Monday 26 June 2017

A Fine Drinking Man's Country?

I have long intended to write this post but now, with a huge bloggy backlog and much else to do, I don't have the time.

But I've written it anyway.

My father retired in 1980 and bought a house beside a golf course in Portugal. 'Why Portugal?' I asked. Unlike Greece it was not a country he had visited much, or at all, and although the dust had largely settled after the 1974 Carnation Revolution the new democracy remained fragile. 'Because,' he said, 'it’s a fine drinking man's country.'
 
A younger me standing in the doorway of that house in Portugal (April 1992)
For my father was a drinking man, not an alcoholic or a habitual drunk, but a man who liked a drink, then another one and that was the evening started. I differ from him in many ways, but I share his face - I often stare into the shaving mirror and wonder what the old bugger is doing in my bathroom - and his fondness for an occasional tincture.
 
I enjoy the occasional tincture
A toast in home made mulberry vodka, Goris, Amenia, July 2003
So, staggering in my father's footsteps, here is a drinking man’s guide to a small selection of the 50 or so countries I have been lucky enough to visit. I also like eating, so I have rated them as eating men's countries, too. And when I say 'men' I only echo my father from those far off less inclusive times.

I like to eat - but I should point out that is a sharing plate
Tallinn, Estonia, July 2011
The ratings, on a scale of 0 to 5 (halves permitted), are personal, any woman or man is free to take issue with my scores, but to give a semblance of objectivity here are my criteria.

Drink: How easily available is it? How much variety is there? What is the quality of the local products? Are imported drinks available to fill gaps in variety or quality? Is the price reasonable?

Food: I am judging food from everyday rather than high-end restaurants. How easy is it to find such restaurants? Are fresh ingredients used? Is there a variety of ingredients? Is there a variety of cooking methods? Is food a cultural expression or a commodity?

So with an idiosyncratic selection of 10 countries across 3 continents here (in alphabetically order) are my scores.

1)                  China

Scoring only the Han heartland; travelling among Uighurs and Tibetans has its charms, but they do not include food and drink.

Drinking 3½

Chinese drinking culture exists but European-style cafés are unknown and bars are not obvious. Beer is widely brewed and available but the quality is poor – too much rice and too little (or no) barley. Chinese wine is best avoided - you rarely see locals drinking it. Spirits are easily available, cheap and drinkable – once you have acquired the taste. Knock-off western brands exist, too; I treasure the memory of a bottle of ‘Bushtits Irish Whiskey’, with its familiar black label.
 
A litre of sorghum based bai jiu (clear spirit) bought in Hangzhou
50% abv, it cost around £1
Eating: 4½

Restaurants of every class abound but I never cease to be amazed by the variety and quality of food that can be produced so quickly by one man and a wok working behind little more than a hole in the wall.

Even little local restaurants like these in can be relied upon for an excellent meal
Beijing September 2013
It is difficult to get a bad meal in China.

But it doesn't get much better than this - though it still costs less than a pub meal at home
Beijing duck, Quanjude roast duck, Beijing Sept 2013
Why not 5? Lack of dairy products (I do like my cheese) and their tendency to relish things....

Why am I nibbling the webbing from between the toes of this unfortunate water fowl?
Dinner with Mr Zhua, Huizhou 2004
.... nobody else regards as food (1.2 billion Chinese can’t be wrong – or can they?)
 
Scorpion soup, somewhere in Guangdong Province 2003/4
Picture credit Sian Morris

2)                  France

Drinking: 5

What could you want that they do not have? Good wine at any price level, fine beer (in the north, anyway), the world’s best brandy, pastis (a particular favourite of mine) and a huge range of other drinks. If you insist on scotch or gin & tonic, that is available, too.

Eating: 4

Shock horror, the home of European gastronomy and no 5! You can eat excellent regional dishes, but too many of France’s mid-range restaurants are resting on their laurels. Menus read better in French, but we don’t eat menus.

