Architects meet the farmers

We alight  at Kendal Auction Mart, a new, purpose built, multi function Mecca for Cumbrian livestock farmers, and addicted household auction devotees. This is our Thursday post walk venue. Our target, Café Ambio, they have a concession within.

Entering through automatic doors, we see fittings, floor coverings and interior design,  smart and modern, hinting at the head office of, perhaps a posh software company, but is this fit for purpose?

Our visits rarely coincide with livestock auction days,  the café is usually quiet. Today we can’t help noticing we are following a trail of mixed sawdust, cow dung and sheep droppings on the clinical floor which increases as we coincide with the corridor from the livestock auction ring to the café, and furthermore, an overpowering bucolic stench prevails - fortunately that seems to dissipate as we enter the café.

The ambiance is cacophonous with farmers badinage and gossip. We see a range of ages, but mostly with gnarly Cumbrian weather-beaten faces, wearing flat hats, woefully worn and ingrained tweed three piece suits, or layers of moth eaten jumpers or cardigans, all wearing muck shedding wellies, and most carrying home made knobbly sticks for prodding their livestock into spriteliness to impress prospective buyers in the ring, which all tends to belie some of the expensive transport parked outside. This gathering  looks like it has been transported from the stone flagged floors of a Cumbrian pub shepherds' meet, and appears incongruous here where well intentioned designers have failed to marry the Cumbrian farmyard and its attendant livestock with modern architecture.

Our walk was uphill and down dale from Crosthwaite where we parked, (with permission), at the expensive Punch Bowl, (sample starter - seared Loch Fyne scallops, white chocolate and truffle risotto £9.95).

Kendal Auction Mart - Café Ambio is at righthand end

Can anybody identify this flower and...

...this grass/wheat like plant? Click to enlarge

Underbarrow church

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Knee update. Just back from scan/x-ray/blood test results appointment. Now have to have hospital visit to withdraw fluid to establish existence of infection. If worst comes to worst the whole op would have to be done over again, but surgeon urges not to panic - "one step at a time". He told me emphatically that the problem is not related to me overdoing things and I must not blame myself - "carry on with whatever you are doing".