Food – Rockpool Trading

A month. Shocking. But in my defense, I was out revelling in all the joys Devon and Cornwall (and…ahem…Scotland) has to offer. It is the summer after all – and as the Hurricane-formally-known-as-Bertha hoolies it’s way towards the South West, I thought I’d reflect on a fabulous 4 weeks in the Westcountry sunshine…

Week 1 – Watching the inimitable Elbow at the Eden Sessions. An unlikely Mother’s Day pressie from my 1 year old (he knows his Mother well), Mr RT and I were lucky enough to catch the boys from Bury in surely one of the most picturesque venues in the country. If you’ve never seen a gig at Eden, make it a priority – it’s breathtaking (if not a long walk back to your car). And speaking of breathtaking views, the following night we pitched up, with 20,000 others, to MTV Crashes Plymouth. (Yup – Elbow one night, Example the next – who says we’re not eclectic??). The event was certainly loud and proud, and while I’ll save my rant about the lack of bars for another post (and in any event I vented my spleen in a strongly worded complaint to Plymouth City Council to which, incidentally, I’m yet to receive a response), you can’t say this kind of massive event isn’t fantastic for Plymouth, and the wider Westcountry. Plus, on a scorching evening on the Hoe, it’s hard to be grumpy. (Even if you’ve queued for 3 hours for a beer).

Week 2 – Saw Rockpool attend The Wild Tribe Children’s Festival; the first children’s festival to be held in Plymouth. As new parents we were probably a bit biased, but we thought it was fantastic. Theatre performances, puppets, storytelling, marshmallow toasting, all sorts of messy crafty type things, bands, stalls, amazing food (including Yum and Stuff and Thorough Bread – check them out) and, of course, your local, friendly online retailers. Fab day – can’t wait for it to come back next year.

Week 3 – Did Accounts. De-fleed the dog. Packed for…

Week 4 – Holidays in Scotland! Too much to cram in – amazing evenings at Hampden watching the athletics at the Commonwealth Games, shows at the Edinburgh Festival suitable for 1 year olds, fabulous fun with much-missed family and more wine than is probably healthy when we all have to get up at 5.30am for the little ones. Even though it’s a long way from the Westcountry, Scotland feels very much like home – can’t wait to be back there again soon.

So home we are, and back to the lovely day job. More fairs coming up in the next few weeks, and who knows, maybe even the odd new product line. Keep your eyes on the skies Rockhoppers…

First of all – Happy 2014 one and all! Having said that, it is 5th January, so it’s waaaay too late to be bothering with all that palava. I’m sure most of us by this stage have made resolutions, broken resolutions, re-made more realistic resolutions and started counting the days until the next bank holiday weekend. (Just me? Oh, OK then…). Christmas at RT Towers was quiet and fairly uneventful. Mini-RT loved the wrapping paper and labels as much as what was actually inside – as expected, and I actually managed to get dinner on the table by mid-afternoon – which most certainly not expected.

In an effort to combat the post-New Year blues (and because we didn’t eat enough during the previous week), the hubby and I went for dinner at The Riverford Field Kitchen near Buckfastleigh in Devon last night – and oh my word, what an unusual night it was… The food was absolutely amazing, and incredibly reasonably priced, but that wasn’t what was unusual – the out-of-the-ordinary element to the evening was that Riverford have you sitting at communal tables; so when we arrived we were seated with 2 other couples, who also didn’t know each other. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have an ominous sinking feeling about the whole evening – my past experience of striking up conversations with strangers has not been entirely successful, not least because I tend to laugh when I’m nervous or when I can’t actually hear what the other person is saying – with some unfortunate consequences. But I was to be proved wrong! Not only were our dinner companions very friendly, but they were really interesting (one of them was an Oscar winning sound engineer – I kid you not!), and it got me thinking – maybe Riverford were on to something? If we’d have sat at our own little 2 seater table, OK Mr RT and I would have had a perfectly lovely evening, but we would invariably have ended up chatting about one or more of the following topics: mini-RT, the state of the spare room / loft / utility area, when we were going to start doing some proper exercise, and what we would do if we won the lottery. All worthy and productive avenues of conversation, but pretty much what we talk about over dinner at home. Whereas being thrown into a table of strangers (not literally) meant we had to ask questions and take an interest in something outside our little universe. And yes, it helped that our table were full of very interesting people, but still – we wouldn’t have discussed post-Oscar parties or the overpopulation of Holland if it had just been the two of us…

But anyway – a truly fab evening was had by all and the food, as I said, was out of this world. As a local success story, we love Riverford anyway, but that aside, we’d heartily recommend the whole experience to anyone looking for an evening with a twist. Plus the desserts have to be seen to be believed – think hubby and I had better get back to that exercise conversation…

Tag: Food

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