 2-7; JAWS Festival – jazz and world sounds – Jun 5-14.
Sumburgh Airport 01950 460 905www.hial.co.uk/sumburgh-airport/
Frequent daily charter services to Aberdeen, operated by Eastern Airways for the oil industry.
Tourist/Local Info 01595 693434 visit.shetland.org
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Airport + 47 67 03 10 00 www.avinor.no/en/airport/stavanger
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen. Onward connections to Cardiff, Durham Tees Valley, East Midlands, Humberside, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle, Norwich, Stornoway, Wick
Tourist/Local Info +47 51 97 55 55 www.regionstavanger.com
STAVANGER
Norway Chess
Airport + 47 67 03 15 55 www.avinor.no/en/airport/bergen
Eastern Airways flights to Aberdeen. Onward connections to Cardiff, Durham Tees Valley, East Midlands, Humberside, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle, Norwich, Stornoway, Wick
Tourist/Local Info +47 55 55 20 00 www.visitbergen.com
BERGEN
WHERE Bergen airport Flesland is approximately 12 miles south-west of the centre of Bergen. The airport is served by airport and scheduled buses, boat and taxi. For car hire see Europcar info on back page.
VISIT Troldhaugen, the home of composer Edvard Grieg. Norway in a Nutshell – a short tour (ideally three days) of some the dramatic scenery nearby, including the Breathtaking Flam Railway.
STAY AT Radisson Blu Royal or the mid-market Thon Bergen Brygge, both on the old quayside.
SHOP AT Shop at Galleriet in the city centre; Kløverhuset for clothes.
DRINK AT Holberg Stuen or Zachariasbryggen, both in Bryggen.
EAT AT Potetkjelleren, Bellevue Restaurant, Enhjørningen Restaurant.
WHAT’S ON Bergen City Marathon, Apr 30, Bergen International Festival, May 25-Jun 8; Night Jazz, May 26-Jun 4.
Troldhaugen
WHERENorway’s fourth largest city lies on the country’s south-west coast. The airport is just nine miles out of town and is served by a regular shuttle bus. For car hire see Europcar info on back page.
VISIT Pulpit Rock – a natural rock formation that overlooks the Lysefjord; Norwegian Petroleum Museum, Kjeringholmen, 4001 Stavanger.
STAY AT The Clarion, Myrhegaarden, Skagen Brygge, all in the city centre; Sola Strand Hotel, on the beach, near the airport.
SHOP AT Kvadrat, Norway’s biggest shopping centre is just seven miles south of Stavanger.
DRINK AT Dickens, Skagenkaien; Newsman, Skagen 14.
EAT AT Sjøhuset Skagen – specialises in traditional Norwegian food; Tango, Nedre Strandgate.
WHAT’S ON Stavanger Wine Festival, Apr 6-9; Vårfest spring festival, Sandnes, Apr 7-9; Norway Chess 2016, Apr 18-30; Maijazz 2016 Jazz Festival, May 3-8.
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F LY L O C A L LY T O N O R W AYNow better connected to Stavanger and Bergen via Aberdeen
Flights from Durham Tees Valley, Cardiff, East Midlands, Humberside, Leeds Bradford, Newcastle, Norwich, Southampton, Stornoway and Wick John O’Groats
easternairways.com why fly any other way?
Connecting flights from Aberdeen to Stavanger and Bergen are operated by Widerøe
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ESSENTIAL GUIDEIt’ll be 300 years in August since the relatively humble birth of a man who would go on to be dubbed “England’s greatest gardener”. In our Essential Guide, we look at just a few of Capability’s many designs, focussing on those that are both nearest to Eastern Airways destinations and bestowed with easy public access.
Chatsworth Park Photo: Matthew Bullen
Lancelot “Capability” Brown was the son of a land agent and a chambermaid on the Kirkharle, Northumberland, estate of Sir William Lorraine. Having begun his gardening life as an after-school apprentice in Sir William’s kitchen garden, Lancelot headed south at the tender age of 23 to embark on a career that would see him responsible – in whole or part – for more than 250 garden designs.
He effectively helped the landed gentry to remodel the face of the English landscape. However, it was not for this reason that he acquired the Capability moniker. Rather, it was because of his habit of telling his landed clients that their estates had great “capability” for landscape improvement.
