Red gingham is a bit of a cliché, the ubiquitous table covering of an unpretentious traditional bistro in provincial France. Or so I thought.
In 2013 I came across Ristorante Tromlin in the hills overlooking the Italian city of Turin.
Torino was the capital of the Kingdom of Savoy, which also ruled Nizza, now better known as the French city of Nice.
I developed a theory that perhaps the red-and-white check entered French culture through this historical back door.
Ristorante Tromlin
The bistros of Paris were opened by people from the countryside who migrated to the city, and classic dishes from the French regions, notably Beaujolais, Alsace, and (not forgetting) Savoie became staples.
One of my favourites is La Fontaine de Mars, where the menu is firmly rooted in the French Southwest. Jambon de Bayonne is freshly cut on the red enamel slicer that gleams at you as you’re shown to your table, to nibble as you decide whether to choose cassoulet or confit de canard.
La Fontaine de Mars
Last time we were there we startled our waiter by asking if we could have a green salad with the cheese course.
‘Une salade avec du fromage? Vraiement?(shrugs)
Vive la difference!’
(The tablecloths are red and white gingham in my memory, but when I found this photo I realised they are actually pink. Perhaps the effect of a glass too many of their finest Cahors).
Then there’s Polidor, the restaurant that time forgot. The blackboard proclaims that ‘we haven’t accepted cheques since 1873’.
Woody Allen chose it as a location for ‘Midnight in Paris’, when the lead character accepts a lift by a stranger’s car which transports him back to the literary heyday of the 1920’s, where he encounters F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in the restaurant.
‘We haven’t accepted cheques since 1873’
I remembered a visit to Mamma Mia, an Italian restaurant in Dublin.
No mistake this time, the tablecloths are proudly chequered.
Mamma Mia
Maybe there’s something in my theory after all.
Savoie to Paris, by way of Dublin?
I look forward to resuming the necessary research.
This is Graham Kirkham, the last maker of farmhouse Lancashire cheese, selling Mrs Kirkham’s Lancashire at the Slow Food festival ‘Cheese’, in Italy, 2013.
Graham Kirkham at ‘Cheese!’ in Italy, 2013
In 2020, cheese makers in the UK have been badly affected by the Coronavirus crisis.
Food Writer Jenny Linford says Graham usually sells 1,000 cheeses a week.
Last week he sold 13.
Read Jenny’s interview with Graham, and her list of local cheesemongers, here:
Please seek out and buy British cheeses from our specialist suppliers, or they will disappear.
In the absence of wholesale restaurant business, Neal’s Yard Dairy have scaled up their capacity to deliver cheese to private customers nationwide, and they make a point of highlighting producers most at risk.
They have sold out of their first Save British Cheese Selection. There will be another selection available soon. You can sign up on their website to be notified when it is released:
Recipe of the year, 2019: foolproof fillet of beef.
My brother-in-law Richard Groves cooked this for his birthday dinner last year, and directed me to the recipe by Tom Kerridge, who serves it with Yorkshire puddings as a Sunday roast.
It’s counter-intuitive, in that it seems to take almost no cooking. It’s rare, deep pink and juicy, but releases no blood. (If any of your guests are squeamish about rare beef, you could flash fry their slices).
I cooked it on two occasions, and both times it went down a storm.
In summary, marinade a piece of beef fillet overnight in a mixture of black treacle and water. The next day, drain it and reserve the marinade. Pat the meat dry and sear it briefly in butter, then roast it for 45 minutes on the lowest possible setting of your oven.
Reduce the marinade by about half, and season to taste.
If you are a regular follower of this blog, you will by now have a supply of Anthony Bourdain’s demi glace in your freezer; this is the occasion to employ it.
“Some dishes know when you’re afraid. They sense it, like horses, and will ‘misbehave’. . . Do not be afraid”.
“Let me stress again: DO NOT EVER BOIL YOUR STOCK!”
“Your butter for finishing a saucewill be ready and on station. It will be f**king SOFT”.
If you failed to follow his advice, (and mine) you will have to make do with a splash of red wine. Add it to the reduced marinade, and finish with a knob of butter (soft, of course) if you feel cheffy.
Serve with Horseradish Crème Fraîche: mix crème fraîche, grated fresh horseradish and a good dollop of Dijon mustard. Taste it.
‘Do try this at home’
It was so successful, we decided to repeat the exercise as dinner for four in Norfolk, on two consecutive evenings during the August heatwave. We served it at ambient temperature, with a potato salad and simply dressed tomatoes.