Spiny lobster - excellent local speciality
Cargèse, Corsica July 2006
3)                  India

Drinking: 2

Hindus are often tee total vegetarians, Muslims tee total meat eaters. Beer, though, is widely available at least in tourist areas, and passable local gin and rum in bars, hotels, and ‘wine shops’ - often disreputable looking places which don’t actually sell wine. Gujarat is dry, Kerala has reportedly put its ‘rolling prohibition’ into reverse.

Naughty boys at a 'wine shop'
Thomas and I, Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, March 2016
Eating: 3½

Good Indian food is among the best in the world but finding it is tricky. Most restaurants catering for western tourists are clean and relatively expensive but dial back on the spices; desperate not to offend anyone they ultimately please no-one. Those aimed at the local market can be dull too, the same melange of spices in every dish regardless of the other ingredients, which you cannot taste anyway. But sometimes, and not necessarily in a smarter restaurant, each spice retains its individuality and the combination complements the ingredients instead of drowning them out. Thomas Mathew, our driver on our last two southern India trips, has a gift for spotting the right restaurant in an unknown town. Many of the best meals I have eaten have been in his company, and some cost less than £1 a head.

Thomas' choice in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu, March 2016
Here the humble biryani is raised to a thing of joy

4)                  Iran

Drinking: 0

Iran is dry.


Tea house at the tomb of the poet Hafez, Shiraz 2000
It's the nearest we got to a drink!
Eating: 1½

I hate to say this about the land of my birth, but the restaurant food we encountered was too dull to photograph and numbingly repetitive; mountains of rice with a pat of butter, maybe some yoghurt to moisten it and kebabs, unseasoned chunks of beef, chicken or lamb, every day, sometimes twice a day. Home cooking, we were told, is much better, and maybe it is. My (Hampshire born) sister’s recent visit suggested variety has improved markedly, but as Iranian cuisine eschews garlic and all spices, how much better can it be? Pluses: breakfast feta-style cheese and the world’s finest pistachios.

5)                  Macedonia (Former Yugoslav Republic of)

Drink: 4½

Mastika (better than ouzo, maybe as good as pastis) before a meal, a choice of wines with and an acceptable brandy after. Tikveš is the only wine region of note but it produces a range of interesting varietals including the dark, smoky and seriously underrated Vranac. Skopsko Beer, dominating the market, is a pleasant lager but hardly memorable.


Popova Kula winery, Demir Kapija, Tikveš region, Macedonia May 2015
Eating: 3½

The Balkans specialises in grilled meats but Macedonians have a lighter touch than most. Vegetables are rare but salads, often covered in a blizzard of grated cheese, abound. Being landlocked, fish only figures around Lake Ohrid, but trout, eel, carp and whitebait were fresh and sympathetically cooked.

Carp and eel, and a bottle of Tikveš Zupljanka beside Lake Ohrid, May 2015
 6)                  Mongolia

Drink: 2½

In Ulanbaatar there is good beer and, as a former soviet satellite, more vodka than is good for some locals. In the countryside there is airag, fermented mares’ milk. Good manners say you must taste – and it is not unpleasant – but drink more and you will discover it rifles through the European digestive system with destructive haste. Believe me.

Making airag, Mongolian encampment July 2007
Eating: 1

Outside Ulaanbaatar there are no vegetables or salad – digging in God’s good earth is a rude intrusion. Goat’s milk cheese is sun dried until it has the colour and consistency of a pot sherd, though it (eventually) softens in the mouth to release a punchy goat flavour. In a week, 12 of our lunches and dinners were mutton. For the thirteenth we found chicken in a restaurant in Ulaanbaatar. The fourteenth? We were too full of chicken to eat  anything!

