Postcard from Norfolk - Guns 'n' Bras at Holt

Ah, Holt.  Unlike some towns, usually the sort of town that has butchers that have offerings still in fur and feathers in their front windows, Holt has never crossed the line from Posh to smug.  This may because it’s ‘Holt’, simply ‘Holt’, and lacks the ‘by-the-Sea’ of nearby villages such as the delightful Cley.  It’s not by-the-Sea and ‘by-the-arable-farm’ does not have the same appeal.  For all that the residents of Holt may wish their town to be regarded as posh, and for all that it is undoubtedly monied, a few things keep it firmly rooted in unpretentious.

The first is the art galleries.  Not a natural choice.  If one is grading on the Cotswolds scale of poshness of village as a result of the simple formula of art galleries per head of population (unlike the rural scale of depravation, which is number of pubs per head of population – a healthy ratio being 1:1, in case you are interested), then Holt is very posh indeed.  Luckily, the art galleries perform a public service of selling stuff that is either too expensive, or whacky, to actually buy.

Take for instance the bras carved out of driftwood.  Well, I presume they are carved.  It may be that somebody spends a lot of time beachcombing in order to find naturally occurring double dee cup driftwood.  Never seen any yourself?  Just proves my point, the Coastal Creeper probably got there ahead of you.  Even if you did, you would at most try and get the damn thing out of your dog’s mouth before it charged into the pub with it, or take a picture for the amusement of your more puerile friends.  What you wouldn’t do is fish it out of the surf, dry it, sand it, varnish it, masturbate feverishly over it and then sell it.

So hats off to the galleries of Holt for making visitors smile and move quickly on to the pub.

The other feature of Holt that keeps it thoroughly grounded is the local field sports store.  Now, this used to be in a tiny shop and was crammed with stuff.  It relocated a few years ago to a much larger store that allows them to cram even more stuff into it.  It’s a delight to browse there, if a challenge, because trying to find a camouflage hat in the camouflage section is something of a challenge.  My advice is to buy a duck lure furst, startle the hat and then make a grab for it as it takes flight.  Never seen a flying hat?  Might I suggest a stroll on Brancaster beach in October with insufficiently secured headgear.

Downstairs though, oh, it’s a delight.  That’s where they keep the Guns!  And these are real Guns for men.  These are not the sort of guns that feature in the news, they are not guns for small minded psychopaths, these are guns that are designed to be taken out of the house hours before dawn and held by their owners in darkness, in a hole, in a marsh, waiting for first light.

Because who the fuck needs an alarm clock in Norfolk, it’s rosy red dawn followed by enthusiastic goose calls, then a fusillade, then some likely shouting.

Honk Honk!

Bang!  Bang!  BangBangBang!

Fuck!

Sorry Nigel.  Shit, that looks nasty.

Later that day:

“What did you get darling?”

“Oh, one for the pot, one for A&E”.

That’s why fowl hunters crouch in holes.  It’s not for cover, it’s because some idiot thirty yards away is tracking at zero elevation and doesn’t see you because a) he’s concentrating on a low flying duck and b) you are wearing a camouflage hat, remember?

In short, Holt is lovely, but unglamorous.  Solidly Georgian, with good parking facilities, it remains the sort of Norfolk town that is much more suited to the Defender than the Range Rover Sport.  Leave that to the posh places.

Postcard from Norfolk - Fish and Chips

One of the holiday party has announced that they are on a mission to have fish and chips every day of the holiday.

Given the enthusiastic rapture that I was in yesterday as a result of the seafood platter at the White Horse (a dish that deserves capitalisation and so will henceforth be known as the Seafood Platter), and the secret ambition I am nurturing not just to have the Seafood Platter every day but, if at all possible, every meal, I am in no position to criticise what I now consider a sound and admirable moral choice.

Because if you are going to choose to have fish and chips every day, this is the place to do it.

