ROUND ENGLAND WITH A SCOTSMAN

Gorbals was woefully ignorant about England.  The boy has had an (ahem) 'progressive' education and apart from a few months in Hampshire his only impressions of England have been gleaned from books and the television, so he thinks London is a Dickensian nightmare full of cutthroats, murderers, oom-pah-pah wenches and toffs in top hats with Dick Van Dyke accents, and the North is full of dark satanic mills and madwomen screaming on moors.   I was determined to show him the real England in the manner of Boswell to Dr Johnson, only in reverse, and we set off last July to complete the boy's education. 

Borough Market

Our first stop was of course the great metropolis, where we would also terminate our grand boucle.  We started on the East Side, in trendy Shoreditch, close to Brick Lane which constitutes the boundary between hipsters and Moslems.  In some cases it was quite hard to tell the difference.  We had a curry on Brick Lane of course, but on the second evening a much better one a bit further away, in the Lahore Kebab House, which is a noisy, BYOB canteen where the food is cooked in a huge open kitchen and by 8 p.m. there is a queue for tables.    In between the two curries we tried to have a sightseeing walk but the rain started and after taking shelter for a while in Borough Market where we sampled cheeses like Bleu de Tottenham, we ended up digging in at The Sugar Loaf near Mansion House, where we had beefy sausages with mustard and watched the Dubai Duty Free Darts Masters final on telly, which got more entertaining as the beers slipped down. I am now a great fan of Phil 'The Power' Taylor.  

The last of the old East End

Brick Lane is notoriously short on pubs but there is a wonderful 24-hour bagel bakery at the top of the road, the last bastion of London's East End Jewish community who once occupied the area.  The bagels - or beigels, as they call them - are made before your very eyes, and sold in dozens and half-dozens for a few pounds.  A salt beef bagel sandwich was slapped together as we peered through the window, about half a pound of salt beef was hacked off a joint, slapped inside a bagel and thrown unceremoniously onto the counter.  ₤3.90.  

        

London is much too expensive to hang about for long, and so we picked up a jalopy at Paddington and headed out on the M40 towards Oxford.  It was Saturday and Oxford was heaving with Chinese tourists and graduation ceremonies.   Slightly embarrassed graduates in gowns were escorting their beaming parents around the colleges.  It was too crowded and we only had a few hours before we had to head off to Midsomer Dibley, where we were staying with my cousin Vera Slapp and her husband Cyril.  They took us for Sunday lunch at the Fleur de Lys in picturesque Dorchester-on-Thames, where Gorbals came face to face with Yorkshire Pudding for the first time.  Judging by his plate at the end of the meal, it was not an altogether unpleasant experience.

After a few stops to visit friends in the West Midlands and Cheshire, we headed for the Peak District.  In Buxton we stayed at the delightfully old fashioned Buckingham Hotel, which has a photo of Basil Fawlty on the front door and a cracking bar with a telly showing vintage.tv - I was soon singing away to David Bowie.  We had dinner at The Old Club House opposite the Opera House.  It was one of these pubco places, with one of those menus we were to encounter again and again.  I think we had steak and ale pie. Fashions change in pub grub don't they?  I was hoping for breaded garlic mushrooms somewhere, but they seem to have been phased out in favour of halloumi nachos or some such street food craze.  

The next day we drove to Chatsworth House, and walked around the free bits, while Gorbals whistled The Red Flag.   We declined to add to the massive wealth of their Lordships by eating in the cafeteria - although I did admire the chairs.  The restaurant is situated in the stable block which is the size of a medium sized palace itself.

After Chatsworth, Gorbals insisted we visit the opposite end of the social spectrum, Hadfield.  The reason for this was somewhat obscure.  Something to do with the village being featured in the opening credits of a programme called "The League of Gentlemen".    It was a ghastly place, and almost deserted.  There were two pubs, one of which was closed.  All the restaurants closed at 2.00 p.m.  We ended up buying something horrible  and gristly from a shop and eating it in the car.

Our ultimate destination that day was Manchester. This was a new experience for both of us. I had been to the old Granada studios to see the set of Corrie (Harold's mother's choice) but had never seen the city centre. Of course it was raining.  We stayed two nights in Manchester and I'm glad we did, there was a lot to see.  The John Rylands library, the People's History Museum, the Chopin monument, not to mention Chinatown and the Gay Village with the touching statue of Alan Turing.  Once again, our eating habits didn't fit in with English opening times, and we often arrived at a gastropub just after 8 p.m. to find the chef had just gone home.  Thank God for Chinatown where they will welcome you at all hours.

Gorbals gaying it up.

Me showing Alan Turing an i-Pad.

Friday we were heading for the Lake District but managed to fit in a few hours in Liverpool, don't ask me why.  We walked through the fabulous new docklands area although didn't have time to visit Tate Liverpool.   Mathew Street, where the Cavern Club is, had to be done.  We posed merrily for photos with the statue of John Lennon, unaware that Our Cilla was about to imbibe her last G and T over in Spain.  We did not have time to see the Cathedral or the famous Adelphi Hotel,   but we did see the inside of the scuzziest gay bar I have ever encountered (another of Gorbals' great ideas).   My whistlestop scheduling is famous, ever since the days of working for the Folies Bergere, where my boss said you needed a liver of iron and the driving skills of Alain Prost to keep up with my regional tours.

And so to Cumbria, where the scenery makes up for the lack of haute cuisine.  Not that you can't eat well in Cumbria, but there is so much else to do.  Climbing fells (small ones),  driving over passes, looking down on lakes, forging through undergrowth, we had a very active week and food was restricted to local takeaways and picnics.   However a lot of pubs were visited, and a lot of beers with funny names were sampled.

The weather was somewhere between poor and appalling for most of the time, but on the very last day we did a trip round the south end of Lake Windermere and back up through Coniston and Ambleside, and the skies smiled on us.  We lingered as long as possible on the shores of Lake Windermere watching an impossibly dramatic sunset.

A week was all too short, and before long it was time to start heading south.  We set off towards the Yorkshire dales in search of the Last of the Summer Wine, and some sunshine.