Sunday was a rainy, muggy, down right damp sort of day. After non-stop sunshine I’m sure the ground needed it, but I'm certainly not completely ready to say goodbye to summer and am still expecting a bit of an Indian summer to be honest.
On top of this we’ve had trouble with our washing machine and dishwasher (I’m seriously rethinking this whole being a property owner thing…hmmm).
However, the weekend took a significant turn for
the better when after church Mark suggested heading out for Sunday Lunch. At first we were going to look into a local
garden centre and the pub next door to it, but when we accidently took a wrong
turn I remembered The Hartnoll Hotel in Bolham and their delicious looking
lunches.
Bolham is a cute little village at the bottom of
the road from Knightshayes, it has sweet little cottages and a red telephone
box which is now used for book swaps. That
road out of town leads you north through a green valley and through the
countryside along a road that’s never too busy when we’ve been on it.
I wasn’t all together hopeful as the Hartnoll
has an atmosphere of somewhere you absolutely should be on a damp, rainy day
as it’s so cosy, homely and welcoming. I
love the countryside on this part of town and although just off the road, the
Hartnoll has large gardens where you can get afternoon tea.
When we drove into the car park I was telling my
optimistic husband to lower his expectations….this place was bound to be booked
up. As we went into the bar area we
could see the large conservatory had a few people in it but besides another
couple, who looked like residents, we were the only people in the bar. When we asked they said they could seat us
there and showed us to a freshly made table.
The linens were white and crisp, the chairs were
plump, cushioned and covered in tartan and it was a lovely cosy
atmosphere. We were given the Sunday
Lunch menu which was exactly what we wanted anyway and I picked winter vegetable
soup with croutons, roast beef, roast beef and sticky toffee pudding with ice
cream. Mark picked a fancy prawn
cocktail, roasted pork loin and rhubarb an apple crumble. Apart from my Yorkshire pudding and our
potatoes the vegetables and sauces were on the table to share, although apart
from a couple of carrots I didn’t take anything.
I would definitely go here again and even looked up
the cost of having our Christmas dinner here but it is a whopping £90pp,
although I'm sure the service and food is great, we can order all our food from
M&S for that price so it fell at the first hurdle.
We meant to have a productive day and go to the
laundrette, get to the supermarket before it closed, and take Daisy out for a
long walk. However we were as lazy as
could be and ended up having a nap which stretched into watching Harry Potter
and the Philosophers Stone (revision for our trip to Leavesdon) before having tea and toast
for dinner.
Daisy got her walk, but
because it was raining she huffed, puffed, sighed and tugged until we went her
way. This meant we only went on a short circuit
and we were back home to watch Roald Dahls Marvellous Book, X Factor and
Victoria after just 45 minutes. This is a perfect recipe for a very lazy Sunday.
