Is there a British Japanology?

Before traveling to Japan, I must have watched more than a hundred Begin Japanology and Japanology Plus programs from Japan's NHK television station.  They aren't travelogues but cover the everyday culture of Japan and I wish all countries had similar programs produced by their public television stations.

So I'm trying to pull together videos on England that cover similar territory.

BBC: A People's History of Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.  Unfortunately this series is no longer available at the BBC site but only as a lower quality video uploaded on YouTube.  It is narrated by Clarissa Dickson Wright, one of the Two Fat Ladies, and concentrates more on historic meals of the nobility than those of the common man.  And Clarissa Dickson Wright doesn't quite have the reserved charm of Peter Barakan.

• Episode 1: Breakfast
• Episode 2: Lunch - Clarissa does mention Simpson's Tavern as a traditional London chop house and of course she talks about the "sandwich".  The second half is more about what the common man ate covering rationing and supermarkets (the packaged sandwich) and she ends with the Sunday Roast.
• Episode 3: Dinner  - Confusing here.  Is it "dinner" as the biggest meal of the day or "supper" in the evening.

History of English Language. Four hour-long episodes by LWT,  London Weekend Television.

1. Birth of a Language   Beginning with the invasion of the Germanic tribes from Friesland in 491 AD, after the Romans left, and the subjugation of the Celtic tribes. Then the addition of the Latin alphabet from the Catholic church in the 600s, the addition of Norse from the invading Vikings and Danes in the 800s, and the defeat of the English in 1066 by the Normans, speaking Old French and concentrating the wealth of the country in fewer hands.
2. English Goes Underground.  The 300 years when English is a subjugated language as were the English-speaking people, when the Normans occupied all positions of power.
3. The Battle for the Language of the Bible
4. This Earth, This Realm, This England

The Worst Jobs in History.  A British television series from 2006.

1. Series 1 Episode 1: Roman and Anglo-Saxon (up until 1066)
2. Series 1 Episode 2: The Middle Ages
3. Series 1 Episode 3: The Tudors
4. Series 1 Episode 4: Stuart Times

That London Life: Walking London

These are YouTube walking tours done by Eleana, who speaks very fast but offers some very interesting tidbits about architectural landmarks in London.

1. City of London
2. Lesser Known London Walking Tour from Chelsea to Fulham

Afternoon Tea and Tea Etiquette

1. Visit London: Afternoon Tea in London (Ritzy tea parlors are featured without much tea but with champagne, fancy cakes and sandwiches.)
2. English Cream Tea Etiquette (Learn how to place your napkin, hold a cup, stir your sugar, and open your scone -- no hamburgers, please.)
3. Chateau des Fleurs - Tea with Adam Gottesman (This is the same tea etiquette advice but from a guy.)
4. Victoria's Insider Guide to London - Episode 4: The Best Afternoon Teas in London (If you like exquisite afternoon teas, check these out.  From Expedia.)

1000 Londoners

Each week, a profile of a Londoner is posted on https://www.1000londoners.com/ with a 3 minute film that gives an insight into their life.

1. The woman keeping traditional London alive through a Pie & Mash shop: Jacqueline, Londoner #161  (This is a very interesting profile with lovely shots of a historic pie & mash shop.  We'll have to go.)
   

Peter Ackroyd's London

Ackroyd is a prolific writer and biographer.  He has an 800 page biography of London which was also turned into a TV Series, uploaded to YouTube by various people.

1. Episode 1: Fire & Destiny
2. Episode 2: Crowd
3. Episode : Newgate to Tyburn (A colourful journey from the site of London' old Newgate prison to the site of the Tyburn Tree)
4. Episode :  East versus West

BBC: The London Markets
Hour-long programs on the wholesale food markets in London.  I can see why they are dying institutions and I hardly think women will miss them. Even the Fruit and Veg market doesn't have a woman in sight, except for a Romanian woman serving tea.  The market men are responsible for their own demise, I'm afraid.

