Subscribe The homemade ices came on an artist's palette of sponge the chocolate patterned to look like grain in a piece of wood the five
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The homemade ices came on an artist's palette of sponge, the chocolate patterned to look like grain in a piece of wood, the five different sorbets the artist's colours, rounded off with an edible painting resting on an easel of chocolate.Awards?Four AA red stars, two AA rosettes (more to come, surely), and judged best restaurant in Northamptonshire.Clientele?The hotel has suffered a withering attack in print from Michael Winner, which has only convinced everyone else that it must be really rather good. There's a wedding booked every weekend at the hotel until the end of 2000.Things to do?Motor-racing at Silverstone, horse-racing at Cheltenham and Towcester, and Birmingham NEC, Sulgrave Manor, Althorp House, Warwick Castle and Stratford-on-Avon to visit Golf at the Belfry, near Coventry.. Otherwise, it's mainly couples in search of rest and recreation, motor enthusiasts visiting nearby Silverstone, or corporate delegates. Michael Schumacher, the King and Queen of Sweden and Rocco Benetton have all been recent guests. This part of London is hilly, like much of the walk, and there are stunning views across to the skyscrapers of the City and down into Kent.A cluster of literary roads - Dryden, Keats, Wordsworth - led us to Woodlands Farm, with its overgrown fields, stream and run-down sheds. Until recently it was a piggery and abattoir producing bacon for the Co-op Now, a trust is to turn it back into a working farm For now, it is wild meadowland, ideal for our picnic.
Sitting in the long grass, growing woozy on Chardonnay in the hot sun, we were deep in the countryside, with hardly a sound apart from one or two planes overhead turning in to land at City Airport A fox watched us eating and then slunk off. We saw one person all afternoon.Then we went across the A207, also known as Shooters Hill, notorious for highwaymen, who occasionally ended up being hanged on a spot where the police station now stands. Open green areas run almost continuously, with the odd tramp through a housing estate. We weren't doing the whole 40 miles: instead we took a U-shaped eight- mile trek, from Abbey Wood to the Thames Barrier. Parked at the station (because the final part back was to be by train to pick up the car), we set off south, armed with the relevant sections of Explore, the official green chain guide.Just five minutes into the walk, we were admiring the ruins of a 12th- century abbey against a background of steel warehouses hugging the banks of the river. The surprising quietness at Lesnes Abbey was a feature of the whole of the unknown London we discovered that day - it had a kind of end-of-the-line feel.
But it could have been the totalitarian notice that put people off from lingering there for long: "No climbing on walls, metal detectors, exercising dogs off lead, taking cuttings, ball games, using radios etc, cycling, barbecues". That didn't leave much else to do, so we carried on.Into the woods (this happened so often it got us thinking about the eponymous Sondheim musical), past the fossil beds and to Bostall, described in 1906 by a diarist as "picturesque and charming beyond description". Well, it still is, even though the trees caught the full force of the 1987 hurricane. Horizontal trunks and dense undergrowth soon gave way to open glades, where dappled sunlight filtered through beech trees and self-sufficient dogs sniffed busily at roots - and at other dogs We met a Dobermann who snarled at us "It's best not to move," its owner advised "Can't you put it on a lead until we've gone?" we pleaded. "If I try to do that, he'll probably go for me," she said.Neither of us had heard of East Wickham Open Space, a huge area where the Fanny-on-the-Hill pub - a haunt of Dick Turpin's - used to be.
South Londoners are a canny lot. Across the unfashionable estates of Plumstead, Charlton and Wickham, for years they've kept schtum about the best walks in the capital. If you think of London as a clock face, the area between three and four contains vast swathes of quiet green spaces. Hampstead Heath, by comparison, looks like an overpopulated play area for fussy dogs and trendy liberals. Until we saw a map of the south-east London green chain on the wall of the dentist's waiting-room, we'd never heard of Lesnes Abbey, Bostall Heath, Woodlands Farm or Maryon Park.