Fish & Chips in Bath

Whenever we visit the grandchildren in Lancashire we try to fit in a meal at the fish and chip restaurant at Boundary Mill, Colne. Banny's   has two spacious dining rooms which must seat at least 200 people. It is usually full when we visit.  Fish and chips is available in every town but often fails to reach perfection for one of two reasons. The traditional chippy often puts too much batter on the fish when a light touch produces a far superior product. Pubs and restaurants on the other hand never use fresh potatoes: they are wedded to frozen fries  which have no substance. Fish restaurants in the north of England by and large have cracked this and consequently are popular. In the south of the country seating is seldom provided and take-away is often the only option. A disadvantage of  this is that the chips go soggy when wrapped.
In Bath there are several chippies but few with seating. The best we had found until today was  The Fat Fryer    in Batheaston. But there is a new contender arrived in Monmouth  Place, not far from Queen Square. The  highly regarded Scallop Shell fish and chip restaurant has come down the hill from White Row Farm   where they also have a fishmongers.As we had to vacate the house  for the estate agents to show it to potential buyers we decided to try it out, despite the rain.

I can't remember what business occupied the site before but have a vague recollection of a school uniform shop somewhere along here.

Decor is distinctly rustic/nautical with ropes across the ceiling. wood plank walls and painted concrete floor.

Plenty of seats well spaced

All the fish is cooked in beef dripping  and has a batter so thin you can see through it - lots of Gecko points there!

Prices, unsurprisingly, are about 50% higher than at Banny's

The selection of fish is good and includes Mackerel and Gurnard

When you are seated you make up your own order by completing the menu/order form and taking it to the kitchen hatch.

The food arrived on the seemingly obligatory rectangular plates loved by gastropubs and it did not disappoint.

The tartare sauce appeared truly home-made and really creamy. Personally I prefer it a little more piquant but M was very pleased with it.

The Haddock portion was considerably smaller than the Cod loin but both were very tasty..

Definitely one to add to our recommended  list.

One disappointment and one query.
By the time we had finished our fish the restaurant had filled up and we were unable to attract the attention of a member of staff to order dessert from. Hence we left without sampling the poached winter fruits with cider sorbet or reacquainting ourselves with a Knickerbocker Glory. This needs addressing. The staff were not too busy: they were inattentive, preferring to check the state of their hair than the status of the diners. 
My query is whether the arrangement with diners completing their own order forms really works. Apart from the waste of paper, it  is not possible to ask questions of an order form (What is Gurnard?) and the opportunity to sell further items, like drinks or bread and butter is lost. This should be reconsidered.

A Sad City

Bath is a very villagy place. It may have 80,000 inhabitants but it feels much smaller than that when the tourists leave. The Chron this week is dominated by one story and all the city is sad.

Thomas Rowlandson in Bath

Amongst our eclectic collection of canal-related pictures is this wonderful cartoon by Thomas Rowlandson, The Mitre in Paddington.

The exhibition of his  cartoons of political and social life at the Holburne Museum in Bath has been extended for another week. It now closes here on Sunday Feb 15.  After that it moves to Buckingham Palace, I believe.

This is a small exhibition but kept me enthralled for an afternoon.

An example from the exhibition

The Slasher

Almost three years ago I made a brief mention of William Perry, know as The Tipton Slasher. My piece was brief as I found it difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff when looking for information. Well, I have just learned that a new biography of this famous pugilist is about to be published. -
Slasher - The True Story of William Perry  by Chris Smith promises in its title to save me a lot of legwork.Apparently it contains much previously unseen material. If you can get to Tipton Library on Saturday Feb 28 the author is signing copies at the book launch.(11.30 - 1300)

Are you ready for the Tarmac Canal?

My thanks to the BBC for this most intereesting report- read it all

Work on a £29m cycle superhighway linking Bradford and Leeds has officially begun.

The 14-mile (23km) route will run from Bradford city centre to Seacroft, in east Leeds.
The CityConnect project, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year, has been funded by an £18m cash award from the Department for Transport and £11m of local funding.
The scheme also includes resurfacing parts of the Leeds Liverpool canal.
Coordinators say they hope the cycle way will encourage more people to make short journeys by bike and improve access to employment, skills and education.
The project is jointly managed by West Yorkshire Combined Authority, Leeds City Council and Bradford Council.

