River Cottage

By fletch Monday, September 22nd, 2008

The weather this weekend was brilliant, really fresh but nice and sunny.. as it turns out, the perfect weather for a trip to River Cottage!

Check out the photos here :-)

Picture this, it’s Friday night and after some beers and a bit of food with Asian Bond (who has just moved to London) I’m back at DJ Towers in bed ready for a catnap when Jen presents me with a bottle of beer; “Do you want to know what your surprise is?”

You see, this weekend has long been pencilled in my diary as “something exciting” it was to be kept free for some sort of surprise activity, I hadn’t been given *any* details at all and I quickly recognised that this beer was a clue, God I’m good.

The beer was called “Stinger” and described on the bottle as “Slightly spicy with a light bitterness and a subtle tingle that comes from the nettles. Equally good with summer barbecues and winter roasts or while sitting on a hay bale watching the sun go down”. I’d also like to add to this that it’s pretty good for drinking in bed with your girlfriend as well.

Anyhow, at first I thought we might be off round a brewery somewhere so I looked for the brewers stamp and after a minute or so where panic was setting in, wondering if I should by now “get it” and thinking “why don’t I understand!” and “what is she smiling at” I finally saw the light and the River Cottage logo appeared!

“Are we going?!”
“Yep, to a party there tomorrow night :)”
“fuck!”

So yeah on Saturday morning we set off down to the Devon/Dorset border, pitched a tent at a nearby campsite and went to a River Cottage party!

We shared a taxi from the campsite with another couple who been to an event at the cottage before and were clearly “Hugh Fans”. We got dropped off in a field at the top of the hill and then trailored down to the farm by a tractor. On arrival at the farmhouse we had a glass of Local bubbly and just milled about whilst people walked round with canapes.. I’m not going to waflle on about any of the food, I’ll just state the obvious that it was all fucking totally delicious.

Anyhow we just kind of wandered around the farm bubbly-in-hand eating canapes and checking out things like the famous Chickenopolis, the veg garden and surrounding areas. Generally I suppose we just got into more into the nettle beer and organic cider (so into the cider in fact that we forgot to go and see the pigs) and watched the sun start to set.

A sit-down dinner was served about 8PM, five courses – seabass, carrot & beetroot soup, roast lamb with turnip gratin – and of course there was plenty of local wine around to sup.

We saw a few faces from the show, “the meat guru” and the “chicken man” to name a couple. Jenny was very excited to see Gill Mellor (Head Chef and “very fit”).

Earlier on in the evening a curious queue had formed half way around the vegetable garden somewhat targetting the main face of all this Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall himself. I’d imagined bumping into Hugh like you see him on the telly, a bit drunk on some tipple of the moment, tending to the broccoli or something yet here he was with a line-up of people waiting to ask questions and press the flesh – a bit like a book signing.

I wasn’t sure if this was usual practise or not but we joined the queue for a bit because we wanted to say hello but ended up drifting out of it when it became clear that he’d be around for a while (we also ran out of cider) it was a bit strange to see people getting quite “celeb” around the Whittingstaller – albeit in a kind of middle-aged way ;)

Anyhow, Hugh came round to all the tables whilst we were eating and we had a quick chat, I got him to pose for a picture for fletch.cx and asked him about sleeping in a polytunnel naked with the tomatos.. expressing faux concern that those same tomatos might have been in the soup we’d just eaten. Aparantly that was about five years ago and he eyed me a bit suspiciously saying that he thought “we’d met before”, clearly we hadn’t, I don’t know what he thought we were!

Right, now onto the finest surprise of the evening. Every member got entered into a raffle for which there were about half a dozen prizes ranging from sheepskins, organic vegetable boxes etc right through to what looked to be the best prize of a “River Cottage Lamb, butchered to your specification” and whilst we’d briefly flicked over the prizes and ooh-ed over the throught of them we hadn’t really paid the raffle any attention.

So, Mark starts to read out the raffle winners over the PA system and says “..the winners of the butchered lamb in your own home..l.. err. at least that will need to be confirmed, last year Ray did travel to the winners home.. we’ll have to check..” I was thinking at this point how funny it would be if the winner lived in Scotland or somewhere else miles away and mentioned it to Jen: “Imagine, Jen and Paul from Aberdeen” when suddenly Mark announces “Jenifer and Paul!” we just looked at each other: “us?!”

After jumping up and celebrating like we’d just won a euromillions rollover everyone stopped clapping and the question was asked loud and clear over the PA “Congratulations! Where do you live?”

“AHB-BERRRRRGH-DEEEEEIN-SHIYRE!” I yelled.

Brilliant. It was absolutely quality. Ray “the meat guru” Smith came over after the rest of the prizes had been dished out and will be coming to London Bridge some time in the next couple of months with a whole lamb to butcher at DJ Towers. How good is that?! Can’t wait, it has made a few of my more dedicated foodie friends quite jealous and requests for lamb cuts have already been made!

The rest of the night passed talking, drinking more cider and nodding along to the house band “Gothic Chicken” before heading back to the campsite around 1AM.

Right, well, that’s River Cottage I suppose. Some other things that I found out this weekend include I look a little bit like an Aardman Animations “Creature Comforts” character and that I need to get back into shape because I saw a vision of my future self at West Bay on Sunday!

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Hello! Fletch.cx has been going since 1999 in one form or another, yep incredible, when will it end? For more of my bullshit see last.fm, lluckj.com, facebook and if you really want a constant avalanche of musings, observations and lies then follow me on twitter..