It was possibly even better the next day, as a sort of deconstructed Surf ‘n’ Turf.
I’ve never really seen the point of steak and lobster on the same plate. We ate the lobster first, a good decision as it was the best and freshest lobster we’ve ever eaten.
Surf. Then Turf.
Friends had recommended C. A. Seafoods, run by the Westons, as purveyors of the freshest and cheapest crabs on the Norfolk coast (there are several Weston families in Norfolk who fish or deal in seafood).
Driving out of Weybourne village towards the station (the North Norfolk Railway, which runs steam trains from Sheringham to Holt) it’s one of the last houses on the left, with refrigerated vans outside, and a little sign on the pavement.
It went like this:
I walked up to the window, which opened as I approached. “I’m hoping to buy four half lobsters”
“Do we have any lobsters, Eileen?”
“I think so, I’ll go and look. Do you want ’em dressed?”
There were about eight ladies inside. In the time I waited, they finished picking and packing crabs (a couple of hundred at a rough count), and cleaned down, leaving the place spotless.
Sure enough, Eileen re-emerged with my lobsters, priced at a reasonable £6 a half.
In December 2019, the Westons opened a fishmonger’s shop in Sheringham:
Rocky Bottoms reopened after their winter break, on a gloriously sunny Monday.
Yes, it was windswept on the clifftops at West Runton, but this is Norfolk after all.
Beach and clifftops, West Runton
The heap of lobster pots outside boded well for lunch. The owner catches crab and lobster off nearby Weybourne beach.
Lobster pots, Rocky Bottoms
The new-look menu has some new additions alongside the old favourites. We couldn’t resist a shared plate of fat whitebait with tartare sauce, which was followed by a mighty crab sandwich (her) and the grilled lobster with garlic butter (me). Both come with a generous mound of salads: shredded beetroot and carrots, capers, cucumber, cherry tomatoes.
The fat whitebait, thick as your finger
Grilled lobster, garlic butter and a pint of Yetman’s
Rocky Bottoms now serves a limited selection of wines, and four varieties of Black Shuck Norfolk gin. They’ve always offered BYO, and continue to do so; I took a bottle of Yetman’s beer, which is brewed in Holt along the road.
The manager, known on social media as “Little Boss”, noticed this, and let me know that three of Peter Yetman’s beers would soon be a fixture.
(I understand “Big Boss” is Alison Matthews, wife of Richard the fisherman, so I assume it’s an extended family business….)
in Salthouse, with dinner at The Dun Cow on Friday evening. We’d booked a table in their dining room at the side. The main bar has much more atmosphere, but the tables there are first come, first served.
The barman offered to let us know if a table in the bar became available, and by the time we’d ordered our meal he was as good as his word, and moved us through; fortunately for us, people tend to eat early in Norfolk.
“Later that evening”
I went for “Spanish style cod” from the specials board, with tomatoes, chorizo and saffron potatoes.
Spanish style cod
A last minute change of plan the next day meant we went back to The Dun Cow for lunch, with a beautiful view of the marshes from our window table (it was March and windswept; you know the score by now).
Salthouse marshes from The Dun Cow
Smoked haddock Scotch egg with horseradish sauce (for her)
The Dun Cow, Purdy Street, Salthouse, NR25 7XA 01263 740467
Lunch at The Ship Inn, Weybourne
A couple of days later the weather broke, and it rained all day, so a lunch at the local seemed the best option.
The Cley Smokehouse platter at The Ship, with horseradish and tapenade, ticked the box: citrus smoked salmon, hot smoked salmon; smoked mackerel and prawns.
Cley Smokehouse platter at The Ship
The selection of gins at the Ship has crept from 75 to over 150 since the first instalment of my pub crawl – https://wp.me/p7AW4i-6a
The Ship Inn, The Street, Weybourne, Holt, Norfolk, NR25 7SZ. 01263 588 721
https://www.theshipinnweybourne.com/gin
Cley Smokehouse
The fish I ate for lunch at The Ship was supplied by Cley Smokehouse, a small business founded over 35 years ago. Like Rocky Bottoms, it’s a family business. Glen Weston and his wife Andrea took over the smokehouse 11 years ago; the Westons are well-known in Norfolk as fishermen, and as Glen says “you can take the fisherman out of the sea, but you can’t take the sea out of the fisherman”.