The first step in cheese making, Mongolian encampment, July 2007

7)                  Morocco

Drink: 1½

No Muslim country can be a drinking man’s country, but the Moroccan wine industry limped on after the French departed and has recently undergone a revival. There is a full Appellation d’Origine system, but the wine is easier to find in France than in Morocco. Flag lager used to be a contender for ‘worst lager in the world’, but I am told it has improved. The Jewish community distil a spirit from date palms for which a taste can be developed.

Food: 3

Moroccan food is excellent - tender mechoui roast lamb, tagines of lamb, beef and fish with couscous, pastilla (a savoury pastry with pounded chicken and almonds), mountains of fresh fish on the Agadir dockside - but by day four you are going round the cycle again. The quality and skill on show are impressive, the variety sadly limited.

8)                  Portugal

Drink: 4½

Portugal offers the world’s most underrated wines, plus Port and Madeira, brandy, bagaçeira, and liqueurs of varying palatability. My father was right; it is a fine drinking man’s country. Why not 5? Portuguese beer, though widely available is of modest quality and limited variety.

Modest quality, limited variety - but that won't stop me
Evora Sept 2016
 Eating: 4½

I eat more fish in two weeks in Portugal than in the whole of the rest of the year. Restaurants use fine, fresh ingredients and let them speak for themselves. Why not 5? Although the variety is impressive (unlike Morocco), too many restaurants concentrate on the same old favourites; a little innovation would be welcome.


Sardines with Mike and Alison, Portimão Oct 2016
9)                  Sri Lanka

Drink: 3

Falling like a dewdrop from the end of India’s nose it might be expected to be similar, but not so. Lion lager, overwhelming the best selling beer, is available everywhere as is arrack, the very enjoyable national spirit, distilled from toddy (see The Backwaters of Kerala) and bottled at various qualities. They also distil gin and more.

Eating: 2½

Drinking maybe better than in India, but eating is not. Rice and Curry (in that order) involving three or more bowls of vegetable and meat curries with little variation is ubiquitous. Devilled meat or fish – resembling sweet and sour with a chilli kick - or ‘Chinese’ noodles dishes are the only alternative. Beef is always tough.

Rice and curry, Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka
10)              Thailand

Drink: 3½

Chang Beer is the sort of light, fizzy, flavourless lager I would normally avoid like the plague but, in the Thai heat, it somehow hits a spot. There are other beers (notably the more characterful Singha), Mekhong ‘whisky’ (which is not whisky), SangSom rum and several other easily available spirits.

Chang beer works its magic, Cha Am beach, November 2015
Food: 4.5

We have eaten one or two dull Thai dishes, but generally the standard of cooking is high; a red curry in Bangkok and squid with lemon and chilli beside the Mae Klong River stand out. All tourist orientated restaurant dial back (sometimes omit) the chillis while other restaurants often clock a large lumbering frame and a pale face and do the same automatically. You sometimes have to fight for your right to a chilli.

Squid with lemon and chilli (and some fish cakes) beside the Mae Klong, November 2015

Being a mathematician I put the results on a graph.

Microsoft calculated the line of best fit and I calculated Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. It was 0.69. (The coefficient is a number between -1 and +1, 1 implies perfect positive correlation, -1 perfect negative correlation and 0 no correlation) so there is a moderately strong correlation between good eating and good drinking. Well who’d a thunk it?

Monday 22 May 2017

Ripon and Fountains Abbey

Renewing the Bonds of Friendship from an American Exchange 34 Year Ago

Some Background

In 1983 I had been teaching for 11 years, our daughter Siân was two, Lynne was a full time mother and we felt up for an adventure. So, with an unjustified confidence in my abilities, I applied for a year's teacher exchange and was duly paired with Joel Wingard, a high school teacher from Gig Harbor, Washington, a small, pretty town nestled beside the Puget Sound, 45 minutes’ drive from Seattle.