His hallmark was the replacement of formal gardens with more naturalistic compositions that sought to weave the stately home into a new informal setting,
featuring serpentine lakes, scattered clumps of trees and undulating pastures, rather than formal lawns.
He became both the height of fashion and highly prolific, though there remains considerable speculation as to the precise number of gardens that should bear his name, not least because he kept no formal record. If so many designs seem improbable, it’s worth noting that our Capability was an accomplished horseman and could reputedly survey an entire estate in an hour and then map out a rough sketch of the design.
In his day, he could earn the then astonishing sum of £500 per commission and averaged £6,000 per year. He was appointed George III’s Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace in 1764 and died a wealthy man, in London, in 1783, having sent two of his sons to Eton, one of whom went on to become MP for Huntingdon.
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SCOTLAND
Although he was born within about 30 miles of the border, Capability Brown headed south rather than north. But that does not mean the Scottish garden wasn’t influenced by his ideas. Indeed , Sir Walter Scott fostered the notion of Scotland as a place of wild romance, rich in ancient ruins and great vistas and this played to the creation of natural landscape gardens by both William Kent and, later, Brown.
In Scotland, houses and castles became surrounded by the parkland and the naturalistic planting schemes that typified the period. The architect Robert Adam designed ruined temples and follies to enhance these landscapes, some of the best of which can be seen at Culzean Castle and Auchincruive, in Ayrshire, and at Dawyck House, near Peebles. Further north, William Gordon may well have been influenced by Brown’s ideas when he drained marshes, planted trees and established a lake and gardens at his Fyvie Castle, in Aberdeenshire.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Aberdeen, Newcastle
NORTH OF ENGLAND
Where better to begin than at Kirkharle, Brown’s birthplace. Kirkharle Courtyard is a centre for craft and other businesses and is staging many events to mark the third centenary, beginning with a talk by the TV historian, John Grundy, on March 23 and a torchlight procession round the serpentine lake on March 26. Full details at http://kirkharlecourtyard.co.uk.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Newcastle
Visitors to Alnwick Castle are most usually drawn by the Duchess of Northumberland’s ambitious and quite recent formal garden, but Brown remodelled the setting of the castle itself, diverting the River Aln and softening the slopes beneath the castle walls. He also worked with Adam on parts of Hulne Park on the edge of the town.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Newcastle
At Wallington Hall, just two miles from Kirkharle, the exact scope of Brown’s influence is unclear, though he did design one of the lakes at Rothley.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Newcastle
The magnificent Gibside estate, former home of the late Queen Mother’s family, the Bowes Lyons, is near Rowlands Gill, on the outskirts of Gateshead and features a Palladian chapel and Column of Liberty. Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Newcastle
Harewood House, near Leeds, features a Brown landscape that now contains 100 acres of gardens, with plants from all over the world.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Leeds Bradford
The Tudor-Jacobean house of Temple Newsam in East Leeds is a real gem. Besides Brown’s landscape, the house is a treasure trove of decorative arts.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Leeds Bradford
Wentworth Castle, near Barnsley, is the historic home of the Earls of Stafford and boasts 500 acres of landscaped parkland, woodland and farmland as well as the more formal pleasure gardens. The deer park’s serpentine lake, Palladian bridge and elegant tree clumps epitomise Capability Brown.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Leeds Bradford
At Burton Constable, near Hull, Brown’s scheme involved joining up fishponds to create two lakes. He also planted tree clumps, and installed sunken fences and a ha-ha.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Humberside
Roche Abbey, near Rotherham, lay in ruins for 200 years after the suppression of the monasteries, eventually passing into the family of the Earls of Scarborough, the fourth of whom contracted Brown in the 1770s. He engineered a lake and islands, a river, waterfall, tree groupings and levelled abbey walls to enable a banqueting lodge. Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Humberside, Leeds Bradford
MIDLANDS
Capability’s involvement at the National Trust’s Clumber Park, near Worksop, is probable rather than absolutely certain. Once the country estate of the Dukes of Newcastle, the house was demolished in 1938, but you can still explore the Gothic chapel, dubbed a “Cathedral in miniature”, the walled kitchen garden and the extensive grounds.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Humberside, East Midlands
Chatsworth House, on the edge of the Peak National Park, is home to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and among the country’s most celebrated stately homes, having also featured on both the small and large screen – as Mr Darcy’s home, Pemberley, in Pride and Prejudice, for example. Brown worked on both the gardens and the extensive parkland.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – East Midlands
Chatsworth Park
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Belvoir Castle is the ancestral home of the Dukes of Rutland and it towers over the Vale of Belvoir, in Leicestershire. By chance, Brown’s plans for Belvoir – lost for nearly 200 years – were recently discovered in the archives and to mark the anniversary, new areas will be open for the public.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – East Midlands