Their shop is open 7 days a week, and products are available online:
If you’re ever in Norfolk and fancy having a go at archery, there’s a patch of woodland opposite Voewood House in High Kelling, east of Holt. On most days there’s a sign at the roadside advertising archery; it’s a tight turn, but you can drive in through the gate.
The woods are owned by Jon, a genial bear of a man who’ll look after you; pay him a fiver and he’ll provide you with a bow and arrows, and talk you through the basics of shooting. If you have your own kit and already know what you’re doing, you can pay the fiver and he’ll leave you to it for the day, “stay as long as you like”.
“As long as you’re enjoying your archery, that’s the main thing!”
It’s a hit or miss affair
Some arrows you win, some you lose. Sometimes you have to look for them in the undergrowth (difficult). Sometimes they’re really obvious (when they’re 10 feet up a tree).
How did I do that?
Fortunately Jon is usually on hand with a ladder.
Help is at hand
I was shooting there on the August bank holiday weekend in 2017.
Without really registering where it was coming from, I noticed a rhythmic thudding noise in the woods during the course of the afternoon. Later the cause became clear, as Jon explained:
“It’s the woman over there, she’s lovely…. the one teaching knife throwing.”
At home on the range
Archery IN kELLINGSIDE WOODS
“20 targets in 11 acres of private woodland”
Cromer Road, High Kelling, Holt NR25 6AJ
Usually open Wednesday and Friday from 2pm, Saturday and Sunday from 11am.
Arriving in the countryside the day before the pheasant shoot, I was invited to try my hand at shooting clay pigeons; terracotta discs which are released from machines to mimic the speed and trajectory of birds in flight.
It started well. The barrels on a modern shotgun are “over and under”, and there’s a single trigger which you pull twice to fire. I found it difficult to see if I’d hit the clay, only to be told I needn’t have fired a second shot; my first round clipped the clay, but the second smashed it.
Over-and-Under. Two hits
My experience of instinctive archery may have helped me to relax at first, but then I tensed up and began to overthink.
The posture in the photo is a bit of a clue; leaning back nervously from this loud, dangerous and unfamiliar piece of kit.
They tell you to resist the temptation to turn towards your mates to celebrate a hit. Break the gun open as soon as you’ve fired, making it clear it’s not loaded. The spent cartridges pop out, and you quickly learn how to avoid them hitting you in the face. (They’re hot!)
I also tried firing a restored 19th century English gentleman’s fowling piece, with side-by-side barrels, two hammers and two triggers. Despite its slender appearance, it was like shooting a musket: a loud thud, a flash, a puff of smoke and the sulphurous reek of black powder.
(I missed. With both barrels).
Vintage side-by-side. Two misses
As for shooting pheasants? Yes, I had a go the following day.
Reader, I missed (again).
No birds were harmed by this “gun”
A substantial Game Pie
My hosts for the weekend met and married in London, but Tim returned to live near the farm where he grew up, and fairly quickly “went native” (he’s the one who organises the shoot). His wife Kate was more ambivalent about country life, but came round to it eventually. She’s a wonderful cook, but also ambivalent about the annual challenge of dealing with a glut of game birds.
On the night of arrival (Friday) we met at a local pub and, suitably refreshed, went back to the house for “a simple supper”: potted pigeon, a game pie, a game terrine, salads, cheeses, pickles, chutneys….
There were five of us.
I wish I’d taken a picture of the pie, it was the perfect centrepiece – hand raised like a pork pie, and so packed with meat that Kate had to serve the sloe jelly separately, there was no room to pour it inside the crust. She said it was easy enough to make; she had just cooked all the game she had accumulated in the freezer, and combined it with pork shoulder.
The hot water crust is a pretty traditional recipe (Mary Berry or Delia Smith). Kate marinated her game in red wine, juniper and thyme overnight, seasoned her pork with more thyme, nutmeg, salt and pepper, and let that infuse overnight too. The jelly was made with game stock, redcurrant jelly and sloe gin.
Dealing with pheasants
After Saturday’s shoot, I was given a brace of birds to take home and deal with. Tim and Kate have so many in the course of the season that they advised skinning them, rather than embark on the long and messy business of plucking, then to take off the breasts, and use the rest of the carcasses to make stock.
I hung them in a cool place for three days, then this video from the Shooting Times proved useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbwSGPtLUxw
There are many recipes for cooking pheasant. I wrote this one down decades ago (two or three?) and can’t remember where I found it. Looking at it now, the cooking time and use of flour seem excessive, but my sister and my mother-in-law both swear by it as a dinner party stand-by, so I give it to you as written:
Pheasant Casserole (for 6)
3 pheasants.
