It must be the perfect country inn: an 18th-century former farmhouse of mellow stone, set in a beautiful, wooded valley, in the heart of the North York Moors National Park, four miles from Rievaulx Abbey and bang opposite the 12th century Cistercian, Byland Abbey. Jill Turton takes a first look at The Abbey Inn, Byland.
Mark Hix will permanently close his Dorset pub The Fox Inn in July after only 18 months of trading.
Teej Sparks is the co-founder of Wales’ Best Local Restaurant 2024, Inn at the Sticks. How have they been celebrating the win? The Good Food Guide finds out.
Nick Nairn was one of the first chefs to turn himself into a ‘celebrity’, and did so via the BBC’s then wildly popular show Ready Steady Cook. But Nairn was a star in the kitchen as well as on the screen. He opened his first restaurant, Braeval Old Mill, near Aberfoyle in 1986, and went on to open the acclaimed Nairn’s in Glasgow in ‘98. Not bad for a chef who lacked formal training... and once described himself as ‘a self-taught cook who couldn’t boil an egg ten years ago’.
The largest of the Channel Islands is a self-governing bailiwick off the northwest coast of France. On a clear day, from one of its many fortified eminences, where the old cannon have fallen silent and the defensive towers turned into bijou residences, you can see Normandy. Hydrangeas festoon large in private gardens, while summer sees outbreaks of startling, purple-headed agapanthus line the verges. There is a local language – a reconstructed Norman tongue called Jèrriais – which around three per cent of the inhabitants still use.