Before taking over each other’s lives - jobs, houses, cars and even in-laws (Siân acquired a much-loved third granny) – the British and American exchangers gathered for a few days orientation at San Francisco State University. And there we met Joel and Lucinda Wingard and their three children, all eight of us about to embark on what had been a dream and was now becoming a pretty scary reality…

San Francisco State University, August 1983, l to r Gabe, Lynne, Siân, Me, Dija, Joel, Lucinda, Tyler

…and here are the adults thirty four years later. The children, now with jobs, families and lives of their own are far too busy to take time off in mid-May.

Kettlewell, North Yorkshire, May 2017
Siân is now older than I was in the top picture

We had met Joel and Lucinda at Manchester Airport two weeks earlier and once their heads and bodies had settled in the same time zone they set off north to walk a lot and drive a little of the Coast-to-Coast route with the Sierra Club.

21/05/2017 (or 05/21/2017 for J & L)

A Whizz Round York

Their walk heroically completed, though with Lucinda now hobbling with the same tendon damage that had ruined my SW Odyssey last month, we met again in York.

The National Railway Museum

After a look at the train museum,…

Stephenson's Rocket (replica), National Railway Museum, York

Bettys and a Fat Rascal

…. a visit to Betty’s for the obligatory fat rascal…

Lucinda and a fat rascal, Bettys tea Room, York

York Minster

…and a walk round the Minster,…

Inside York Minster

...we set off for Ripon.

Arriving in Ripon

City of Ripon

20 miles from York, Ripon (pop 17,000) is England's third smallest city. Founded, according to tradition, by St Wilfred in the 7th century it was first an important ecclesiastical centre and then prominent in the medieval wool trade. The city was noted for manufacturing spurs in the 16th and 17th century, but lost its importance when it was by-passed by the industrial revolution.

Passing the racecourse we discovered it was race day and our B&B, a pub just south of Ripon’s little River Skell, was catering for those preferring to watch the horses on television. We were warmly welcomed by the landlady, but the bar was loud and we wondered how long the noise might continue.

Tapas in Ripon

Joel and Lucinda had spoken of their difficulties in finding places to eat in 1983, particularly with three children in tow. It is much easier now, but not necessarily on a Sunday evening - my internet search had shown only two local restaurants whose day did not finish with Sunday lunch.

A quick exploration suggested there was more choice than expected. I do not know how many tapas bars there were in Britain in 1983, but I doubt there were any in places like Ripon. Manchega is there now and although quiet on a Sunday evening (so that is why so many places close) it served us well. We enjoyed nine tapas plus desserts and every one - old favourites like patatas bravas and pescaditos or new discoveries like Morcilla de Burgos (Castilian black pudding) and padron peppers - showed authentic Spanish flavours. One criticism, the wine list was dominated by South America with hardly a Spanish wine in sight; that said I enjoyed our Chilean sauvignon.

Outside Manchega, Ripon (photo: Lucinda)

The Ripon Wakeman

Well fed, we made our way to the market square, an expanse of cobbles and tarmac half given over to car parking. In the centre is an obelisk.

Obelisk, Ripon Market Square

At 9 o’clock precisely the Wakeman arrived to set the watch as he has done (allegedly) every single evening since 886. He blows his horn at each corner of the obelisk before announcing ‘The Watch is Set’.

The Wakeman sets the watch, Ripon Market Square

This done, the small multi-national crowd gathered round Wayne the Wakeman who explained something of the history.

Wayne the Wakeman explains, Ripon Market Square

According to the Ripon Hornblower website Alfred the Great visited Ripon in 886. Impressed by the city and its stand against the marauding Vikings he wished to give it a charter but lacking parchment he gave it a horn instead, advising them to appoint Wakemen to be ever vigilant against attack. Wayne did not claim the horn came from Alfred in person – he probably never ventured this far north – but he told us of the charter and how the original Charter Horn is still kept in the Town Hall.

