The first farm shop/cafe I visited was the Cross Lanes Organic Farm Shop which is on the A66 near Barnard Castle. It's a new venture, and is situated a lovely new building with all sorts of eco-features, which you can read about on their web site. It sells a range of produce which is all either organic, or local, or environmenally friendly (they have an Ecover re-filling section where you can fill your empty Ecover containers) or Fairtrade. It also has a fantastic restaurant.
The restaurant is well-designed, light and airy and, most importantly, serves a fantastic cup of coffee.
It also has a varied and interesting menu (including lots of gluten-free options). It was Sunday when we visited, so there was a range of Sunday roasts, a few specials and pizzas made in a wood-fired oven. Alastair had pork with all the trimmings, and I had a very good warm falafel salad with houmous and mixed seeds, and a beautiful flatbread which was as light as a feather, crisp, drizzled in olive oil and sprinkled with delicious salt crystals. I was very impressed, and Alastair said his Sunday lunch was excellent.
The very best thing about it though, is that there are goats living on the roof!
The second farm shop/cafe - I visited was Newfield Dairy and Ice-cream Parlour, in Nottinghamshire. The ice-cream is all home-made using milk and cream from the dairy - 0 food miles! - and they specialise in using seasonal local fruit, for example damsons from the local hedgerows for the Damsons and Cream flavour and local Bramley apples for the Apple and Cinder Toffee Ripple flavour. There is also selection of sandwiches and light meals made from local produce where possible. The cafe itself is bright and airy, and has a wall of windows so that you can look out over the Nottinghamshire countryside. There's also a gorgeous wood-fired stove in front of which sits a huge and stately leather sofa, on which a lovely bright-coloured throw had been artistically tossed - I could imagine whiling away a Winter's afternoon with a hot chocolate there very easily!
The food was very good. Mum and I had sandwiches which were made with what I think was home-made bread and a fresh, tasty salad. My sandwich was beef, and the beef was perfect: tender, succulent and pink in the middle.
Dad had a truly monumental sausage sandwich (he was more impressed than he looks).
It would have been rude not to sample the ice-cream, we felt, so after our savouries we indulged in something very sweet indeed! I wanted the Chocolate Brownie Sundae (chocolate ice-cream, vanilla ice-cream, chunks of brownie, chocolate sauce and whipped cream) but I restrained myself (ahem...) and just had a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of chocolate. The vanilla was silky smooth perfection, and the chocolate was so rich and buttery it tasted like cake batter (not a bad thing!). Delicious with coffee.
While the first and second farm shops/cafes I visited were new ventures, the final one was very much an established behemoth - Chatsworth House Farm Shop. We popped in for coffee and a snack and a quick look round the shop before a tour of the house decorated for Christmas. The shop was amazing - an absolutely fantastic range of - I quote from the website - "quality produce fresh from the estate, tenant farms, Derbyshire suppliers and small food producers". The website sets out their sourcing policy: "our philosophy is simple. We aim to source primarily from the estate, secondly from the estate's tenant farmers, thirdly from Derbyshire producers and then from other quality suppliers within the UK wherever possible". Marvellous.
After a good look around the shop we moved onto the cafe. Like the other two, it also had beautiful views, this time over the rolling Derbyshire countryside. However, it had much much more...it had the best teacake I have ever tasted. Ever! Now, I wouldn't normally wax lyrical about a teacake, in fact I would very rarely choose to accompany my morning coffee (or indeed afternoon tea) with a teacake. This was, however, no ordinary teacake. It was magnificent. Its consistency was a perfect mixture of feathery lightness and doughy moistness, and it was so delicately flavoured with cinnamon that it was more of a scent. It would have been absolutely perfect with a few more sultanas in it, but the ones that were there were plump, juicy and sweet, so one mustn't complain. All I can say is, go to Chatsworth House Farm shop, have a teacake and then buy a packet to take home. Although you will be spoilt for the indifferent, cotton-woolly, unsubtle mixed-peel-flavoured nightmare that is a Warburtons teacake for ever. I warn you now.
My teacake epiphany was so profound that I didn't even take a photo. I did, however, snap Mum and Dad enjoying their elevenses. Or not, in Dad's case. He was disappointed with his Bakewell Tart, which he said was dry and crumbly and tasted like it had been on the shelf for a good few days. For a Derbyshire establishment this was a disgrace - we knocked off a star for that one.
All in all, I had a magnificent holiday, spending time with my husband and my parents, walking, eating, drinking and most importantly relaxing. Wonderful!
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