Saturday, August 25, 2012
Visit report 1
Record breaking trip from North Devon yesterday, record breaking in the sense that it took us 7 hours and 13 minutes to make the trip, 3 hours and 13 minutes more than the expected 4 hours for the something less than 200 miles. Noon start. Lots of traffic on the North Devon link road and on the A303 west of Stonehenge. Quite a lot of caravans and quite a lot of what looked like rather ancient VW camper vans, which last I am told are back in fashion among surfonistas. But I don't think they were causing the slow down, rather just more traffic than the road could cope with resulting in queues to get off the sections of dual carriageway and bunching elsewhere. This last being a rather odd phenomenon; coming and going with surprising speed. Maybe I should have done that option at university, queue theory being quite trendy at the time.
As a result of all this we decided on a break at Countess Services, a tier three operation near Stonehenge, the food part of which appeared to be operated by both Little Chef (which I thought had gone bankrupt) and Burger King. Quite a novelty for us to eat in such a place, much more usually making do with DIY sandwiches at a fraction of the cost. BH had a tuna jacket, with the jacket looking as if it had been cooked some time previous and warmed up, but with the usual humungous dollop of mayo rich tuna and a few stray bits of lettuce. I had a burger, of substantial size but of interesting flavour and texture. Didn't look as if all that much of what you or I would call meat had gone into its construction. Served on a bed of some spicy red goo and came with a portion of chips. These last well coated with oil and some brown gear but a only very distant relation of what you might get in a McDonald's, never mind a chip shop. Glasses of tap water entirely satisfactory and served with straws. Tea entirely satisfactory, not quite as strong as seemed to the the custom in North Devon. Staff all friendly, all young and mostly female; we were impressed by the friendliness towards the end of what had probably been a long and busy day. Restaurant bright and clean, only let down by the toilets (including a DT), the cleaning of which was struggling to keep up with the steady flow of holiday makers - a good proportion of whom had probably not paid their way in the restaurant. £15 the lot.
My only suggestion would be that, in line with other operators, they extend their table numbering scheme to the tables themselves. As things stand, the orders have table numbers and the staff have access to a map, but the tables themselves are free of numbers. Perhaps the designer thought that numbers would spoil the otherwise clean lines of the things.
Onto the petrol station to see if we could buy some milk for our TV tea later, to find that one could either buy huge cartons of real milk or sensible sized cartons of something called Cravendale (there is a fancy looking web site but it is another one which Chrome does not cope with today), which we bought but which I assumed would be as destructive to the flavour of tea as long life or UHT. About which I was wrong and the resultant tea turned out to be quite drinkable, unlike the first cup this morning, made with thawed blue top which was not. All BH could think was that the flavour of the Cravendale cunningly covered that of the stale water which had been sitting in our pipes for a couple of weeks. We shall see what the next one is like.
As a result of all this we decided on a break at Countess Services, a tier three operation near Stonehenge, the food part of which appeared to be operated by both Little Chef (which I thought had gone bankrupt) and Burger King. Quite a novelty for us to eat in such a place, much more usually making do with DIY sandwiches at a fraction of the cost. BH had a tuna jacket, with the jacket looking as if it had been cooked some time previous and warmed up, but with the usual humungous dollop of mayo rich tuna and a few stray bits of lettuce. I had a burger, of substantial size but of interesting flavour and texture. Didn't look as if all that much of what you or I would call meat had gone into its construction. Served on a bed of some spicy red goo and came with a portion of chips. These last well coated with oil and some brown gear but a only very distant relation of what you might get in a McDonald's, never mind a chip shop. Glasses of tap water entirely satisfactory and served with straws. Tea entirely satisfactory, not quite as strong as seemed to the the custom in North Devon. Staff all friendly, all young and mostly female; we were impressed by the friendliness towards the end of what had probably been a long and busy day. Restaurant bright and clean, only let down by the toilets (including a DT), the cleaning of which was struggling to keep up with the steady flow of holiday makers - a good proportion of whom had probably not paid their way in the restaurant. £15 the lot.
My only suggestion would be that, in line with other operators, they extend their table numbering scheme to the tables themselves. As things stand, the orders have table numbers and the staff have access to a map, but the tables themselves are free of numbers. Perhaps the designer thought that numbers would spoil the otherwise clean lines of the things.
Onto the petrol station to see if we could buy some milk for our TV tea later, to find that one could either buy huge cartons of real milk or sensible sized cartons of something called Cravendale (there is a fancy looking web site but it is another one which Chrome does not cope with today), which we bought but which I assumed would be as destructive to the flavour of tea as long life or UHT. About which I was wrong and the resultant tea turned out to be quite drinkable, unlike the first cup this morning, made with thawed blue top which was not. All BH could think was that the flavour of the Cravendale cunningly covered that of the stale water which had been sitting in our pipes for a couple of weeks. We shall see what the next one is like.
# posted by Jim @ 4:31 AM 
