TALES FROM THE VALE
Tales From The Vale with Andy Palmer
There’s a great little farm shop and outdoor café up a dirt track near Milton Abbas owned by ‘Steve,’ but run by two selfconfessed ‘smiley girls,’ Sandy and Hannah, who are lovely.
This prize-winning venue is called Steeptonbill Farm Shop and the name comes from the sheep that ‘Steve’ (not sure if ‘Steve’ exists, I’ve never seen him) farmed on Portland, presumably near the Bill (how do you do it, Sherlock). Apart from having the charmingly haphazard air of being expanded with random stretches of canvas tenting on an ad hoc basis (which I love. In fact, I wouldn’t mind living there, might even meet ‘Steve,’) it does help if you like cats as there are a dozen friendly felines roaming around rather needing attention. These ones seemed to like me (such judgement) and I had pleasure in stroking them – plus there’s an entertainingly noisy cockerel which doesn’t know when to shut up (a bit like Meghan Markle). It’s got an astonishingly eclectic range of produce, including fresh herbs and spices including chillis and ginger – good, as I was planning a curry that evening. And there’s an outdoor café. Well worth a visit. Apart from loading up on the necessaries, I bought some goat burgers with red wine and rosemary. I also bought a
Yes, this is indeed the mysterious Steve from Steeptonbill Farm Shop...
tin of haggis, but should have looked at the label first as when I studied the contents later I saw it contained ‘lamb’s lobes…’ There’s going to be a few alarm bells in this column, and these are the first.
If you want to know what ‘lobes’ are, and I think you should, they are lungs. Off-putting (or offal-putting) but better than what I first thought ‘lobes’ meant. So that went in the bin. Yes, I know there are people starving but how am I going to get a tin of lungs and oatmeal to Africa? *** My wife Kae and her friend Linda went to the charming little rural cafe, Petranettes at Flying Geese Gallery, Pleck Hill (on the Mappowder to Hazlebury road), run by two sweet German sisters,
Petra and Anette. If you like eating cake while looking at stunning views, Petranette’s is for you. But not when they went. Watching the barn rocked by gusts of 55 MPH gusts, drinking hot chocolate and each wrapped in the equivalent of eight, 50-tog duvets, they agreed that it was ‘atmospheric’. I love Linda. Despite her youth, she is delightfully old fashioned, in person and dress, and uses words like ‘behove’ and ‘umbrage’. We need to cherish these oddities. - Laura, could you take that bit out as Linda is an avid reader of the mag (OK - Ed). *** Watch out for the DFLs. Driving to Marnhull we’d obviously pressed the ‘invisible’ button on our car as several enormous sparklingly clean 4x4s, clearly owning the road, swept past on narrow lanes without bothering to move to the edge of the road, causing us to
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