We awoke to the first really overcast day since we arrived, a shame as I really wanted to take a good photo of the town from the pier and it would have looked so much better with blue sky … maybe tomorrow!
While there, we noticed the two small shops on the pier were open for the first time and a souvenir was successfully chosen … a fish to decorate the kitchen and remind us of our holiday.
Walking seemed a perfect choice for the day so we went to Old Hall Farm which advertise a cafe and walk. They also advertise a maize maze, but unfortunately that doesn’t open until tomorrow! We started with lunch and munched through crab salad and a lentil burger … and more chips … after all we are on holiday … and we did then work some of it off with a 4 mile walk. The path took us through a meadow down to a area of reedbeds, fens, dykes and pools created in 1999 to provide new breeding habitat for bittern and other wildlife.
Most of the birds which nest in the reeds have already fledged this year, but we watched activity round a pond from a hide … until they got spooked and all flew away!
At times, all we could hear was the rustling sound of the breeze blowing through the reeds but later the distant sounds of Latitude carried on the wind, and we were quite pleased to be here alone rather than sharing a field with 40,000 others 5 miles away in Henham Park.
The path continued along the line of mudflats where we spotted several feeding waders – egrets, oyster catchers and curlew as well as shelduck and lots of black headed gulls …
… before returning through fields to Old Hall.
Well here we are, our last evening in Southwold … what to do … how to go out with a bang? What had been a pretty overcast day turned into a sunny evening so we packed up supper and took it to the beach. We returned to the same stretch of beach we had enjoyed on our first day here and went prepared for it to be a little chilly.
Surprisingly, once we found a sheltered spot and rigged up the windbreak, it wasn’t chilly at all and we feasted on gourmet cheese from Slate …
Firstly Baron Bigod, “an exquisite soft brie-style cheese made in Suffolk at Fen Farm Dairy near Bungay where Jonny and Dulcie Crickmore use the raw rich milk from their Montbéliarde cows to handmake this gold medal winning cheese to a traditional French recipe. The taste is delicate at its centre with yoghurt acidity. Towards its white bloomy rind, which develops over eight weeks of salting and aging, the flavour becomes creamier and richer with aromas of earth and mushroom.”
And then Suffolk Blue “a luxuriously creamy lightly blue-veined cheese handmade at Whitegate Farm in Creeting St Mary, Suffolk where husband and wife team Katharine and Jason Salisbury, have installed a robotic milking system for their herd of Guernsey and Jersey cows. The rich pasteurised milk from these cows gives their cheeses a delightful buttery flavour. Katharine adds Penicillium Roqueforti spores to her Suffolk Blue curds then pierces the cheeses after a week to encourage veining.”
Cheese was served with slices of ripe rocha pears and Nairn rough oatcakes and paired with Adnams Ghost Ship, “a spooky citrus pale ale which takes its inspiration from Adnams 600-year-old haunted pub, The Bell in Walberswick where we had coffee on our first day here. It is brewed with Pale Ale, Rye Crystal and Cara malts and has Citra and a blend of other American hop varieties to create some great citrus flavours.” Made into shandy, this complemented our last supper perfectly … yum!
It was a wonderful end to a fabulous week in Southwold … such a shame that Desni had other plans!
Off Travelling Together 