1. The Fish Market Inside Billingsgate
   
2. The Meat Market Inside Smithfield
   
3. The Fruit and Veg Market Inside New Spitalfields
   

Taking the Train from London to Manchester

Hopefully we won't have to worry about this leg of our trip.
According to GoEuro:

"Trains from London to Manchester run at a frequency of around 3 trains per hour. Trains run from the early morning well into the evening, with the frequency of departures decreases in the later evening hours. All routes during the week are direct, with the average journey roughly requiring between 2 and 2½ hours...All London to Manchester trains are run by Virgin Trains...London to Manchester train costs are 49% cheaper when booked 1 month in advance as opposed to purchasing a train ticket the day of."

Unfortunately when I put in our September dates no train options are available yet although air to Manchester is $47 and takes an hour while the bus is only $22 but takes 8 hours (you'd see a lot of country!).

TrainLine also sells train tickets online and it appears that you can buy tickets directly from London's Euston Station to the Manchester Airport with one change at Wilmslow (switching to the Northern rail line) just south of Manchester or transferring at Manchester's main station at Picadilly for the TransPennine Express.  You can buy both tickets on the Virgin Trains website.

TransPennine Express says tickets go on sale up to 24 weeks ahead of travel and are up to 50% off if you buy them in advance.  They even have a mobile app that sends the ticket to your smartphone.  If only we knew when we have to be at the Manchester Airport to catch a ride up to Newfield Hall in the Yorkshire Dales.  However the TransPennine Express allows you to change your ticket if you bought it online.

Unfortunately their new Japanese-built bullet trains won't arrive until summer of 2019.  Looks like we'll have to go back to England next year.

The Keepers of London's Secrets

According to this BBC article, the drivers of the black cabs in London who have passed the "Knowledge Test",  have memorized every street, landmark and route in London (25,000 streets, 100,000 landmarks, 300 routes).  (Go to Transport for London to learn more about the "Knowledge".)   No GPS for them!  As a reward they can frequent these historic green food sheds that were erected in the late 19th and early 20th century to give shelter to the cabbies, who then drove horse-drawn hackney carriages.  There are only 13 left so we'll have to keep an eye out for them.

The sheds are run by the Worshipful Company of Hackney Carriage Drivers who offer a Cab Guide Course to Hackney Carriage drivers in conjunction with the Museum of London.  After you pass both a written and oral exam, you get this qualified taxi guide badge.  So if we take a black cab, we'll have to keep our eye out for it.

The shelters don't have "loos" and according to the article, finding a public lavatory while on the job is one of the cab drivers biggest bugbears.  (That doesn't bode well for us elderly tourists now, does it?)

Naturally there is competition between the traditional Black Cabs and Uber, many of whose drivers are recent immigrants using GPS and Waze.  You can read more about the clash between the Black Cabs' knowledge and experience versus the techie upstarts in this Oct. 17, 1917 article from the Washington Post.  There's even more in the New York Times: On London’s Streets, Black Cabs and Uber Fight for a Future: London’s cabby wars are less about the disruptive power of an app, or a new business model, than about the disruption of Britain.    This is a particularly interesting article, profiling a British Black cabbie and a Moroccan woman Uber driver: "She had come to London in 1997, at age 18, unable to read or write or drive, with a new husband she barely knew."  Schooling wasn't allowed for girls in her village.  Lots of baggage here worth reading.

The English Breakfast

Haven't I already talked about this?

However, now I'm reading Colman Andrews' The British Table: A New Look at the Traditional Cooking of England, Scotland and Wales.  (By the way, he doesn't even mention gin.  Can you imagine that?  Especially when his final chapter (which is teeny) is on Whiskey, Beer, Cider and Wine.)

His first chapter is about breakfast (and he says that nowadays the British eat the same kind of breakfast, including Kelloggs, that we do except on special occasions) and he mentions the English Breakfast Society whose website lets you explore the history and traditions surrounding the full English Breakfast.  Evidently the full English breakfast was started in the early 1300s by the "gentry" in the countryside who wanted to maintain "Anglo-Saxon" traditions and show off the bounty of their estates.  During the Edwardian period, the ingredients of the English breakfast became more standardized and accepted by the middle class: "bacon, eggs, sausage, black pudding, baked beans, grilled tomato, fried bread and toast, served with a jams, marmalades, tea/coffee and orange juice."  By the 1950s even the working class was claiming the full English breakfast, the fry-up, as their own.

