I don't normally do bad things but...

Yesterday was one of the exceptions. We were on the road for seven and a half hours, driving through torrential rain, broiling clouds, mist and sunshine – it was one of those days when your sunglasses were on and off more times than a Guide’s nightie (or is that a bride's nightie?). We drove through Welsh mountains, Hereford hills and lastly the Wye Valley before we made our way across the Severn and landed up in Exeter and our first experience of a Jury’s Inn.

            The journey was a dream for anyone who identifies themselves as tea and cakes aficionados. The whole distance (A5, A49 and then A466) was punctuated by tearooms with almost clockwork regularity – rather like those lame horror films that you used to watch in the nineties – the ones where you knew someone was about to die because a further 12 minutes and 16 seconds had just elapsed (watch Halloween 5 if you don’t know what I mean). We had cheese on toast and filter coffees in a walkers’ café near Capel Curig before descending into a rainy Betws-y-Coed, staring wistfully at the beautiful shops and resisting the urge to park up and have an early cream-tea. If you love days out with views, tea-rooms and every possible variation of outdoors’ shops then follow this route. There’s no point me recommending any one café over another – just stop when you cannot bare the thirst anymore and make sure you have a cream-tea or maybe some of that Welsh cake.

We stopped in Leominster for our afternoon stop but if you haven’t been along this route before then I would suggest you stop in Hereford and make sure you visit the Cathedral and the Hereford Mappa Mundi. It’s expensive but one of the most breath-taking sights in England. If we hadn’t been in rather a hurry to get to Exeter I would have paid the fee to go and see it again. The anticipation of the sight is as wondrous as the map itself. A corridor of history around the map, punctuated with detailed translations of the various parts of the world as it was understood at the time. Detailed annotations such as ‘There be monsters…’ how I would have loved to have been able to explore this World – the one where it was believed that Heaven and Hell were integral parts of our Earth along with seas and lands full of ogres.

Finally you enter an ante-room and already the temperature has dropped, in this room your eyes adjust to the dulled lights and you await the slow sweep of the vast glass doors as you are at last allowed into the map room itself and stand in front of this splendid relic from our past. If you want to read more about it before you visit you could click here.

Drinking a beer in the bar at our hotel whilst ruminating over where to eat – we decided against the hotel menu of overpriced mediocre food with very expensive (and no doubt ordinary) wines, opting instead for more reasonably priced mediocre food and less expensive (but still rather ordinary) wine at Café Rouge – we worried for a moment or two whether this was going to be the best venue for sleep, given the abundance of men in various states of fancy dress and women dressed in very small dresses and precarious heels. This was Saturday night in Exeter in summer and Jury’s Inn seemed to be the place to stay for stag and hen dos.

Still we had a pleasant evening at Café Rouge, a gentle stroll around the Cathedral and returned to our comfortable beds having forgotten our fears and I drifted easily into sleep. Anyone who has suffered insomnia will know how special this kind of sleep is and how badly you react to being woken from it at 03:28 by inconsiderate groups of revellers who proceed to continue their party in the room next to yours. And continue it until some time around 5am. I am not normally murderous but everyone has limits.

I consoled myself with the fact that I would get my revenge in the morning and finally drifted back to sleep when the party people quietened just as it was starting to get light.

As I said, I do not normally do bad things so I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the revellers who were taking some well needed sleep this morning. It was me who gave you those wake-up calls between 07:30 and 07:45 – I know you didn’t actually book them but it was a lovely morning and it was a shame for you to miss it. Hmmm, it was also me who hung the ‘Please Make-Up This Room’ sign on your door – sadly I had to go to a Baptism this morning so I wasn’t around to see that bit of fun.

I am on holiday for one more day but will be posting recipes here soon.