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

___________________

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".

"Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?"

Thursday 23rd May 2013

Thursday walks with Pete finish at a café, and we have favourites within our familiar territory.

For some time we favoured Number 17 at Milnthorpe; it is close to home, coffee is 10 out of 10, and  leather armchairs provide comfort. Towards the end of our Lancaster Canal project I indulged in a piece of Rocky Road, a confection I had watched Nigella Lawson make. I was taken unawares when I nearly broke my multi-hundred-pound dental bridgework on a solid chunk which turned out to be a whole hard boiled sweet - I was told this was part of Number 17's recipe - it certainly wasn't part of Nigella's. I was not impressed. At the next visit "background music" was not background but loud pop, damaging to the ears, and impeding conversation. With consideration for my hopefully continued good health we haven 't been to Number 17 since.

Another port of call is Café Ambio at the Lakeland Motor Museum near Newby Bridge at the southern end of Windermere. Ambio also have a branch at Chorley, and puzzlingly they set up at the Le Mans 24 hour race (I must research the reason behind that). More relevant to Pete and myself, Kendal Livestock Auction Mart  recently relocated to palatial new premises close to Jct. 36 on the M6 only a few miles from Arnside, and Café Ambio are part of the deal. Coffee is again tops. There is background music but barely audible. Free wi-fi and leather settees also feature, and they make a flapjack with oats, treacle and fruit that is sticky, wholesome and to die for, and that is where we ended up last Thursday after a six mile walk in Kentmere.  

Down the Kentmere valley

An enlargement of the River Kent which provides good trout fishing available on day tickets

To the head of Kentmere.  Kentmere Pike on right. Ideal walking surface

This business of background music is tiresome in eating and drinking venues, but for sometime now it has become more prevalent and intrusive in television documentaries. I have read and heard from many varying sources about this irritation which leads me to believe that this is a majority objection, yet still these egotistic documentary makers persist. I have seen some excellent productions where this has  been the only fault, but unfortunately almost making them unwatchable.

In praise of tea

My predilection for cafés, pots of tea and the like on my wanderings by foot or cycle has been questioned (see comment - L da P on my last post). The implication is that this denigrates the macho image.

This café failed me - click to enlarge to see notice in window

I have no pretension to be the “hard cyclist” alluded to by L da P.

My attitude to cycling seems to ignore the personal challenge I often adopt when walking, when I tend to compare my time with those in guide books, and others, or set myself targets. Having said that, I do have a sneaky look at the mini cycle computer that tells me my average speed, and, best of all, the fastest speed achieved (31 mph so far).

For me, tea refreshes at breakfast time, and during the day. Coffee gives me a kick mid morning, and induces repletion after my evening meal. Wine only enters the equation on outdoor trips if I eat out in the evening, or it may be beer if good real ale is available.

Beer during the day when walking or cycling is disastrous. On the Pennine Way (1987), I had a sandwich and two or three pints in the Green Dragon at Hardraw. The following ascent of Great Shunner Fell, on a blazing hot afternoon was one of the most uncomfortable walks I can remember.

The “mutual friend” mentioned by L da P was my old climbing partner Tony who was as good a friend as I ever had - he very sadly died in 2003. Tony was a hard climber, but he always insisted on a brew at a café before and after climbing, and that influence is now embedded in me.

Tony

A trip with Tony took us to Spain where we climbed with some Spanish climbers who were exceedingly good company. For these guys a days climbing had to include a pre-climb brew, good companionship on the crag, and a meal together afterwards, and this was reverently designated:  un compleat días, which I have always remembered as a laudable concept.