But, sorry, you can't have potatoes with your fry-ups: "We here at the Society believe that hash browns and french fries are used as a cheap breakfast plate filler in badly run cafes, by people who have no respect for our traditions."  We'll have to eat our hash browns at Denny's.

Gloucester Pig

We can, however, experience the different back bacons, sausages and black puddings in the various regions of England.  The English Breakfast Society has a Guide to British Sausages (of which there are more than 400) in which they mention that the Cumberland Sausage is probably the most famous.  We'll be able to try that when we are at Derwent Banks in Keswick, Cumbria.  And thank god their sausages are traditionally made with pork and not with chicken or turkey, although I must admit that I don't care for the breadcrumbs added to their bangers.

And a note on back bacon:  it's not belly bacon like in the U.S. and it's not Canadian bacon which is cut from the loin.  British bacon has both belly and loin in each slice and they have bred pigs to produce the best cuts.  So we must have British back bacon in our full breakfasts, along with black pudding, which is a controversial foodstuff that Sir Isaac Newton wouldn't eat.

Choosing our Pubs

Penny says we need a battle plan for hitting the pubs as none of the Nicholson's pubs were in Chelsea or Fulham.  I have scoped out some pubs in the area around the apartment and there are a few that might be worth a visit.

Hollywood Arms is a couple of blocks away from the apartment and is part of Young & Co's pubs.  It isn't your typical historic looking pub but the food looks good, including the Sunday Roast.  Young & Co. has other pubs in West London (Chelsea and Fulham) and they all offer Sunday Roast and they all look sparkly clean, more like afternoon tea establishments than bars.  Perhaps they are "gastropubs" instead of the traditional pub.  Another of their pubs that is fairly close by is the King's Arms, located about 4 blocks up Fulham Road.  They believe in "great British food" but most of all they "believe in burgers" (they are a Burger Shack).  What can I say?  That appears to be the most popular pub food these days, although to their credit they do offer a Dorset lamb burger with whipped goats curd, red onion, pickles, shredded lettuce, and fries.

And Penny, Young & Co. also offers a pub app for your phone to help you find their pubs.

Another pub that is around 5 blocks from the apartment is The Sporting Page, a gastropub from the Food and Fuel chain.  Gastropubs seem to specialize in wine and cocktails rather than ale so if we want an historic pub that serves real ale, we might have to go into town as Chelsea doesn't seem to be the best place for cask ales.

Cumberland Curl

For instance, when we go to the Victoria and Albert Museum, we could stop at the Elephant & Castle for lunch, which is a Nicholson's pub specializing in sausages and chops.   Or maybe we'd rather go to the Churchill Arms when we're up at the V & A, except their kitchen specializes in Thai food (who knows, we might be ready for that!).  It's part of the Fuller's pub chain which doesn't have any pubs in Chelsea or Fulham.

If we visit the Smithfield Meat Market we can stop at The Old Red Cow
which is supposed to have a good selection of many types of beer and offers a good Sunday Roast, but you have to make reservations for that (we can do that online so we don't have to worry about language difficulties).   If we go to the British Museum we can stop at The Lamb, which offers Wiltshire lamb rump, broad beans, onions & gravy (18£) for "brunch" (I think that's lunch since they only open the kitchen at noon).

When we go down to Borough Market on the south side of the Thames, we can stop by the historic George Inn, a historic coach inn owned by the National Trust and managed by the Greene King chain of pubs.

We are going to need a little help with our pub trail.  Are we looking for real cask ale? Historic interiors?  Good British food?  Here are a few "best pubs" articles to get us started.  Many of the historic pubs are very small with standing room only so they advise avoiding lunchtime and the post-work rush.  We can select the ones that appear on all the lists and then check their menus.

Cittie of York pub recommended by the Pocket Rough Guide to London.  A Samuel Smith pub.

• The Telegraph:  24 of London's most incredible historic pubs
• The Evening Standard Go London: The Best Pubs in London
• TimeOut: The Best Pubs in London features a wine bar on the first page...
• Fodor's: London's 15 Best Pubs
• Visit London: Best Traditional Pubs in London
• Food and Wine: 19 of London's Best Pubs
• CNN Travel: 10 of London's Oldest, Greatest Pubs

So the question is do we want a real pub, a boozer, or do we want a pub with good food?  And if the latter, does that mean we should stick to gastropubs?