The present owner of Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, is Jane Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, 28th Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, granddaughter of Nancy Astor, the first female MP. The 3,000-acre Capability Brown park features lakes, ancient woodlands, and a herd of red deer.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – East Midlands
Brown’s longest ever commission was for the Earl of Exeter, at Burghley House, Stamford, where he was involved for some 25 years. Famed for its horse trials, Burghley’s magnificent grounds are a favourite destination for day-trippers.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – East Midlands
Weston Park, near Telford, boasts 1,000 acres of landscaped Capability Brown parkland. Formerly home to the Dukes of Bradford and with an important art collection, the home’s 28 bedrooms are now available for exclusive-use hire.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Birmingham
Brown was responsible for the park and lake at Chillington Hall, near Wolverhampton, home to Giffard family for eight centuries.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Birmingham
Patshull House is now a hotel with golf course and country club. Capability Brown landscaped the grounds; work on the Great Pool began in 1768. The Doric Temple, now part of the hotel, was built in 1754.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Birmingham
Himley Hall was originally a moated manor house, which served as a home to the Lords of Dudley and their knights for four centuries. Brown’s legacy follows the building of the new Palladian manor house and includes the great lake.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Birmingham
Holkham Hall
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Coombe Country Park is managed by Coventry City Council and was developed from the grounds of a 12th century Cistercian abbey, whose buildings are now the luxury Coombe Abbey Hotel. Parts of the grounds closed to the public for 40 years are open on some weekends this year.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Birmingham
Ragley, near Stratford, is the family home of the ninth Marquess and Marchioness of Hertford and is surrounded by ten hectares of Capability Brown gardens.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Birmingham
Charlecote Park, near Warwick, is run by the National Trust and here, as in other such properties, Members of the Embroiderers’ Guild will display their pieces of textile and stitch artwork inspired by Capability Brown.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Birmingham
EAST ANGLIA AND SOUTH OF ENGLAND
Holkham Hall is one of England’s finest examples of the Palladian revival style of architecture. Brown or one of his foremen probably redesigned the pleasure grounds some time between 1760 and 1780.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Norwich
Wilton House gardens, near Salisbury, are in an idyllic setting between the rivers Wyle and Nadder and comprise a mix of open parkland in the style of Capability Brown, and small formal gardens.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Southampton
North Stoneham Park, near Southampton Airport, is a Brown landscape acquired by Hampshire County Council for its long-term protection. Amid huge controversy, it was subsequently earmarked for housing development in the Eastleigh Local Plan and this looks set to go ahead. Campaigners are focussing on ensuring that at least the lakes (a private fishing club) and the walled kitchen garden with the remains of the privately owned 19th century orangery survive.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Southampton
The grounds at Highcliffe Castle, Christchurch, comprise one of only two coastal landscapes attributed to Brown. The castle itself has been described as the most important surviving house of the Romantic and Picturesque style of architecture, which flourished at the end of the 18th century.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Southampton
Brown’s informal walled garden at Uppark, Petersfield, was substantially modified after his death, by Humphry Repton, known for his slightly more formal approach.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Southampton
Stansted (nothing to do with the airport in Essex) was acquired in 1781 by Richard Barwell, who made his fortune in India. He called in Capability Brown to rebuild the house and gardens, near Havant, and when Brown died, Barwell asked James Wyatt to finish the job. Much of the elegant house was gutted by a fire in 1900.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Southampton
Originally the southern seat of the Dukes of Northumberland, Petworth is a National Trust property now partially occupied by Lord Egremont. Its extensive grounds were painted more than once by Turner, whose works are among those you can see in the house.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Southampton
WALES
Dinefwr, Carmarthenshire, is a National Nature Reserve, historic house and 18th-century landscape park, enclosing a medieval deer park. Brown first visited Dinefwr in 1775 and continued to advise until 1783. The National Trust recently reopened one of Brown’s original walks.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Cardiff
Cardiff Castle passed into the hands of the Earls of Bute in the mid-18th century and they employed Brown to landscape the grounds, demolishing many of the older medieval buildings and walls.Nearest Eastern Airways airport – Cardiff
When did buying yoghurt get so complicated? These days the supermarkets have a wall of the stuff – strained, unstrained, Greek, pro-biotic, full-fat, half-fat, three per cent fat, totally fat-free and every variety made by about six different companies. You’d need to do a night class to understand what it all actually means.
