Out to Lunch in Corsica, Tamil Nadu and the Western Desert

Three Lunches Enjoyed in Three Very Different Countries with Very Different Cuisines

I do like eating. I also have a sad tendency to photograph my lunch, or have myself photographed eating it, or to photograph my companions eating theirs. It may be mildly weird, but it is (probably) nothing to be ashamed of, so here come three lunches Lynne and I have enjoyed in various places at various times.

Spiny Lobster, Cargèse, Corsica, July 2006

France

It is hard to believe this blog has reached its 77th post and this is the first mention of our nearest neighbour. We have probably been to France more often than any other country, but we have visited less often of late, being seduced by more exotic locations - Vietnam, coming up next month or previously unexplored parts of Europe - The Baltics last year, the Balkans next May.

Corsica

And now I have turned my attention to France, it is not to the mainland but to the beautiful if occasionally rebellious island of Corsica. I cannot be certain that Corsica is the only unspoiled Mediterranean island left, but I know of no others of any size. Corsica has its own language (though everybody speaks French too), its own flag and its own distinctive cuisine.

Cargèse, on the west coast of Corsica

Unusually for an island, the traditional Corsican diet did not involve fish. With the low lying east coast a malarial swamp and the rocky west coast plagued by pirates, the Corsicans turned their backs on the sea and lived among the mountains. The chestnut forests provided their flour and polenta, the sheep provided their pungent cheeses, several of which the UN have officially designated as WMD, and their meat came from the demi-sauvage black pigs which roam everywhere - and from wild boar in the hunting season.

Pirates and malaria, though, are problems long banished - from the Mediterranean, a least. The island’s capital is no longer the hill town of Corte, but the port of Ajaccio, and seafood has joined pork on the island's dinner tables. In the small coastal town of Cargèse, some 30 km north of Ajaccio, spiny lobster features on the menu of every restaurant. It is never cheap, two spiny lobsters and a bottle of Corsica’s crisp, clean dry rosé cost over €100, but it is good to treat yourself occasionally. And you do at least get a long lunch for your money; it takes time to ferkle out all the meat from the various parts of the crustacean, even using the special ferkling instruments provided.

About to tackle a spiny lobster

It is a weird looking beast with plenty of spines, but no claws. It may be the size and – very roughly – the shape of a lobster but it actually tastes more like a crab – and that is no bad thing.

South Indian Thali, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, Feb 2009

India

Tamil Nadu

Most of the citizens of India’s southernmost states are vegetarian, and a Thali is a perfect introduction to the local cuisine. A thali consists of a tray holding several (in this case eleven) small metal bowls each containing a different vegetable curry. Rice and a poppadum or chapatti are dumped in the middle, the rice being replenished as often as required. Thali is available everywhere and costs anything from 50 to 500 rupees. The quality of the food varies little, the difference relates to the surroundings in which you eat. More upmarket restaurants will also sell beer but elsewhere you make do with a bottle of water. For a little extra upmarket restaurants offer meat or fish thalis, which means a slice of meat or fish is balanced on top of the rice. In my opinion most vegetarian dishes can be improved by a slice of ham, but vegetarian thalis are an exception to that rule; they are absolutely complete in themselves and need nothing extra.

Eating a Thali, Paristhuram Hotel restaurant, Thanjavur
Posh enough for a beer and a table cloth, humble enough to be cheap

It is not always entirely clear what the vegetables are, partly because many are unfamiliar, and partly because they are less important than the spices. The difference in spicing from bowl to bowl, the richness of the combinations and the subtlety in variation is a delight. One bowl usual contains what might be called a dessert, often tapioca sweetened with jaggery and laced with cardamom. I remember being given tapioca pudding as a child and hating it; it has long disappeared from the menus of childhood but if it had only been this way, then things might have been different.

Lunch at Cleopatra’s Restaurant, Bawiti, Egypt, Nov 2009

Egypt

Bawiti is the main settlement in the Bahariya Oasis some 360 km across the Western Desert from Cairo.

The morning commute, Bawiti

Apparently Cleopatra runs a restaurant there now, which must be less stressful than being Queen of Egypt. It is not a big restaurant - indeed this is the only table - nor does it have much of a menu, offering a choice of ‘meat or chicken.’ There is also rice and potatoes, salad and bread. No one would accuse the cooking of being complex or innovative, it is simple stuff but done as well as simple stuff can be.