In time the Wakeman (elected for a year) and the 12 self-appointed constables who elected him came to control the city, not always to the benefit of the ordinary citizens. It was time for a reboot, and in 1604 James I granted a new charter with a more democratically elected mayor tasked with employing a Wakeman. And so, more or less, it has continued. Today’s Wakemen (two of them job-share) may serve the town’s tourist industry rather than ensure its security, but they maintain a tradition which is, they claim, unbroken for over 1100 years.

Psalm 127, verse 1 says (in the Authorised Version)

Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh in vain.

To give their Wakeman some divine back-up the city chose as its motto a modified version of the second part of the verse and emblazoned it across the Town Hall at the end of the Market Place. St Wilfred, the city’s founder can be seen keeping vigil from a niche (some locals call it his bath) on the wall of the NatWest Bank, the regrettable 1960s building to the left of the Georgian Town Hall.

Ripon Town Hall with St Wilfrid half way up wall of the bank next door

Ambling back to our B&B we found the pub, like everywhere else, had closed early and a restful night was had by all.

22/05/2017

Ripon Cathedral

Ripon’s former importance has left it with a huge Gothic cathedral and to visit we again had to cross the River Skell. The bridge has a 7.5t weight restriction, and a warning sign telling you so. Lucinda found the sign amusing, if not downright funny and insisted on photographing it. I do not understand the joke, but here it is anyway.

Hilarious sign (Photo: Lucinda)
note to self: try not to turn sideways when you know there are people with cameras nearby

Perhaps American readers are now breaking out in loud guffaws while Brits are saying ‘yes…and…?’ with furrowed brows. Or maybe not. ‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us!’ to quote the wise, if occasionally incomprehensible Robert Burns.

The huge Early English west front was added in 1220 to what was the fourth stone church on this site. The first, constructed by St Wilfrid in 672 was one of the earliest stone buildings in the Kingdom of Northumbria while the fourth, started in 1160 by Roger de Pont L’Évêque, Archbishop of York, incorporating parts of earlier churches and took 400 years to complete. The cathedral is now one of the three co-equal cathedrals of the Diocese of Leeds (none of them actually in upstart Leeds).

The west Front of Ripon Cathedral

Though not as elegant as York Minster, it is an impressive cavern surrounded by soaring stonework.

The interior, Ripon Cathedral

I have read that the cathedral has a fine organ, but it was being tuned during our visit and hearing its complete range at full volume was sometimes excruciating.

Organ, Ripon Cathedral

St Wilfred's Chapel, Lewis Carroll and a Rabbit Hole

Beneath the quire, is a stone corridor...

Towards St Wilfred's Chapel, Ripon Cathedral

…leading to a small chapel – all that remains of St Wilfred’s original church.

St Wilfred's Chapel, Ripon Cathedral

The quire has some fine carving….

Choir, Ripon Cathedral

…the 35 misericords were carved between 1489 and 1494 by the Ripon School of carvers who were active - and not just in Ripon - as stability returned after the Wars of the Roses. A member of the cathedral staff kindly pointed us towards one depicting a gryphon hunting rabbits. The rabbit’s backside disappearing down the hole, top right, and the corridor to St Wilfred’s chapel were, she suggested, the inspiration for the opening of Alice in Wonderland. Charles Dodgson was appointed a Canon of Ripon Cathedral in 1854 when his son, also Charles but better known as Lewis Carroll, was 20, so it is possible, though our informant fair-mindedly admitted that there are other claimants.

Gryphon hunting rabbits, misericord, Ripon Cathedral

She also told us that later that morning Ripon would be standing in for Westminster Abbey for the filming of the new series of Victoria and that was why the modern candle holders were being removed.

Removing the modern candlesticks for the filming Victoria, Ripon Cathedral

Before leaving the cathedral we visited the exhibition in the transept. There was church plate, some interesting jewels and a small library, but my eye was caught by a series of models of the cathedral. From 672 to the 16th century each successive version showed enlargements and improvements. The last showed the cathedral with pepper pot spires, like those at Southwell, topping the towers. The only alteration since has been to remove those spires. The building has been lovingly maintained but not enlarged or expanded in any way - I am uncertain what conclusion to draw from this observation.

