Malton, a reminder of how ‘to weekend’

We had a last minute, impromptu weekend break to Malton, or Yorkshire’s food capital, and we had a great time. It feels like a while since we’ve had a weekend away from it all, though I’m sure it’s not that long really. It was a bit of a stab in the dark as to where we ended up, but we struck lucky.

I wanted somewhere not too far away, but far enough - it’s about a two hour drive for us, but neither of us fancied the Cotswolds this time round. It wasn’t until after we booked it that the weather forecast started to look decidedly dodgy, but well, I’m sure the weather wasn’t that great anywhere on Saturday tbh!

As we left home early Friday afternoon it didn’t take too long before we were in queues of traffic just north of Newark, and we remembered that travelling on Fridays isn’t always a good thing. The SatNav then shared that the A1 was shut further up, and did its thing and took us on a wild and wonderful route, which meant we saw parts of the country we would never have seen otherwise. But we arrived at our hotel, The Talbot in good time and settled into our weekend.

We ate in the hotel the Friday night, and following a really good meal and seeing the weather forecast for Saturday afternoon/evening opted to do the same Saturday night too. We didn’t do much on the Saturday apart from wander around the town and acquaint ourselves with many of the local independent shops, including the secret whisky bar at McMillans where we stopped to sample some of their wares.

We looked around the lush interiors shop, Interiors at Nine to Eleven and poked around the antique and craft shops in The Shambles leaving with some pretty hand painted cards, a vintage table runner and a pre-loved wine coaster. MOH found the local bike shop, Northern Ride who had an elusive ‘gadget’ mount that he’d been after. Purchase completed we headed over to the shops at Talbot Yard, stopping for a coffee at the Roost Espresso Bar, tasting (and leaving with) some Spiced Gin from the Rare Bird Distillery and buying a meat pasty for lunch at the butchers, Food 2 Remember - checking their opening times to make sure we could pop back and buy some of their produce before heading home.

A VINTAGE TABLE RUNNER AND SOME PRETTY HAND PAINTED CARDS

A FABRIC SAMPLE WHICH I FELL IN LOVE WITH - A BARGAIN AT A £1

And then we settled in for the afternoon back at the hotel with our new purchases, the newspapers and a book - and working out our plans for the next day.

The Walled Garden at Scampston Hall

This hadn’t been on my list before we got here (but then again not much had) but it was just over ten minutes drive away and looked a good bet, but it’s only open Wednesday - Sunday, so that was our plan sorted for Sunday then.

There’s twelve different areas in the walled garden which was designed by Piet Oudolf in 1999, and this is his largest private commission in the UK. It was great to be able to wander pretty much everywhere, including the Gardeners’ Yard. I’ll share more in a future post, but here’s a snippet from our visit.

THE CONSERVATORY

CHARD IN THE VEGETABLE GARDEN

THE SERPENTINE GARDEN

We also headed out to explore the parkland, though with the sky looking decidedly dodgy again, it was only a brief wander down to the Palladian Bridge (from where the photo below was taken) and along the lake to the cascades and then back across to the cafe.

LOOKING DOWN THE LAKE FROM THE PALLADIAN BRIDGE

THE CASCADES

It was a good choice, and a good way to walk off the cooked breakfast. In fact we didn’t even have a cake in the cafe we’d been so well fed since we arrived. The hall wasn’t open when we visited, but I’d be interested to peek inside if we’re ever this way again.

Our hotel deal included a cream tea, and we opted to have that in the hotel’s lounge when we got back that afternoon - that’s also a reason why we didn’t have cake in the cafe, but after a scone with jam and cream we were fully topped up again, and skipped dinner as neither of us really needed any more food.

A day at Castle Howard

I did know that we were staying about fifteen minutes from Castle Howard but I wasn’t sure if we’d visit or not. We ummed and ahhed about whether to go for the gardens only ticket, or to add in the house too - in the end we opted for both, and it was good to see the house again (we last visited in 2018) and to see how it had changed, including a couple of rooms which had been refurbished since we last visited.

It is expensive, but i’s cheaper to buy the tickets online - 10% cheaper - which is something. Though it’s not clear that the prices shown are the reduced price, and so I didn’t follow through on the purchase. As we were queuing we realised the prices at the venue were higher, so we ducked out of the queue and used the free wifi to buy our tickets online at the cheaper price. Well, it would have been rude not to!

