The man in the grey suit

Saint Mary's (C.E.), Ponteland
Originally uploaded by samknox

Another rest day today. The regional buses are abysmal on Sundays and Simon was working, so we stayed in the village for rest, a mini pub crawl, and a traditional English Sunday lunch. The first place we went, the Seven Stars, was not serving food. The Smithy, a place recommended by Simon, was fully booked. Starting to believe that this is really going to be one of our traditional everything-is-closed anniversary trips, we went to our first public house here, the Diamond. They had just stopped serving lunch. At five after two.

The barman suggested we try the Italian place down the way, and we confused the pants off him when we said we'd already been there, and we really wanted to eat English food. It was then that I noticed the Man in Grey. He was standing at the end of the bar, dapperly dressed and drinking Guinness, exactly as he had been on Friday night. He caught the barman's eye, made a subtle gesture, and before you could say Yorkshire Pudding, we were seated in the back and ordering enoumous plates of roast beast and root vegetables. I had the lamb, and it will surely be some time before I feel a craving to taste mint. They put massive quantities of mint gravy over the whole plate. Now I know why Dad was apprehensive when I served lamb at a family dinner.

We then crossed the river Pont to explore the pretty church and graveyard. Parts of the building date back to Norman times, but the oldest grave marker we could read was from 1729. Sam fond out that squashed yew berries are sticky and foul smelling. We also noticed that crows have very different voices here. They don't caw, more like scold like a grey jay. Much more genteel than our raucous crows!