Lynne at Cleopatra's Restaurant, Bawiti with Mohammed (nearest camera) our driver and a man with a fine sense of humor, and Araby, linguist, archeologist and all-round good egg

The vegetables we buy at Tescos, Morrisons - or wherever - are varieties bred to look good, be disease resistant and of a consistent size. They are then treated to ensure they have the maximum possible shelf life. Nowhere in the process is consideration given to how they might taste. I have no idea where Cleopatra’s patron buys his supplies, it may or may not be the El (or Al) Senbad Supermarket, but wherever it is, it is somewhere that lacks the ‘benefits’ of Tescoid civilization. His potatoes tasted like potatoes, his cucumbers like cucumbers and his tomatoes were not just a glass of water in a shiny red skin.

El Senbad Supermarket, Bawiti

Eccleshall and Cop Mere: Cowpat Walk No. 2

A Circular Walk based on The Star at Copmere End

Staffordshire

Stafford Borough

Once upon a time Eccleshall (Eccle-shall is the unlikely but correct pronunciation) consisted of a manor house on the north bank of the River Sow and a single east-west street running down to the church on the other side of the river. This was enough for the several dozen people who lived here in 1068. Eccleshall’s population now exceeds 6,000 so it could be a small town but feels like a large village. All subsequent development has been to the south but that original single street is still the main street, so Eccleshall’s centre is, paradoxically, on the very edge of the village.

Eccleshall to Ellenhall

We started outside the church. The present edifice, built on the site of the Domesday church in the 13th century, is large and self-important, as befits the last resting place of six bishops of Lichfield.

Holy Trinity, Eccleshall

Cop Mere – our intended lunch stop - is only two kilometres to the west, so to make it a full morning we took a less than direct route. We started by walking round the edge of Eccleshall in a south easterly direction. It was a cold crisp day with a pale blue cloudless sky; it looked good, but we needed to get moving to keep warm.

Outside the village we passed Johnson Hall. There has been a manor house on this site since the 12th century, but the present building is 16th century (with an 1883 makeover).

Johnson Hall, Eccleshall

Leaving the grounds of Johnson Hall......

Leaving the grounds of Johnson Hall

....we crossed the A519 and made our way by lane and field path to the village of Ellenhall.

Field paths to Ellenhall

Ellenhall’s 300 inhabitants have no shop, pub or post office, but they do have a church and that church has seats in the churchyard so, although it was a little early, it seemed a good spot for coffee. The church is much more modest than Eccleshall’s; its oldest sections are 12th century, but the tower is a 1757 rebuild.

St Mary's Ellenhall

The low January sun was generating a little warmth, so it was a pleasant place to sit, although, after an hour’s walking we were now twice as far away from our intended lunch stop as we had been at the start.

Alison and Francis have coffee in the weak sunshine

Ellenhall to Cop Mere

Refreshed, we left the village via the grounds of the tautologically named Ellenhall Hall. It does not seem a particularly old building, though there has been a manor house somewhere in the village since the 16th century.

Lee makes a friend

A long, very gentle descent took us down to Lodge Farm and a string of fish ponds, and an even more gentle rise brought us back to the A519 near the hamlet of Whitely Heath. Crossing the main road we headed down Cash Lane. A row of churns had been placed on the verge outside a farm for decoration. Seeing milk churns awaiting collection on roadside stands was commonplace in my youth. At some point, probably in the late sixties, they disappeared, though I think it was some thirty years before I had noticed they had gone.

Milk churns beside Cash Lane

Turning off Cash Lane, field paths took us to Horsley Farm before another lane and more field paths brought us to the small road down to Copmere End. There seemed an inordinate number of stiles on this walk and many of them tricky to negotiate, being above steep banks down to slippery footbridges or hemmed in with hawthorn or in poor repair.

Another awkward stile

Lunch in The Star at Copmere End

The Star at Copmere End is the sort of country pub that has been fast disappearing over the last decade. The Star, though, is very much open and was busy. Perhaps it shows that if the landlord can get the food, the beer and the welcome right, country pubs can still be viable businesses.

Lunch in the Star, Copmere End

Copmere End stands beside Cop Mere, but as the lake is roughly circular I struggle to see how it can have an ‘end’. Like Aqualate Mere, Cop Mere is glacial in origin - a shallow scoop in the Staffordshire clay made by retreating ice.

Cop Mere

Following the River Sow from Copmere

Leaving the pub we walked half way round the Mere to its north edge before heading up across Sugnall Park to the B5026.