THE VIEW FROM THE BOAT HOUSE

We opted to start our day by walking down to the Boathouse, an area we’d not been to before, then skirted round the boundary past the Temple of Venus along to the Temple of the Four Winds which I posted about after our last visit - it’ll be interesting to compare my photos from this visit, then we wandered past the lakes and up past the Atlas Fountain to the house.

THE ATLAS FOUNTAIN

Yes, we decided to do both - and I wasn’t disappointed. The Turquoise Drawing Room remained one of my favourites…

THE TURQUOISE DRAWING ROOM

… but there’s a new kid on the block, with the recent unveiling of the Tapestry Drawing Room, which if you look at the second photo below is even more remarkable given its state just two years ago.

THE TAPESTRY DRAWING ROOM

A PHOTO SHOWING THE STATE OF THE TAPESTRY DRAWING ROOM IN 2023 BEFORE RESTORATION

With the house tour completed, that just left us the Walled Garden to do - two walled gardens in two days, what’s not to like?

DAHLIAS IN THE WALLED GARDEN

It was full of dahlias, berries and so much more.

BERRIES IN THE WALLED GARDEN

And once again we were treated with the bluest of skies for our visit. I’ll definitely share more from our wander around this part of the garden, as looking back it doesn’t appear to be something I shared before - and I’ve no idea why as it’s a gorgeous space.

CLIMBING SWEET PEAS AND THE BLUEST SKIES

We finished our day with a visit to the Thai restaurant, Tuis of Malton, just along the road. The food was good, the portions were huge and I’d hate to think how many chillies they get through in a day, let alone a week!

Then it was almost time to head home, but not before a visit to the butchers and the bakery over the road. My freezer is now very full, and so’s my heart actually. Malton’s a great place to visit, and a great place to remind us how ‘to weekend’.

Having a proud sewing moment

After each of our sewing group meetings there’s usually a photo or two shared on our Facebook group to showcase some of the projects undertaken at that meeting. It’s a great way to keep the group visible to all of our members, and to perhaps encourage more people to come along.

After the last meeting I spotted this photo of my table, and then I looked more closely and realised that I’d made pretty much everything that’s on show in this photo. So that’s my proud moment!

It’s a small thing really but it’s actually quite a big thing for me as I never really thought I’d get this ‘into’ sewing. I mean I’d sewn before, and was happy using a machine but it probably wouldn’t have been my ‘go to’ craft but in the two years we’ve been here in Nottinghamshire, that’s changed. Partly I think because the sewing group I first went to was one of the most welcoming craft groups I went to, and so I went back and have kept going back. I’ve also been to knitting groups and a mixed craft group once, and haven’t been back - so that tells you everything you need to know about them, doesn’t it?!

But anyway, back to that photo and my sewing projects:

1. The blue pouch (top left), black patterned pouch (bottom left) and gold pouch (bottom right) are recent makes on my new ‘take to’ machine.

2. The patchwork stars are the centre blocks in my next Quilt of the Month which I’m still working on and will share soon.

3. The dress I made, which I even wear out in public (and it hasn’t fallen to bits at all!)

4. It’s the corner of another pouch which is just showing in the bottom right corner - I’ll be sharing that one here soon(ish) too.

5. I made this bag back in 2016, when I really didn’t sew much at all. It was a collaborative post with the company providing the fabric, and I still use it today - and that hasn’t fallen to bits either, I should have more confidence in myself!

So yes, I’m having a proud sewing moment over here, it’s a good reminder of what I can do. And will hopefully spur me on to complete more of the projects on my “to sew” list!

Planting my new olive tree

I shared the start and end of this in my August garden update, but as you’d imagine there was a bit more to it than just filling the pot and popping in the plant.

We’d seen the pot when we were at Grand Designs back in May. We weren’t looking for a pot, but there was something about it, as well as the show price and free delivery, that had us hooked. I always knew that if we bought the new large pot, then it would be going on the far corner of our patio and I just needed to convince MOH it would look fine there.

Pot delivered, now for the tree

When it arrived and we’d stripped its wrapping off, the first thing we did was to see it in situ. Thankfully it worked just as well as I hoped it was, and MOH was convinced. The second thing we did was carry the pot back to the garage where it stayed for a while, while we sourced the right sized, right shaped and as importantly right priced olive tree.

I didn’t want something so small it was lost in the pot, but equally I didn’t want something that was too large - a real goldilocks tale! So we had a tour of a few garden centres near us to check out the olive trees, and they had a lot. Again we hadn’t intended to buy one straight away as we knew we were going to some garden shows, and well, there’s always a deal to be done at a garden show isn’t there?