Ales, Beers and Pubs

Before I go to England, I want to review my options in the realm of beer.  I like fizz and I think a lot of British beer is flat and not very strong.

Real Ale

But first we should find out what the difference is between ales, typical beers of Britain and Belgium,  and lagers (also pilsners), the typical clean and crisp beers of the United States and Central Europe.  Lagers are brewed with the yeast Saccharomyces pastorianus which works at colder temperatures than the ale yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.  According to the Popular Science article, "What is the difference between a lager and an ale?", the lager yeast S. pastorianus, is a hybrid of S. cerevisiae and S. eubayanus, a wild yeast from Patagonia, and so understandably did not appear in Europe until the 1500s. The low-and-slow fermentation of lagers means that "lagers taste "clean" and lack the fruity esters characteristic of ales." S. pastorianus also cannot survive in a high alcohol environment and so the lagers are lower in alcohol than the ales, although British ales tend to be weaker than the Belgian ones.

According to Wikipedia, "England is known for its top fermented cask beer (also called real ale) which finishes maturing in the cellar of the pub rather than at the brewery and is served with only natural carbonation."  The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) began in the 1970s as a reaction against the homogenization of beer and its monopoly by big global conglomerates.  To help you find a pub that serves Real Ale, CAMRA has developed What Pub?, an online searchable directory of pubs in Great Britain, featuring 35,904 real ale pubs.  They also have a directory of pubs with historic interiors that you can search at Pub Heritage.

The Blackfriar

Apparently many of the pubs, even if historic, belong to chains like Wetherspoon, Fuller's, Slug and Lettuce, Nicholson's, Samuel Smith, Young & Co., Green King.  Like choosing a wine by its picturesque label, we can choose pubs by their picturesque names:   The Coal Hole (a 'song and supper club' where Gilbert and Sullivan performed regularly), The Blackfriar (a 'specialty sausage and chops house' with a wonderful interior), The Magpie (a specialty pie house), The Mudlark (named for scavengers who made a living in the Thames mud), The Porcupine (another specialty pie house), and The Moon Under Water (named after George Orwell's favorite fictional pub).  Then there are the pubs with "Arms" in their names which may refer to heraldic coats of arms or nearby alms houses, like the Harwood Arms and the Hollywood Arms which are near the apartment.

Nicholson's Ale & Gin Establishments has neighborhood Ale & Gin Trails that you can follow in London and you can also check out their seasonal Ale Library, with ales from various breweries in Ireland, England, and Scotland.  The majority of the spring ales are pale but they have some lovely names like Stiff Upper Lip, Light Brigade, Mad Goose, Fat Sprat, Pigs Ear, Juniper Rising, and Moonstone.  The most alcoholic is Yorkshire Dales Pale Ale at 6.5% so we shouldn't get drunk, just fat.  And if Penny would rather have gin, Nicholson's has a Gin Library too where she can pick out ones that are 'juniper heavy & robust',  'light & citrusy', 'floral & modern', 'sweet & fruity', 'savoury & dry', or 'something a little bit different' like rhubarb gin or sloe and mulberry gin.

I don't see that Nicholson's offers flights of ale or gin that would let you try a variety.  That would be nice.  Some of their pubs are "specialty pie houses" and offer an interesting menu of meat and non-meat pies.  Others are 'specialty sausage and chop houses' where you can get different kinds of sausages and toad in the hole as well as lamb chops.  Nicholson's also has specialty fish houses like the White Swan in Covent Garden that offers a special seafood menu.

Puddings

In other words, desserts.

The British have a sweet tooth and so do I -- sort of --, much to Fernando's consternation.

Here's a list of British desserts from Wikipedia.  I need to identify the ones I should definitely search out in London and be aware of in Yorkshire and the Lake District.

Eccles Cake

Eccles Cake
St. John, the head-to-toe dining of Fergus Henderson, offers Eccles Cake and Lancashire Cheese.  According to Wikipedia, Eccles cake is a small, round cake filled with currants and made from flaky pastry with butter, sometimes topped with demerara sugar, from the British town of Eccles.  An alternative name is "Squashed Fly Cake".  Now, is that pronounced eckels or eckless?  And for a bit of poptart humor: British fire brigades have reported fires started by Eccles cakes overcooked in microwave ovens. The sugar contained in the cakes is alleged to be flammable.  You can learn even more about how they are made at Heston vs St. John.