Fish and chips on the Norfolk coast is a single meal option with a multitude of options and varieties.  Obviously, you have your sauces, but you also have side dishes.  Well, one side dish, mushy peas.  Simply remembering there are more fish than cod in the sea that taste astonishing when battered for your pleasure makes the possibilities if not limitless, then certainly enough to fill a week.

Me?  I go for cod and chips from French’s, the best fish and chipper in the world.

This, it appears, is hardly a secret.  The queue was, literally, out the door when I arrived.  However, thanks to the experienced team working the friars, it was a moving queue and, because we were all only ten minutes away from golden battered goodness, it was a good humoured one.

It’s not just the tourists who turn up to take away here, it’s the locals too.  What I love about the take away service is that fish and chips is, more than any other food, ideally suited to being a take-away product.

Most importantly, French’s serve their fish and chips in a cardboard container.  No polystyrene here, just good, honest paper-based flatware.  What’s more, they warp them in sheets of paper to keep them warm.  What’s even more, they bag them in paper bags or, more precisely given the amount of fish and chips I was picking up, sacks.  French’s must have a paper bill just below that of a mass-market tabloid.

The benefit of all this is twofold.  Firstly, it keeps everything toasty for the journey back to the caravan, without everything going soggy in the way that using unnatural, godless packaging makes it.  Secondly, it allows the aroma to drift gently up and around the interior of the car.  This is especially wonderful of a wet winter night when, with a warm bag of fish and chips in your lap, the interior of the car slowly becomes a vinegary fug, a different variety of the atmosphere that is normally only found under duvets; warm, welcoming, comforting.

Finally, of course, one has the sauce sachets and condiment packets.  One is treated like a grown up and trusted to sauce and season one’s own whips.  The question is, one sachet of red sauce, or ten?  The supposed answer may be found in the pages of the better guides to etiquette, the actual answer is; as many as one thinks is appropriate.  We don’t judge.

Postcard from Norfolk - Seeseafood

 The Ship, at Brancaster, is one of my favourite pubs.  The staff are friendly, the parking ample, the beer good and the food great.  They make a great flat white coffee, they have conversations with one another about how to make a great flat white coffee, and at the end of the evening the bar staff get up on the bar.  They aren’t doing a dance or anything, they are holding the credit car machine aloft, trying to get a signal.  Maybe in a county as flat as Norfolk, a couple of feet makes all the difference.

Getting a signal was clearly a problem the day when their ‘phone wasn’t being answered, this resulted in taking a punt on getting lunch.  Bad call, no room at the inn.

No problem, onward to the White Horse at Brancaster, which is reliable, spacious, has a great bar menu and more than ample parking.

The White Horse also has something new on the menu.  The seafood platter.

Oh.  My.  God.

This is what bliss tastes like.  This is the desert island meal.  This is the Death Row meal.  This is so very, very good that you want to accost everyone else in the bar and ask them why they are not eating it, while simultaneously resenting anyone else ordering this because they might tell others about it, and reduce the number of seafood platters in future.

It was better than beer.

That’s right.

It should have been no surprise.  The White Horse does exceptional food.  This is a pub that is on the salt marsh and, when the tide is in, is so close to the water you can just about row up to the bar.  This is a pub that has pools full of mussels just outside its back door.  This is a pub, in short, that does seafood.

Presumably they know a chap who does platters and the chef thought, ‘hey ho!  I’ve got an idea!’.

Let’s be quite clear, I was ready to enjoy lunch at the White Horse as only a man who has been disappointed not finding a table and then found an excellent alternative can be.  I was simply not prepared for just how great that alternative was.

The Ship is still one of my favourite pubs in Norfolk, the reasons now extend to that time they were full and we went to the White Horse instead, and discovered the seafood platter.

Now we don’t need to worry about where to go for lunch for the rest of the holiday.  The only conundrum is how many times during the remainder of the holiday it is seemly to go to the White Horse and order the seafood platter.  I’m thinking ‘as often as possible and far more than is decent’.