But we found the right sized tree for the right price at the second garden centre we visited. And £32 later and yet more convincing MOH it would work we were back home with our new tree. Which of course we left in its garden centre pot for a good couple of months…

Sourcing the soil

It’s a large pot to fill, and just as I’m running out of pots I also don’t have much spare soil in this garden. I didn’t want to use all new compost as I wanted the pot to have even just the smallest part of our local eco-system. I asked in our village Facebook group if anyone had any soil they wanted to get rid of, but no joy.

I knew I’d need to add drainage to the pot, and plenty of it but I didn’t want to add rocks and weight to the pot. I’ve used polystyrene seed trays before in pots, so I thought using larger blocks would work here. I was kicking myself though as we hadn’t that long ago had a purge of the polystyrene that we had, but never mind. So I also asked in the group if anyone had any of those chunky polystyrene blocks, but I didn’t get much joy from that request either.

However while out walking around the villages lanes I did find a large chunk of polystyrene blowing along so I brought that home and stored that for a while. In the end though over the summer we had some more deliveries which included enough hefty chunks of polystyrene that we could use.

But we were no further forward on the soil.

Or not much anyway. With my tomatoes finishing relatively early this year I had two pots of soil that I was sure would have a relatively active eco-system, and so they were earmarked for the big pot - but I would need more.

In the end we bought some compost for trees and large shrubs and some bags of topsoil, and used a mixture of these along with the tomato pot soil and a very large helping of horticultural grit, again to help drainage. It makes sense that olive trees don’t like soggy roots doesn’t it, when you think about the countries they grow.

Actually planting the thing!

There might have been more than one or two suggestions from MOH about when the thing would actually get planted, and get that large pot out of the garage. So with a morning free and time to potter about, it was time.

But before anything went in the pot I wanted to get some pot feet stuck on the bottom. I’ve used these round silicone feet (from Amazon) wedged under our other pots and they’ve done well. As this pot won’t be moved that often, and will be heavy, I didn’t want to have to faff about getting the pot feet in the right place if we do move it. I used PVA glue to stick these in place, and before long we were good to turn the pot the right way up.

I had help adding the polystyrene blocks for drainage - we found sawing them into smaller chunks was the most efficient way to break them down.

And then before any soil was added, it was time for a quick position check.

Yeap, all good so in went the soil from the tomato pots, two bags of tree/shrub compost and a bag of horticultural grit, which I forked through the soil using my original ‘ladies’ gardening fork. This was my first (and only as it’s still going strong) garden fork from Homebase, which I bought along with a small spade when I got my first house (and garden) back in 1992.

After firming the soil down, I gave the pot a good water and left the soil to settle for a day or too. it didn’t change the level much at all, but that itself was good to know.

It really was finally time

While giving the olive tree a good soak in a trug of water, we added a couple of bags of topsoil and more horticultural grit to the large pot, making an hole for the tree in its centre by standing the olive tree in its pot, in the new pot at the level we wanted to plant it. I’ve seen this done before by Monty Don and co, but have never really done it myself.

It worked well, as removing the potted olive tree left the right sized hole. So all that was left to do was to get the olive tree out of its pot, and pot it in the ready made hole.

And then, after checking it was straight enough from all angles and adding some decorative grit on the top to deter weeds, we could sit back and admire our new olive tree in the large pot.

I think it works well. And with a couple of olives on it already this month, I think it’s happy in its new home too.

We’ll need to give it some protection over winter, but I have some garden fleece in the garage I can use for that. I’ll probably also add some bubble wrap to the pot, as while it’s frost proof, olives don’t like their roots frozen which is fair enough really, I wouldn’t either.

Caring for olive trees in pots

I’ve found the following pages useful, and if you’re thinking about adding an olive tree to your garden, or if you have one already, then you may too:

• How to Grow Olive Trees, BBC Gardeners’ World

• How to grow Olives, RHS

• Trees: Growing in Containers, RHS

• Olive tree care sheet, The Norfolk Olive Tree Company

• Feeding Olive trees, Plantura Magazine

• Pruning your Olive Tree, The Norfolk Olive Tree Company.

I’ve yet to get some seaweed feed for my olive, but it’s on my list for my next visit to the garden centre. I’m loving this new addition to our patio, and along with the garden sofa and the pots I’ve started to place around the garden it’s really feeling like we’re starting to ‘own’ our garden.

I’m sure there’s much more to come though, but that’s all for another day.