Mile post beside the B5026

Crossing the road we wandered up, across and then down Sugnall Hill before turning east and heading along the northern edge of the flood plain of the River Sow.

The 25 km long Sow (pronounced as in female pig) may not be one of the world’s great rivers but does have the distinction of being the longest river entirely contained within the Borough of Stafford. It rises at Fairoak, flows into and out of Cop Mere then through Eccleshall and Stafford before joining the Trent at Shugborough.

The flood plain of the Sow

Eccleshall Castle

Eccleshall Castle was some 500 m away at this point, and although we eventually walked right past it, this distant view was the best we had. A manor house on the site was originally fortified in 1200. It became a residence of the Bishop of Lichfield, played a walk-on part in the Wars of the Roses and was besieged and taken by Parliamentarian forces in 1643. After the Civil War, the castle was destroyed. The current house, built among the ruins some 50 years later, is privately owned - and remarkably difficult to see.

Back to Eccleshall

Over The Sow and Back to Eccleshall Church

We re-entered Eccleshall across the Sow bridge. Eccleshall may be twinned with Sancerre, but that does not mean it produces wine of any great quality – or indeed at all. Beyond the bridge we crossed the water meadows back to our starting point by Eccleshall church.

Across the water meadows to Eccleshall church

[Note on Cowpat Walk numbers: Francis thinks this was Cowpat 4, I have called it Cowpat 2. I have a long and complex justification for this which is far too tedious to bother with here. What it boils down to is: my blog, my numbers.]

The Cowpats
 

1 Ironbridge Gorge

2 Eccleshall and Cop Mere

3 Swynnerton to Whitmore

4 Biddulph, The Cloud and Rushton Spencer

5 Shutlingsloe and Danebridge

6 Crowdecote
7 Scaling the Mighty Weaver Hills

 8 Morridge and Onecote
9 Codsall
10 The Roaches and Lud's Church

 

Aqualate Mere and Norbury Junction

The A519 from Eccleshall to Newport runs along a low ridge as it approaches Shropshire. I had arranged to meet Mike in Sutton, one of the villages on that ridge but finding nowhere to stop on the main road, I was forced to wander a little. I eventually found him parked on the verge where the minor road to Gnosall flattens out at the bottom of the ridge.

After two very cold days, Wednesday was considerably milder and we set off along the base of the ridge optimistic that the rain would hold off.



Across fields towards Forton

A kilometre across rough fields brought us to Forton, the next village along the ridge, the path coming out on the minor road beside All Saints church. First built in the 12th century, much of the present church is the result of an 18th century remodelling. It remains a handsome building of dressed sandstone.



All Saints, Forton

Forton Hall next door is also a handsome building. It was constructed in 1655 by Edwin Skrymsher (and more of the Skrymsher family later) for the cost of £100 – less than I paid for my walking boots.



Forton Hall - cheaper than a pair of boots

We strolled down the lane from Forton to Meretown, crossing a bridge that spans the defunct Newport arm of the Shropshire Union Canal and the River Meese at the same point. We paused on the bridge trying to understand how it all worked. The aqueduct built in 1833 to carry the canal over the river has gone, and the site is further complicated by an extra stream which we decided must be a mill race. According to Staffordshire Past Track, the dilapidated building by the stream was Meretown Mill, a 16th or 17th century construction, though there is documentary evidence of a mill being here since before the Norman invasion.



The remains of Meretown Mill hidden among the trees

Meretown is a hamlet today, but was an important centre in medieval times. The Domesday book describes Forton as being part of the manor of Mere, which had a fishery worth 4000 eels.

We left the road and crossed the boggy land towards the western end of Aqualate Mere, the source of those eels. The path was mainly dry, though in places we were glad the wet grass and mud were still frozen, allowing us to walk on the top of the ground rather than slog through the mire.



Mike and a tree, near Aqualate Mere

Aqualate Mere is the largest natural lake in the West Midlands (admittedly hardly a region famed for its lakes). A kettle lake formed by glacial melt water some 50,000 years ago, it is 1.5 km long, 0.5 km wide but nowhere more than a metre deep. The same glaciation formed the esker along the northern bank. The area is part of the private Aqualate Estate, but the lake itself and the wetlands to its west and north are a National Nature Reserve.

We made our way between two drains, past a wood and then back across the River Meese on a footbridge just to the east of the lake; the slow moving waters still carrying a film of ice. Here reed beds obscured our view of the lake, while from the north it is hidden by the gravel bank of the esker.



