The Red Lion, Northleach

...(and back to the holiday), so, starving, as we had somehow managed to completely miss breakfast, we wandered the streets of Northleach, searching for somewhere to urgently find something to eat -

- and the Red Lion pub beckoned, if only because we were able to ask the lady busying herself outside cleaning the windows if they would be able to serve us something hot...the answer was yes, as long as we were going to order something worth opening the kitchen for (i.e. not a bowl of chips), but that certainly wasn't going to be a problem, so we descended towards the front door and were greeted by a friendly dog -

- who then (sensibly) went and seated himself firmly between the electric fire and the burning log one -

- and we scanned the extensive menu (chalked onto wooden boards above the bar) and despite being rather tempted by the "rack of ribs" I quickly opted for the Irish Stew, Flyingpops the fish and chips...the bread and butter that were intended to accompany my stew arrived first, but were apparently destined to be promptly consumed by Flyingpops, so when the rest of the food came out we were forced to request more (which wasn't a problem), and my *goodness* was the food good...nothing of the chain in evidence, just superb home cooked food, the stew was incredibly rich in flavour with meltingly tender meat, Flyingpops Fish was a complete delight, impossibly crunchy batter and creamy delicate, moist fish within alongside crunchy hand cut chips...both plates went back to the kitchen wiped completely clean...

Try as we might, throughout all of the rest of the break we were drawn back over and over again to the Red Lion, even if it were just for a couple of pints of cask ale, sat by the roaring fire to read the paper in the evening...and I must have ordered the stew three times, each time being as impressed and satisfied as the last...as we settled in to our "local" so we began to notice and start chatting to other regulars, and note with a glow, that the place really was being used as hostelries must have been for hundreds of years, a place to break your journey, get out of the cold and rain, take the weight off your feet, enjoy a comforting drink, exchange a few words with familiar faces and warm your hands before setting back off into the dark...

On our last night, two of the locals, Aiden and Deb (who has been quite taken with baby Thomas) appeared with a Welsh dragon fluffy toy for him, a touching parting gift from a fantastic group of warm and welcoming (largely Welsh, as you can probably guess from the present) folk who we can't thank enough for taking us in during our short trip, hopefully we'll be back, although we might need to stay in a slightly larger cottage... ;)