Tuesday 2nd January

Wishing you all that you wish for yourselves in 2007.

Just got home from New Year's weekend in the Lakes. We stayed at The Cottage in the Wood which is on the Whinlatter Pass just outside of Keswick.

I need just a moment to wax lyrical about our food at the weekend! The hotel we stayed at was lovely, but the highlights were undoubtedly the setting and the food. It is a 9 room place, and our standard room was very comfy but nothing special... just like a very good B&B. It's in the middle of a forest and the walking trails from the hotel door were just amazing. We walked up to the place where they took the video for the panoramic view on the website. We did one long (3 hour) or two short walks each day, and then in the afternoons we would go for a little drive into parts of the Lake District that we haven't seen before! We even went to see the Sellafield Nuclear plant on the coast (Well, I'd never seen it before and we were kind of over that way.....)

The couple who run the Cottage in the Wood are amazing. She (Kath) is front of house and makes you feel SO welcome. He (Liam) is a chef who's worked in Michelin starred restaurants, and it shows. The menu was fixed each night - no choice of meal, apart from dessert. I was a bit worried about that, as whilst I am not a fussy eater, I'm not overly adventurous. You can specify any dietary requirements, but we didn't. Liam has a knack of preparing extremely well balanced menus, and even on NYE when he did a 6 course dinner, you didn't feel stuffed or uncomfortably full. The wine list was also very good. Last night we had a tarte tatin that was absolutely the best I have ever tasted! I was so impressed. And the breakfasts were wonderful, too!

The hotel is small and so all guests gather in the small lounge before and after dinner, so we got chance to meet some new people. We got friendly with a lovely couple from Bristol, and had some lovely evenings just chatting and laughing with them. Roy and I can tend to be a bit anti-social when we're on holiday so it was nice for us to actually meet people we wanted to spend time with!

New Year's Eve was pretty low key - a wonderful dinner (canapes, scallops, consomme, sorbet, venison, chocolate tart/ice cream, cheese & biscuits/coffee/truffles) and then just chatting in the lounge before toasting 2007 with a glass of champagne. None of that forced jolliness!!! We were also quite tired with the walking and fresh air! But we managed to stay up until 1am.

Oh, and we also got afternoon tea every day! Mince pies on the first day, mulled wine and sausage rolls on NYE, and tea and crumpets yesterday! It was like being on full board really, we didn't eat anything else when we were out walking or driving (apart from a small bag of chocolate we'd taken with us from the Christmas collection!!!).

We got drenched on the first and second day's walking.... we only had waterproof jackets, and discovered that we also need to buy waterproof trousers. Getting back to the hotel absolutely chilled to the bone and soaking wet every day wasn't fun, but there was no way we were going to stay in and not go walking.