Gypsy Tart

Gypsy Tart
Paul Hollywood (of Great British BakeOff fame) has a recipe for Gypsy Tart on BBC Food.  Made of a filling of evaporated and condensed milk and dark brown sugar in a pastry crust,  it must be awfully sweet and it doesn't seem particularly exciting.  I can't imagine why St. John Smithfield has it on its dessert menu or why Paul Hollywood would bother with it.  Evidently it is a common dessert for school dinners and you can see how to make it on this video from the Kent County Council (it originated in Kent), by a school meals trainer.  And Pinterest has a collection of photos, including one topped by passion fruit from Bubble and Squeak.

Treacle Tart

Treacle Tart
The Wolseley serves a treacle tart at its Afternoon Tea and according to Yelp, it is the best in London.  This tart is as sweet as the gypsy tart, being made with breadcrumbs, golden syrup, and lemon to cut through the sweetness.  Mary Berry (of the Great British BakeOff) has a simple recipe for treacle tart on the BBC Food website.  According to The National Trust Book of Traditional Puddings, treacle (the syrup remaining after sugar refining, i.e. molasses) was used in the beginning and was gradually replaced by the lighter golden syrup.  Oh, and evidently Harry Potter loves treacle tart.  You can make it treacle pudding by leaving out the pie crust.  Lyle's is famous for its golden syrup and treacle and also offers a recipe for Lyle's Lovely Treacle Tart.

Sticky toffee pudding

Sticky Toffee Pudding
This appears on almost all London dessert menus. It is a cake made with dates, eggs, sugar, flour and treacle ("treecul"), topped with a toffee sauce (the Brits love their toffee!).  BBC Good Food has a recipe for the Ultimate Sticky Toffee Pudding if you want to try it before we go.  The toffee sauce can be homemade or you can pick up a can of Carnation caramel sauce.  Nigella Lawson has a recipe for it and even a YouTube video to help you.  Gordon Ramsay serves it at his restaurants and Mary Berry bakes it as well.  Pinterest will give you all sorts of versions.

Banoffee Pie

Banoffee Pie
Ban (from bananas) + offee (from toffee).
Wikipedia says it is an "English dessert pie made from bananas, cream and toffee (made from boiled condensed milk, or dulce de leche), combined either on a pastry base or one made from crumbled biscuits and butter."  Supposedly it was developed "in 1971 by amending an unreliable American recipe for "Blum’s Coffee Toffee Pie" with a soft toffee made by boiling an unopened can of condensed milk for several hours."  Blum's Coffee Toffee Pie?  Do you think Mother ever ate it in San Francisco?   Carnation will sell you a can of caramel, which apparently is almost the same as dulce de leche.

Bakewell Tart

Bakewell Pudding and Bakewell Tart
According to Wikipedia, "a Bakewell tart is an English confection consisting of a shortcrust pastry shell beneath layers of jam, frangipane, and a topping of flaked almonds," while a "Bakewell pudding is an English dessert consisting of a flaky pastry base with a layer of sieved jam and topped with a filling made of egg and almond paste."  They sound the same to me but the community of Bakewell Online says the Bakewell Tart "is not really at all like the Bakewell pudding either in flavour or texture."  I guess we will have to try each to find out.

Rhubarb Crumble

Fruit Crumbles
These are like our fruit crisps and are fruit topped with a streusel mixture of flour, butter and sugar.  According to Wikipedia, "Crumbles became popular in Britain during World War II, when the crumble topping was an economical alternative to pies due to shortages of pastry ingredients as the result of rationing. To further reduce the use of rationed flour, fat and sugar, breadcrumbs or oatmeal could be added to the crumble mix."  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall of River Cottage fame, has an article on cobblers, crisps and crumbles with recipes.