Reed beds on the River Meese

 We failed to spot any of what Natural England calls Aqualate’s ‘star species’; bitterns, ospreys or reed warblers (not that either of us would have recognised a reed warbler if we had trodden on it), but we did watch two geese launching themselves into the air some fifty metres ahead of us. Smaller than the common Canada geese with well-defined black and white markings, I am confident(ish) that they were barnacle geese, winter residents in British coastal regions, but occasionally seen this far inland.

As we paused for a standing coffee (it was too wet to sit) a group of roe deer came bounding round the edge of the wood and ran towards us. At first they seemed heedless of our presence, but as I stooped to pick up my camera they paused and sniffed the air. They disappeared, unphotographed, as quickly as they had arrived.

At other times of the year the wood at the southern end of the mere has a magnificent display of bluebells. It was only from here that we caught sight of the lake at all, a slate grey expanse beyond the trees, an optical illusion making it appear to be slightly above us.



There will be bluebells here - in a few months time.
The lake is somewhere off to the right

The lake is clearly visible only from Aqualate Hall and the private parkland to the south. The first hall was built in the 16th century by Thomas Skrymsher and rebuilt by Edwin Skrymsher (of Forton Hall) in the 17th.  It passed to the Boughey family in the late 18th century, was rebuilt again and then, in 1910, burnt down. The current hall, constructed in 1930, is hidden from the curious passing walker.

 Beyond the lake we studied the map and our watches and decided a direct route towards lunch would be appropriate. We turned north, through the woods and then over fields to the interestingly named Guild of Monks Farm, once the property of the Benedictine Abbey of Shrewsbury. From there we followed the Humesford Brook and then crossed more fields to the lane below the Shropshire Union canal.



The little valley of the Humesford Brook

The canal here runs along a high embankment. We could have walked along the tow path, but did not fancy the upward scramble. Eventually the road ducks under the canal before rising to canal level at Norbury Junction.

Narrow boats moored at Norbury Junction

Norbury Junction no longer lives up to its name, the ‘Newport arm’ used to head off eastwards from here, but is now the dry canal we had crossed at Meretown. It remains busy though, dozens of narrow boat, some of them permanent homes, are moored along the canal, while the junction itself is a crowded marina. Few narrow boats are hired out in January, but there is cleaning and painting to do, so there are enough people about to justify the continued existence of the Junction Arms, which fed us an excellent sausage baguette and a couple of pints of Soggy Bottom (a Jennings Brewery offering from the soggy bottomless pit of ridiculous beer names)



Norbury Junction

It felt colder when we left the pub, but maybe it was just the effect of going outside. We considered taking the direct route to Sutton, but decided that would be lazy so, despite the threatening clouds, we re-crossed the canal and took the path towards Norbury manor. The right-of-way runs along a private road as far as the current Norbury manor with its neat outhouses and barn conversions. A little further on we passed the moated base of the original manor.



The moated base of the old Norbury Manor

Built around 1300 the manor was acquired by Thomas Skrymsher – yes, them again - in 1521. To see an engraving of how this spot looked in 1686, click here. Later acquired by the Anson family of Shugborough, the manor gradually became a ruin and was demolished in 1838. Its stones were used in the construction of the present manor, visible in the background in this picture.



The old and the current Norbury Manor

The path, now a farm track, rose steeply to join the A519. The threatening clouds had dispersed and it was even possible for an optimist to discern a little blue in the sky. We again crossed the canal, here in a deep cutting, and after a couple of hundred metres of traffic fumes, we thankfully turned down the lane to Norbury.

The poet Richard Barnfield was born here. He was an associate of and occasional collaborator with Shakespeare, though Barnfield’s poetry is more notable for its openly homosexual content than its quality.
 

Looking south from Oulton

From Norbury we crossed the fields to the hamlet of Oulton on the edge of the ridge. We descended and turned west heading towards the distant Wrekin. More field paths brought us back to the lane below Sutton, joining it where it meets the Via Devana, the Roman road from Colchester to Chester. The lane is remarkably straight where it coincides with the Roman road, but where it turns to gently ascend the ridge, the Roman road marches straight up it. There is nothing currently above ground to show the presence of Roman engineering.

Two hundred metres along the lane brought us back to our cars with an hour or so daylight left, a temperature still above zero and the rain still holding off. All in all, a good day out.

Approximate Distance: 15 km