Distance Walked: 7.3km, Time Taken: Didn't Measure, # Beer: None, 1 large glass red wine
Today I took the scenic railway from Settle to Carlisle, and it lived up to its reputation. The Yorkshire Dales are very picturesque. The train was full of people in hiking gear with daypacks. Clearly a lot of people use towns like Settle as a base to do day walks in the area. The weather this morning was perfect for it. Clear sunny skies with very little wind.
I got to Carlisle around midday which was much too early to check in. I'm staying at the Halston here, in a serviced apartment. My apartment is a good size with a living room, with a kitchenette off it, a full sized bathroom (sadly no bath) and a reasonably spacious bedroom. I'm here for 4 nights and wanted to be able to spread out. For some reason, I took the option of just the room, no breakfast. I assume I was expecting to make myself breakfast. Who was I kidding? Fortunately, in addition to tea and coffee, I've also been given a packet of crumpets along with butter & jam. No guesses for what I'll be having for breakfast tomorrow.
After leaving my suitcase at the hotel, I headed off to the tourist information centre to get info on how to get out to Hadrian's Wall and the various Roman museums along it. I discovered there was a guided historical tour of Carlisle due to start in about an hour so I signed up for that too. Before the tour I had a quick lunch at a place called Bob & Berts which claimed to have good coffee. It actually did. The barista truly was competent. I've been plesantly surprised by the coffee so far on this trip. It has all been quite drinkable.
Sadly the food was Dull. They let you order breakfast any time of the day, so I did. What is it about having breakfast for lunch that feels so tempting? I had french toast with maple syrup and bacon. This clearly came from a bain marie so the toast was soggy and the bacon had all the missing crispness and then some.
There were 6 of us for the afternoon tour, as well as one bored and increasingly damp dog. The weather today decided to be the reverse of the last few days. Instead of being damp and windy in the morning before clearing to a fine and sunny afternoon it did the reverse. The tour was good but would have been excellent if I could have just concentrated on what I was seeing and being told, instead of thinking about when I could get somewhere warm and dry. Still, I'm enjoying being here in the north. People here are friendly and chatty and I love the accent. I feel like I'm in an episode of Vera, but hopefully without the body count. My landlady in Settle had a helpful display teaching visitors how to speak Yorkshire. I was pleased with how many I already knew.
For dinner I went to the Casa Romana. I've decided to avoid pub meals while I'm here in Carlisle. Here I have options. Once the Coast-to-Coast hike starts I suspect my choices will be limited to pie&chips or fish&chips. It had decent reviews but my heart sank when I read the menu. While they at least use pancetta rather than bacon in their carbonara, they also add cream. They also serve something they call a Risotto Calabrese. No such dish exists or has ever existed. Risotto is from the far north and Calabria is as far south as you can get before Sicily. I ordered the tagliatelle della casa which came with a sauce of minced lamb, eggplant, olives (theoretically - there were none in my dish) and cherry tomatoes. The sauce was good but there was far too much of it and the tagliatelle was over-cooked. I washed this down with a glass of wine that claimed to be an Australian shiraz. If I'd been told it was a cabernet-sauvignon or even a merlot I would have believed them, but a shiraz it was not. Bread, which had to be ordered separately, was doughy and just plain bad. I decided to amuse myself and see how low they could go and ordered their tiramisu for dessert. This was a pleasant suprise as it almost reached Harmless territory. The biscuit to cream ratio was all wrong and there was no hint of marsala but it wasn't sickly sweet and there was a decent amount of coffee in it.
Shall I tempt fate and try another Cumbrian-Italian restaurant tomorrow night?
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