British Cheese Plate
Fortunately if you don't like cloyingly sweet desserts, there is usually a cheese board selection in the puddings menu, like this one at the Drayton Arms Pub: British cheese plate - Taw Valley Cheddar and Garstang Blue with savoury biscuits, apple and fig chutney, celery and grapes.  The National Café at the National Gallery offers an artisan British cheese plate (Keens Cheddar, Barkham Blue, Tunworth and Berkswell) served with oatcakes and chutney.  The plate usually comes with crackers and chutney.

This 2016 article in the Guardian claims that now British cheesemakers are outperforming the French: "The experts’ guide to a great British cheeseboard".  It mentions several cheese stores in London: Paxton & Whitfield, Neal's Yard Dairy, and La Fromagerie.  So we'll have to explore them.

HF Holidays: Durham and Derwent Bank

Durham
Finally on Day 9 (really 8) of our Road Scholar program with HF Holidays, we head back west to the Lake District National Park, stopping in Durham to see its 11th century Cathedral, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and to have lunch.  Durham Cathedral is on a peninsula formed by a loop in the River Wear and there is also Durham Castle, a Museum of Archaeology, and Durham University with a Botanic Garden.  Perhaps Fernando would like to stop by Durham University's School of Engineering and Computer Science, which looks like they got a divorce last year and now are separate departments with separate websites.  We'll see where we go on the program's "field trip".

For lunch we are on our own, so maybe could stop by Bell's for fish and chips, or Akarsu for Turkish food.  There are also some Thai, Lebanese, Chinese, Mexican and Italian restaurants to choose from and a variety of pubs serving pub fare and comfort food, which looks to be hamburgers and all-day breakfast.  Or we could walk over to the Durham Market Hall and see if they sell any food. We might just have to wander through the town or ask our guide for suggestions.

Then on we go to the famous Lake District and our country house near Keswick: Derwent Bank.

Derwent Water

Lake District National Park: Derwent Bank
This historic house is near the shore of Derwent Water, one of the lakes in this region and it offers the most holiday programs of the three houses in our program.  One can book a painting, photography, yoga, ukelele, bridge or cycling holiday here, in addition to walking.

Silver Travel Advisor: Derwent Bank, Cumbria - guided walking short break with HF Holidays
Most of the full reviews I've read have been for 3-day weekend holidays at the invitation of HF Holidays so they tend to be positive.  The author, Gillian Thornton, has a room on the top floor with a beautiful view of the lake, with a spacious bathroom, two USB ports and plenty of storage.  I only hope we are so lucky.

Derwent Bank room

Travel Lowdown: HF Holidays - Derwent Bank
This is the same author who did the review on the family holiday at Newfield Hall in Malham and again he does it with his family.  He too gets rooms with beautiful views but all of the rooms "contain everything required for a comfortable stay, including a range of toiletries, TV, hair dryer, towels and tea/coffee-making facilities." TV? I thought we were trying to get away from that!  Give me a view instead any day.  And again, there are no lifts in the house.

All country houses have drying rooms

Telegraph: That's the Way I Lake It
It's in this article on Derwent Bank that the author mentions you have to be careful ordering your sandwiches for the packed lunch.

Food at the hotel was outstanding and there was a generous spirit everywhere, with baskets of fruits and snacks lying around to help yourself for picnics, though you had to get the hang of ordering sandwiches. Sitting on a dry-stone wall, one of our group who had misunderstood the request form stoically munched into her Marmite, cream cheese and banana sandwich, pronouncing it "not so bad".

Full Cumbrian Breakfast

Marmite, cream cheese and banana sandwich?  That's worse than Madeleine Morris's peanut butter and onion sandwich.    In another article (the one below on HF), its author mentions "the fine selection of packed lunches, with poached salmon sandwiches and fine local cheese" so I think we will survive just fine.

Hopefully at Derwent Bank we can eat the Full Cumbrian breakfast: fried free-range eggs, local sausage, back bacon, black pudding, tomatoes and fresh mushrooms.  Fernando will be happy to eat everybody else's black pudding.

Oh!  and what does the HF stand for in HF Holidays?  Holiday Fellowship.  You can read more about the organization at 100 years of holiday fellowship.  In 1913 Thomas Arthur (TA) Leonard created the Holiday Fellowship (HF), a Society which sought to provide basic, accessible walking holidays in the UK and abroad. Although the accommodations have become more posh over the years, all the HF guides, or 'leaders' as they call them, are still volunteers who love walking and the outdoors.

