More soon but looking at the Lake District, York, Leeds, Nottingham, Manchester North Wales, back to Bath and Bristol and maybe Brighton too. Cant wait.

I watched a TLC program the other night where the family from Arkansas visited England and while stopping to eat at a pub they were worried that toad in the hole was an actual frog baked inside a pastry. Whew.

I must say I have been really surprised with the food. I was prepared for bad tasting food and was told to make sure to find the Mc Donald’s as I will need some American food.

My first day I had an English breakfast or what they call a “fry up”. Most of the plate was full of what we call baked beans, 2 pieces of white toast slathered with butter, a sliced tomato however it was cooked, fried potato patties very much like a hash brown patty from Burger King, a hard fried laced egg on the top oh yeah a pile of sautéed mushrooms. Usually they have some kind of fried sausage and what they call black pudding which is pork by products and blood gelled and fried thankfully I have not had to eat it. The whole breakfast including a drink was less than 4.00

I had the full local pub experience, I think its not quite what I expected I thought it would look like something from TV but this local was very much a family place attached to a restaurant. There are booths tables and lots of tables outside. You stand at the bar to place your order, you take your drinks with you but all food is delivered to your table. I tried Newcastle Ale, which I had tasted years ago it is the only beers served in a bottle and served very cold. Dave had a pint of Guinness with a shamrock swirled into the top of the foam. They said I had to try English crisps which are potato chips.  I tried two kinds Prawn Cocktail which tasted like cocktail sauce and the others was chicken flavor yep chicken flavored, they tasted like chicken bullion cube. Helen and Dave had dessert with their beer and drinks. Not something we do dessert with beer. We walked to the pub from their house it was about a mile and we walked the whole way through a green way path for people and bikes. Most of the walk way was lined with hedges. It was a nice warm evening by British standards.

The English have a something they call a Sunday roast. It means a traditional Sunday meal which is a roasted meat; mostly lamb, beef or pork. You have the choice of meat, and they sometimes have a veggie of the day. We had peas, steamed carrots, creamed leeks, mashed potatoes and roasted potatoes and of course Yorkshire pudding which is not pudding at all but a large flaky, crusty dinner roll that warm and soft on the inside and just itching for gravy oh yeah there was a lot of smooth almost clear brown gravy. Not milk gravy but drippings from the pan type of gravy. The food was absolutely wonderful, and I had a sparking local apple juice that was clean and crisp. I could not eat dessert my friends  ordered lemon curd tart and a what we would call a hot fudge Sunday.

After more hours of roaming the village and the shops and seeing more standing stones, we headed back through the rolling countryside and stopped at a town called Bradford on Avon, yep the very same Avon that Shakespeare lived on only Stratford is far north of where we were but this town is just as old. We strolled around through the town and found a table sitting outside of what looked like a closed store. It was thrift store type items. Helen called it tat TAT which is a  kind of  junk.

I had to have real Fish and Chips meal. At the end of this long full day of sightseeing Fish and Chips was what we needed for TEA which means the same thing as supper or dinner. We went to their local “chippy” as they are called. A small shop where you stand and order your fish and chips “to Go” or take out or take away. We stood in a que(line) to order. The aroma of the sizzling fish hitting the deep fryer permeated the shop and the walk outside there was no mistaking this was a chippy. The meal consists of large thick cut French fries and a huge piece of cod fish that  were warped in white butchers paper twice then put in a bag. It was hard to wait to get to the house to try to fish n chips. Traditionally they are served with malt vinegar on top. We put our orders onto plates to eat in front of the Telly the fish was huge it looked like a whole fish. Tthe fish was battered and deep fried. I expected something really greasy but the batter on the fish was very light and the fish very moist and steaming. The chips were greasy and hot and could be dipped in any type of sauce ketchup, hot mustard or whatever. The meals do not come with tarter sauce, the meal also came with mushy peas where are basically mashed peas. I loved them there were sweet and creamy and went so well with the crispy fish and greasy chips. I see how a pint of beer or hot tea would go so well with this meal. It was so large I could not eat all of it if I compared it to Long John silvers this meal would have equaled bout 3 meals from our American type of fish and fries