Fountain's Abbey

We made the short drive to Fountains Abbey where we were redirected from the main to the west entrance to avoid a steep descent – particularly irksome to those with heel tendon problems.

Fountain's Hall

By the gate, as a sort of hors d’oeuvre, is Fountain’s Hall.

Fountains Hall, near Ripon

Built as a country home in 1597, the sandstone (including a complete staircase) was quarried from the abbey. Now also owned by the National Trust, the ground floor is open while parts can be rented as holiday accommodation.

Inside Fountains Hall

In 1132 Thurston, Archbishop of York, granted land to 13 monks who had left the Benedictine abbey of St Mary’s in York after a dispute. The site for their new abbey was a sheltered valley beside the River Skell where water, wood and building stone where readily available.

The buildings were initially wooden and it was not until after the monks had joined the Cistercian order that the first stone church was built in 1143. In 1146 a dispute over who should be the next Archbishop of York led to the abbey being torched by a mob. The next 25 years saw a great reconstruction and some of the stonework we could see as we walked across the sward dates from this period, though the quire is 13th century and the Huby Tower was built when Marmaduke Huby was abbot, not long before the dissolution in 1539.

Fountains Abbey

We detoured right to walk along the wildflower bedecked bank of the Skell; though it becomes less attractive when you realise that the river’s main function was to carry away the monks’ waste!

The River Skell above Fountains Abbey

We walked through the hospitium where hospitality was offered to travellers….

The hospitium, Fountains Abbey

…and the cellerium, or store rooms, with their fine medieval vaulting.

Cellerium, Fountains Abbey

A walk through the cloister…

The cloister, Fountains Abbey

…took us into the main church….

The nave, Fountains Abbey

….with the Huby Tower in its unusual position to the side of the nave.

The Huby Tower, Fountains Abbey

Leaving the abbey we followed the River Skell towards Studley Royal Water Gardens, which together with the Abbey make up a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1984 the Wingard family had pitched their tent (actually, come to think of it, our tent) in a nearby camp site and gone for a walk. They knew nothing of Fountains Abbey, but following the water meadows of the Skell they had rounded a bend and been confronted with this totally unexpected sight. Our 2017 trip could not hope to recapture the excitement of that discovery, nor could we recreate the reading of a Shakespeare play (and I have forgotten which one) which they attended that evening in the abbey grounds, but I hope it stirred some pleasant memories.

Fountains Abbey from the West

Studley Royal Water Garden

Continuing to Studley Royal Water Garden we found a garden where form and reflection outrank plants and flowers.

Studley Royal Water Gardens

At the café we paused for a National Trust snack lunch. With two aching tendons between us it seemed wise to whistle up the site minibus which took us across the deer park and back to the west entrance.

In an ideal world we would have stopped at St Mary’s Church. Consecrated in 1878 it was designed by William Burges, gothic revivalist and drinking buddy of the Pre-Raphaelites. Lynne discovered his over-the-top fantasies in Castell Coch as a child and they have long been a source of delight and amusement.

St Mary's Church, Studley, Photograph by Alison Stamp (borrowed from Wikipedia)

In an ideal world we would have stopped at St Mary’s Church. Consecrated in 1878 it was designed by William Burges, gothic revivalist and drinking buddy of the Pre-Raphaelites. Lynne discovered his over-the-top fantasies in Castell Coch as a child and they have long been a source of delight and amusement.

We returned to Ripon before heading on to Masham, Wensleydale and Wharfedale.

I should not finish a post on Ripon without mentioning its trio of Museums, the Courthouse, the Prison and Police, and the Workhouse, collectively known as the Yorkshire Law and Order Museums. After listening to the Wakeman I am sure they are worth a visit, but you cannot see everything in one trip, so we didn’t.