Last time I was in the supermarket I got so bewildered I said to the woman standing next to me: “Point at one at random and I’ll buy that.” She looked at me as if I was mad. Actually it was worse than that. She looked at me as if my comment was part of some elaborate chat-up routine. It is a sad day when a man can’t ask a strange woman to randomly point at dairy products on his behalf without her misconstruing it as something sexual.
None of this would have happened in the past.
On Blackpool Pleasure Beach in 1997 the Army Logistics Corps spent nine hours building the world’s largest jelly. One metre in height and seven metres wide, it was set using dry-ice machines. Looking back now it is impossible not to view the emergence of that giant quivering mass from the billowing heavy metal clouds as one last great defiant gesture of Britishness before our indigenous life ways were finally swamped beneath a tidal wave of duvets, café latte and sun-dried tomatoes. For only a couple of years earlier it had been announced that, for the first time in the history of our proud little island, sales of jelly had been outstripped by that of yoghurt-based desserts. We may have defied the soldiers and sailors of Europe for a thousand years but we were powerless against the continent’s low-fat dairy puddings.
Britain’s relationship with the jelly dates back to Anglo-Saxon times. Jellies flavoured with rosewater were the preferred sweet of Henry VIII. They moved John Keats to poetry (“Of candied apple, quince, and plum and gourd; With jellies soother than the creamy curd”. Yes, no crème fraiche for
Keatsy). The greatest flowering of British jelly culture occurred in the late Victorian era. Hundreds of different shaped moulds were available, the most popular being those that mimicked Cleopatra’s Needle. The dessert that emerged from these copper obelisks was, frankly, somewhat alarming in appearance, looking, as it did, like the sort of thing you might expect to see in the window of a shop in the Hamburg Reeperbahn.
The first commercial jelly was produced by Pearl B Wait, a cough syrup manufacturer from Le Roy, New York (to this day Le Roy is proud of its jelly heritage and boasts what may well be the only museum in the world devoted entirely to the subject), but it was the British firm of Rowntree, which, in
1932, produced the first jelly cube, later proving its versatility by publishing a wartime booklet featuring a recipe for a tasty savoury dish made by combining lime jelly with celery and pickled cucumber.
In the 1970s the jelly enjoyed a spell as Britain’s most entertaining foodstuff, thanks largely to television, which found many novel uses for the wobbly dessert. In It’s A Knockout, teams of lads and lasses from Swindon or Hemel Hempstead would, to the accompaniment of the gleeful cackling of the now disgraced Stuart Hall, attempt to carry trays of jellies up ladders while having buckets of whitewash tipped over them. Benny Hill, The Goodies and the Two Ronnies milked the jelly for comic potential, while the pioneering consumer show That’s Life ran a regular feature denouncing the safety of British pavements in which bumpy urban footpaths were tested by having the substantially-endowed glamour model Cleo Rocos, clad in a low-cut frock, pushed along them in a wheelbarrow while clutching a plate of jelly. “What sort of wobble are you experiencing, Cleo?” presenter Esther Rantzen would ask as a nation chortled helplessly. It may not have been big, clever or mature, but could you carry out such important public safety tests with a fromage frais? I think not.
THE LAST WORD with Harry Pearson
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JELLY GETS ITS UNJUST DESSERTSIN THE 1970S THE JELLY ENJOYED A SPELL AS BRITAIN’S MOST ENTERTAINING FOODSTUFF, THANKS LARGELY TO TELEVISION, WHICH FOUND MANY NOVEL USES FOR THE WOBBLY DESSERT.
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