In Wales we bought Cornish pasties which are pastry dough folded over and filled with meat and veggies. The dough is crimped on one side. I ordered the steak and potato. The pasties are baked not fried. We had ours served to us in waxed paper bag which we folded around the end of the pastie and bit into a hot flaky crust it took two bites to get to the meat and veggies. The inside was really hot and juicy and the sauce or gravy as they call it was not too thick. It was seasoned with spices that I could not identify.  The meat was tender and the potatoes tasted as if they ad been roasted before being added to the dough.We walked around the streets while eating our pasties. As if we were locals and did that every day at lunch time. Later we found a indoor market that was inside an arcade. It was all local foods. Freshly cut meats, cheeses and breads. The aromas were intoxicating. We wondered around the arcade and found a Parisian Café that offered the traditional English “cream tea”. Which is always scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam. Of couse it comes with pots of hot tea. We also had fresh strawberries. I have never tasted strawberries that strawberries were this smooth and sweet. The only problem with the “cream tea” is the heavy cream seems to weigh you down the fat content is 60 grams of fat for 2 oz of cream.

We roamed around in a daze after the cream tea. We did manage to get down to the Cardiff Bay and the Doctor Who shop and caught our train back to Weston-super-Mare.

Sunday we had a full English breakfast at the local farm shop. The full breakfast minus the black pudding which is fine with me. I actually ate fresh sausage. Everything was raised locally I mean all the food we at was local. When you have the breakfast you will need sauce which is catsup and a brown sauce very much like Heinz 57 steak sauce. To work off our breakfast we hiked up a huge hill to see the ancient st. Nicholas church, which still operates as a local church. After hours of hiking we were ready to stop into a pub to have Sunday lunch or what they call a Sunday Carvery. It is very much like a a Sunday brunch. There was a choice of meats which the publican or bar manager carves for you. beef, lamb, and pork. There was a cauliflower casserole with cheese, peas, roasted potatoes, steamed kale and cabbage, steamed carrots, yorkshire pudding and dressing which was little balls of sage type dressing that was fried, chips and gravy I had a local ale that was golden brown and a served room temperature from the tap. It was really fruity and grainy. It went well with the dinner. This evening I will get to try local apple cider which is supposed to pack a powerful punch.

On Monday my final day in the UK, I am cooking a requested American meatloaf,

Real mac and cheese, salad and apple pie with Devon icecream.

Technorati Tags: bristol, british, english, food, UKtravel, wales, weestonsupermare

If you are not sure about transfers or changing trains. Ask the agents they are very helpful and take great care to explain exactly what you need to do. If you buy a ticket on the train be sure to ask for a return unless you are not returning the same place. It is also a good plan to have a map to make sure you are boarding the train in the direction that you plan to visit. It seems like common sense but not to everyone. GPS on your phone may or may not work in rural parts of England Many of the trains going to Cardiff have to change depending what city you are traveling from. Bristol is a major stop. If you go to Wales from the West you will travel under the River Severn. Really kind of neat to go under the river. If you are taking a short day trip there is no need to pay for first class and some trains do not offer first class anyway. If you travel during the slow times during the day or off season, avoid the weekends you should be able to get a good seat at the regular fare

. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weston-super-Mare_railway_station http://www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk/ http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/

http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/default.aspx

http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/rail_menu.htm

About the Author Linda has been writing for fun most of her life. She is the co-author of “The Soul of a Writer”, (Journey Publishing) as well as many published poems and articles. She has jumped into the blog world with both feet. She lives in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina.

Technorati Tags: bristol, howtoridetrains, trains, UKtravel, wales, weestonsupermare