The home of sticky toffee pudding

Who knew? It’s Cartmel in Cumbria, which just happened to be the closest village to our cottage in the Lake District. Funny how these things happen, hey? And the village shop is where it all happened, and still happens today - and yes, we did stop in and make a purchase.

And the sticky toffee pudding was good. Since we’ve been home we’ve seen the very same sticky toffee puddings in Waitrose, and they may have slipped into my shopping basket! If you’re looking for them you’ll recognise the Cartmel lettering from the photo above.

But even without the sticky toffee pudding history, the village was picturesque - but first join me on a walk to the village.

It wasn’t a long walk into the village, but as soon as you could spot the race course you knew you weren’t far off.

It was a lovely picturesque village, full of cottages, character and views.

On the outskirts of the village was the village lock up. Lock ups date from the 18th or 19th centuries when rural communities struggled to police burglaries, drunkenness and the stealing of livestock. These were built as places of temporary detention for rogues, drunks and miscreants until they could be brought before the area magistrate. This building fell out of use in the second half of the 19th century, and was awarded listed status in 1970. More recently, in 2018, the upper storey was added and it was repurposed as holiday accommodation.

But it wasn’t just the sticky toffee of Cartmel that we got to taste. We also tried its beer - also good, and ate at Simon Rogan’s Rogan & Co, the more relaxed of his restaurants in the village. This was the menu.

My cocktail was pretty special too, complete with nasturtium leaves.

We spotted this adventurous sheep on one of our walks back, perfectly happy grazing on the top of a wall. Like you do.

Views of Sizergh Castle

This was close to our cottage in the Lake District, and was one of the gardens on my Visit Seven in 2020 but what with our plans changing because of Covid, it wasn’t until this year that we made it to our rearranged 2020 holiday. Sizergh is an ancient Scandinavian name meaning ‘summer pasture or dairy farm’ and from our first view that’s a fancy dairy farm.

The whole place is impressive, and I was quickly distracted by the plants growing in the wall and then just as quickly distracted by the typical ‘castle’ style wall. I’m easily pleased. After this we headed up into the stumpery which led to the limestone rock garden.

The honeysuckle here was basking in the sun, unlike the tree fern in the next picture which seemed to be relishing the spray of the hose. I’ve many pictures from this part of the garden, but I’ll save those for another day.

As we walked through the garden the castle kept showing itself and it looked great with the garden in the foreground.

Once we’d walked almost every path at least once in that section of the garden we made our way towards the building we’d spotted from various vistas around the garden. The steps up with their lichen and fleabane were another draw along the way.

But turning round to see the water lily filled water gardens was another spectacular view, this time complete with the scent of the honeysuckle.

As we walked down to see more the walled gate on the left caught my eye, and looked a little odd.

We headed down and along and enjoyed the views of the countryside heading towards the tall gates we could see at the end.

They looked grand, but when we got closer we could see they were made of wood rather than iron, and behind them were rows of yew pyramids - I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this. Having come from Levens Hall, I was pleased to notch up my second topiary spot of the day.

And looking back towards the castle, the views were just as impressive. You really can’t beat a castle, can you?

The Chinese Streamside Garden at RHS Bridgewater

RHS Bridgewater is the newest RHS garden, located in Salford in Greater Manchester, which opened this May. Which for us was rather fortuitous, as we were close by with our rearranged trip to the Lake District. Once I’d clocked this good fortune - thanks Monty and Gardener’s World - I was straight onto the RHS website booking my timed entry, calculating the distance from our holiday cottage and the time it might take us to arrive after checkout. As it turned out, that calculation was right and we arrived bang in the middle of our slot, more by luck than judgement though I’m sure.

When we left the holiday cottage our swimwear was still wet from the previous night’s dip in the hot tub. It was in a bag on its own so it wasn’t a disaster but the idea of leaving it to fester wasn’t appealing - anyone remember school swimming bags which were a special type of ultra thick fluorescent plastic? Yes, exactly. Well when we arrived and parked up, the sun was out and so I spotted my chance to dry our swimwear. MOH almost disowned me, but not quite - the memories of wet swimwear were strong. And so I set about ‘hanging’ out my washing, or rather draping it over our luggage on the folded down back seats. It wasn’t exactly having them blowing from the aerial, but you know, I’ll admit it’s not normal behaviour. It worked though, a couple of hours later when we were back at the car my ‘washing’ was dry, and I was rather pleased with myself!

But anyway, RHS Bridgewater. It’s a new garden on a historic site - so there’s established trees and a period building and a walled garden, and it’s got a lot of growing in to do, but that didn’t make for any less of an experience. In fact, the opposite, it’ll be great to see how the garden develops over the years and it’d be great to go back at some point and see how it’s grown.

Today I’m sharing the photos of the Chinese Streamside garden, and because it was those photos that ‘spoke’ to me as I looked through the photos I’d taken.

The winding path and the reflective stream instantly give that feeling of calm, don’t they?

The garden here at Bridgewater is a ‘novel fusing of the best of British and Chinese gardening traditions’ which has been made possible by a collaboration between the local Chinese community, horticultural experts in China and the RHS. There’s more to come from this garden which is themed around the four seasons.

The stream forms the ‘spine’ of the garden flowing through woodland and meadowland to Moon Bridge Water.

It’s just one of the magical spaces that will, I’m sure, grow into its space - and those lucky enough to be able to visit more regularly than I will will be able to see grow and establish itself. That in itself is quite magical.

If you want to find out more about the RHS Bridgewater garden I’ve included the RHS video below - it’s only short, and definitely worth a view.