Blogfromthebarn

The Lake District, a beautiful place but .


Mrs Stuffy is a black belt in the arranging of short breaks, brief respites to boldly go, to discover strange new lands and cultures ... you get the idea. She has, in the past, scored notable success with the delightful Riad Meriem in Marrakech and the superb Bourgondich Cruyces in Bruges.

Imagine my joy then, on receiving, for my recent birthday, a pair of hiking boots and a couple of days accommodation (with my lovely spouse) a rambling break in the Lake District, an area I'm pretty fond of, resulting from a childhood passion for the works of Arthur Ransome and from my climbing days when, living in Yorkshire, it was easy-peasy to pop across the Pennines with Mountain-Mate-Mike and scare ourselves nigh to death on the lovely Cumbrian crags (as opposed to scaring ourselves nigh to death on more familiar Yorkshire crags).

Our drive up was only marred by

1. the need for every inbred bottom feeder in creation to sit in the middle lane of the M3,M25,M40,M42 and M6 having a fag, sending a text and discussing Coronation Street with their ugly halfwit passengers
   
2. Knutsford
   
3. a large chunk of the M6 disappearing into a hole and being replaced by all the cones in the world

Still, we eventually got to Windermere and the Hillthwaite House Hotel, billed on t'interweb as overlooking the lake, which it did, in much the same way that The Great Wall of China is overlooked from space. There was a definite hint of Fawlty Towers about our lodging, faded 60's decor, elderly clientele and staffed entirely by well meaning and enthusiastic East European teenagers with no evident catering experience.

We arrived, thanks to the Great British Transport Infrastructure only 2 hours later than we planned so a quick grimace, a G&T and we were whisked into the dining room.

Dinner, (included in the not inconsiderable price) was a 5 course affair best summarised as beautifully presented blandness. Someone, possibly the Head Chef,"award winning John Kelly" or one of his brigade of highly skilled drizzlers of jus and coulis had a good eye for a stack of raspberries but it appeared that, tragically, no-one in the kitchen had a taste bud. Mrs Stuffy's "Goat cheese on Mediterranean couscous with new potatoes and carrots" still causes her to leap up in the night weeping with the sheer beige horror of it all.

We retired to bed, it wasn't the least comfortable bed I've ever slept in, it was pretty close though.

Up and at 'em the next morning. The bathroom was, evidently, recently refurbished and all the fixture and fittings were new and of a very reasonable quality, sadly the water pressure was such that I effectively put in a 5 mile run jogging around the rink-like surface in an attempt to catch enough precious but desperately scarce water to get wet enough to ablute.

I got off lightly, Mrs S still bears the technicolor bruises caused by a reckless attempt to walk across the slightly moist tiles to open the bedroom door. She's a little prone to opening hotel doors in a state of undress, I'm in favour of it, saves tipping and the staff always seem to enjoy it.

Breakfast was a revelation, whoever does the breakfast should be put on the evening shift at once, great ingredients, well cooked and delicious. Refreshed, reinvigorated and fortified we donned our new hiking boots and set off for the first leg of our trek, from the hotel to Lake Windermere.

To be honest, once we'd got that far we'd pretty much broken the back of it and the next few hours passed in a cordial blur of boat, trek, beer, boat,trek, ice cream (30p for a flake !) trek,beer, yomp, boat and the fruitless search for a pleasant pub or restaurant.

Windermere, Bowness and Ambleside all seemed to be a little bit "lowest common denominator touristy" if you know what I mean, and if you don't then I heartily recommend that you take a weekend at the Hillthwaite Hotel, you'll love it.

Me, I'd rather gouge my own eyes out with a spoon,
a blunt one.

posted by Stuffy @ 12:00 pm 1 comments

Signs of the times.====================== whatever are they thinking ?


Driving through the delightful lush tropical paradise that is Bracknell today I spotted a couple of high-visibility jacketed gents strimming the verge, that made sense, grass grows, men from the council come along with mowers on a regular basis and cut it down.

Simple's yes ?
No, I was taken aback to see that the van belonging to these fluorescent green-fingered civil servants was boldly labelled " Incident response vehicle"

Which raise the obvious questions:-

1. If grass growing qualifies as an incident, what the heck doesn't? and
2. Who reported it ?

posted by Stuffy @ 3:36 pm 0 comments

Movie review - Boldly going where many have boldly gone, boldly ...



It's a little known fact that Mrs Stuffy is a bit of a trekkie, not in a sad dressing-up way, but she is a fan and thanks to her astounding memory will happily watch the same episodes over and over again. I also have to admit to a certain affection for the franchise (in all it's incarnations) so it was with high hopes that we transported ourselves to the moving picture palace.


The new Star Trek movie is directed by JJ Abrams director of Lost, (Mrs S and I hold diametrically opposing views on Lost, she thinks it's great). The Star Trek movie is, let's be honest, a delight, a fast furious (not entirely logical) special effects roller-coaster interleaved with some fine acting, (also some less fine acting but Leonard Nimoy is 167).

Particularly impressive were the Spock and McCoy characters, they've really nailed the mannerisms and mindset of the originals and that, along with some super set design made it work as a believable prequel. (obviously I don't literally mean believable, you know what i mean)

There's just enough humour, plot and characterisation to to stop it being purely a special effects extravaganza but make no mistake it is a special effects extravaganza, we liked it a lot !


And a haiku version ...

Ten series and films
but this makes me say, "Star Trek
live long and prosper"

would you like that in Klingon ? of course you would ...

wa'maH series je films

ach vam chen jIH jatlh Hov Trek 

yIn tIq je chep  

posted by Stuffy @ 10:11 am 2 comments

Movie Review ... State of Play

A visit to the magical moving picture emporium to enjoy this remake of a BBC production (which I've not seen, for television is the devil's own idiot box and will suck out your immortal soul with it's drivel and mind numbing soporific apologies for entertainment, oooooh that's better).

Anyway, sound acting, as ever, from Russel Crowe (who has apparently been filming locally and done nothing to diminish his arrogant git reputation), but the boy can act and that's his job.

Unlike Ben Affleck. I've no idea why Ben Affleck gets work, he's the movie equivalent of tofu, bland, unsatisfying and pointless.

Mrs Stuffy liked Helen Mirren's sweary editor but the rest of the cast seemed to have been coached by Affleck in advanced drabness. The story is very twisty and requires attention, it's well told but I was interested, not involved and we lost Mrs Stuffy to the arms of Morpheus a couple of time s in the last 20 minutes.

Still, a haiku review might look a little like this...

State of play

Makes one think and doubt
Working the connections out
passionless puzzle.

posted by Stuffy @ 12:00 pm 0 comments