 Some are ahead of the game.. .....

Frozen

For the first time this winter we are frozen in this morning.













The sun is shining so it will clear soon







However it is too dangerous for me to cope so we are moving into a house until my hip is replaced and healed.

Spending too much time online?

Off with his head

In the days when British Waterways ran the canals little notice was taken of public opinion. In the early days they just got on with the jobs:in  later years they seemed bent on   profligacy, incompetence and playing monopoly with developers.  But what the public thought was ignored: they allegedly hid the truth, disguised the numbers and told porkies whilst the top management were paid ever larger "performance" bonuses despite the performance criteria not being achieved.
Two years ago BW morphed into C&RT - the Canal & Rivers Trust, and they do care about public opinion.  some would argue that they are casting their net too wide, concerned at impressing everyone in the country at the expense of those who use the waterways most and contribute the most financially - the boaters and boating businesses. However we have seen changes in the management with several high-level people leaving including Sally Ash who was particularly reviled by the boating world. Other dissenters have been moved aside in structural reorganisation.The latest announcement of this kind is that Phil Spencer, Head of Business Boating, is leaving and the post advertised.

You may recall the national news picking up a story two months ago about the floating book shop in Paddington......

Save Word on the Water, the wonderful floating bookshop

What could be better than a fabulous canal-boat bookshop, with poetry and live music on its roof? Not another coffee shop courtesy of a gigantic corporation, that’s for sure

 Fielding was limping along the canal towpath last week to visit his favourite boat, the floating bookshop Word on the Water. It is stuffed with reasonably priced books, his favourite music drifts out, poetry and live acoustic music performances are staged on its roof. Fabulous. He often shops there. But probably not for much longer. Our rivers and canals are getting a bit crowded. Now that there’s barely an affordable shack to live in on land, people are taking to the water, run by the Canal and River Trust. Worse luck.

CaRT is tightening things up. Costs are rising and at some moorings you can now only stay for seven days, which is tricky for a bookshop, and after three years of cruising, the owners were struggling, so they asked if they could stay permanently in the Paddington Basin. CaRT invited them to hand in a bid and proposal for a trading mooring. They’d be up against other small businesses, thought Jon Privett, co-owner of Word on the Water. Wrong. Guess who won? Another gigantic corporation – British Land, “Creating places people prefer”, owners of 32.8 million sq ft and £12bn of property, including most of the Paddington Central development. They plan to have a floating coffee shop. To go with the other 13 coffee shops in the area.
Fielding is enraged. “I don’t want more sodding coffee. I want books. Yet again, something I like is being taken away. Is there no bloody legal apparatus to deal with this sort of thing? A man selling books on a boat, people love it, along comes a mega-rich toad …”

The man responsible for this public relations fiasco was the Head of Business Boating - Phil Spencer. He is not the only one to leave following the floating bookshop scandal. His direct report, senior business boating manager, Suzie Mercer, whose responsibilities include the London area has already left.

The point about coffee shops is interesting as just behind Word on the Water, when I visited, was a floating coffee shopTo get a fuller picture  of provisions for latte junkies this link will take you to a map where all the red dots are cafes 

(These trading boats are located where Paddington Underground is marked on this map).

There is a more fundamental point to be considered in this story.  These boats have Roving Trading Licences .  This means they are required to adhere to the mooring restrictions as any other boat, which involves moving on in accordance with the general or specific regulations.  Due to the overcrowding in London caused by the constant arrival of people bringing boats into the city to live on, in contravention of the mooring  regulations, Word on the Water has found it difficult to  find anywhere to sell their books. C&RT granted them temporary permission to remain on this mooring whilst they sought a permanent tenant.  Inadvertently the bookshop has connived with C&RT to remove two visitor mooring from Paddington Basin and convert them to commercial use.
Whilst I think C&RT has not been fair with Word on the Water  we have to question whether C&RT should be reducing the available visitor moorings in London.

Kings Lock, Middlewich - an Update

I received an update on this pub today which sound like good news. Read the original post and the comments here:-
http://nbgecko.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/kings-lock-pub-middlewich.html

No Awards

Everything one buys nowadays from yoghurt to hairspray carries the claim  

Award Winning....

I would like to make it clear that I do not accept awards of any kind