H.F. Holidays: Newfield Hall and Larpool Hall

Our Road Scholar walking trip in September is done in conjunction with H.F. Holidays which offers walking/hiking programs around England and other countries.  The reviews I've read about them have been quite positive except for the romantic young couples who, after arriving, realize that they are amidst a bunch of older people, with whom they actually have to share a table at dinner.  Not at all what they had in mind for their honeymoon...  So here are a few reviews that I came across late last night.

Yorkshire Dales National Park:  Newfield Hall
This is our first stop, about an hour and a half (65 miles) by car directly north of Manchester.  HF Holidays is supposed to pick us up at the Manchester Airport and transport us there, otherwise it would take us 3 to 4 hours by bus and train to get there.

Bald Hiker:  Newfield Hall The Walking Retreat of Malhamdale
This February15, 2018 post by Paul Steele describes his weekend walking holiday at Newfield Hall, invited by HF Holidays.  Newfield Hall an historic building that was acquired by HF Holidays in the 1930s and the Bald Hiker finds it very impressive.  It even has a heated swimming pool so take your bathing suit.  He says everyone one looks forward to the dinners and the breakfasts are ample: "Breakfast is a huge array of cooked and cold, from full English to Salmon and egg, porridge to cereals."  I wonder if it will displace Munich in Fernando's ranking of breakfasts.

After a couple of days in Malhamdale, we are transported to the Yorkshire Coast, stopping by the Royal Horticultural Society's Garden Harlow Carr in Harrowgate on the way.  Here are some of the must see garden highlights:  a hedgehog-friendly garden with a hedgehog highway, a streamside garden, and a kitchen garden.  The growing conditions they have to contend with are "cold, drying winter winds, deep frosts, a cooler, shorter growing season and lots of wet weather."  Sounds a bit like Pittsburgh.

Yorkshire, North York Moors National Park: Larpool Hall
Now we are up near the east coast of England, near the seaside town of Whitby, whose abbey inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula and where Captain James Cook learned how to sail.  Whitby looks like a very picturesque town so I hope we'll have a chance to explore it, especially the jet shops.  Most of the hikes seem to be along the Cleveland Way.  We are staying at Larpool Hall, an imposing Grade II listed Georgian mansion. The last dinner at Larpool Hall is a 5-course farm-to-table dinner so that is something to look forward to.  Here are a couple of articles about the area so that we know what to expect.

Whitby in the rain

The Quirky Traveler: An Ideal Walking Holiday on the Yorkshire Coast
Zöe Dawes lives in Cumbria and was invited to spend a 3 day holiday in the summer by HF Holidays at Larpool Hall.  She speaks of afternoon teas there and also mentions that the walking guides are all volunteers, so apparently HF Holidays is a nonprofit.  She also mentions the North Yorkshire Moors Railway with steam engines, which we (the Easy Walkers) will ride to the market town of Pickering.  Oh the grandkids would love a vacation here!  Zöe says that both the dinner and breakfast were excellent and that for the packed lunch, you order a sandwich with a choice of fillings the night before and then you get to add things to it in the morning from "a tempting selection of ‘ingredients’ which include fresh fruit, raw vegetables, cheese and crackers, dried fruit, hard-boiled eggs, cake, biscuits and loads more."  I've read more than once that you don't go hungry on HF Holidays.  And I also hear that you can have kippers or blood pudding for breakfast...

Travel Lowdown: HF Holiday's Larpool Hall, Whitby
This is a March 2016 review by a man who took his wife and two young boys to Larpool Hall for a holiday.  Previously he and his family had been to Derwent Bank, which is our last stop on our Road Scholar program.  They are vegetarians and found the staff at Larpool hall very accommodating to their dietary needs.

Most of the articles are by people who have been invited by HF Holidays so one needs to go to Trip Advisor to find the negative reviews, like a couple who were locked out because they came home after midnight (that won't happen to us) or who complained about the hot water not arriving fast enough in the shower (after all, it is an old house).  It also doesn't have a lift.  We only hope that the size of our room is adequate, that it has a view (cross your fingers) and that it is quiet.