1½ oz butter, 1½ tbsps oil, 2 sliced onions.
3 oz flour. 1½ pints stock.
The juice and finely grated rind of two oranges.
2 heaped tbsps redcurrant jelly.
¼ pint of Port.
1 bay leaf, a sprig of parsley, salt and pepper.
Fry the pheasants in butter and oil until golden, and transfer to a casserole. Add the onions to the frying pan, and cook until soft. Stir in the flour and cook for 5 minutes. Gradually add the stock and bring to the boil, stirring all the time. Allow to thicken. Add the remaining ingredients, and pour the sauce over the pheasants. Cover and cook in the oven for 3 hours at 325° / Gas Mk 3.
Footnote – ‘Countryman’s Cooking’
First published in 1965, Countryman’s Cooking is a minor culinary classic. Written by the appropriately named W. M. W. Fowler, it provided practical advice for men, in a time before the expression “Political Correctness” had been coined, let alone “Gone Mad”.
Countryman’s Cooking
Fowler served as a Lancaster bomber pilot in WW2, and was shot down and captured by the Germans in 1941. His time as a Prisoner of War heightened his interest in food but “gave little scope for practice, except the stewing of the Kommandant’s cat with a black market onion!”
After the war he resumed life as a countryman in his native Cumbria, and set about learning to prepare and cook his food with masculine cunning.
His advice on preparing game is still invaluable, but for a pie, he says “the only snag to it is that you must have some pastry; and here, I fear, I cannot help you.” His solution was to bribe his “Glamorous Pastry-Maker, Flakey Flossy,” by plying her with gin.
“But don’t kiss her till she has carried out her duties; otherwise you will find the situation gets completely out of hand and you end up, hours later, with no gin, and no lid on your pie!”
On a chilly November morning, somewhere in the English countryside, we assembled in a farmyard for an early briefing before the day’s action.
The captain who was to be our commander stressed that our safety was his primary concern.
Later that morning I was sitting in a cramped trailer with twenty armed men and their equipment, dressed in brown and green. I felt as if we could have been bumping across country to board a DC47 transport plane which would deliver us to a drop zone in the Netherlands in 1944, or even bussed to the Western Front for the final Big Push of 1918.
Even the banter and vocabulary of my fellow passengers added to my sense of being among a cohesive unit of specialists, comrades ready to go into action for a common cause.
I was indeed. For the first time, I was going on a pheasant shoot; the briefing had been accompanied by tots of sloe gin. There’s a specialised vocabulary on a shoot: “drive, pegs, cover, flush”, and the shooters are known as “guns”. They were hoping the day would start with ducks, which would be leaving the pond first thing in the morning to feed.
“They don’t know the clocks have changed, so we’d better get moving”.
Eager to start: “the ducks won’t know the clocks have changed”
For the first drive of the day, I was allowed to stand with an experienced “gun” on his peg, his place in the shooting line. From there, I was told, I would get a better picture of what was going on. If I went with the beaters to flush the birds out of their cover, “you’ll hear World War 3 breaking out, but all you’ll see is trees and a few dogs.”
We could hear the shouts of the beaters as they worked their way from both ends of the wood at the edge of the field, and sure enough a few ducks took to the air, climbing and changing direction indecisively as the guns opened up. Then as the beaters converged on the centre of the wood, pheasants started to break cover. I was told they are lazy birds, preferring to run, and only fly as a last resort. There were shouts of “over!” letting the guns know from which direction the birds were flying, making for the cover of a nearby field of maize.
Taking up positions for a drive
For the second drive, I joined a group of beaters walking through a narrow strip of maize at the edge of a field. This felt more like hunting; the beaters can’t see each other above the corn, and pheasants have a habit of waiting till you’re right up close before taking off in a panic. I felt vulnerable when the shooting started.
Then came elevenses, laid out on a drop-down shelf on the side of the trailer: mulled wine or lemonade, with sausage rolls, wedges of pork pie, and slices of buttered fruit cake with Wensleydale cheese. Participants take it in turns to cater for the shoot, and appetites are sharp.
“On the Peg”
One gun claimed he hadn’t brought enough cartridges. When the shoot captain ribbed him for “making any excuse for bad shooting”, he said another stratagem would be to bring plenty, but of the wrong size, then say ‘I’m goin’ ter struggle wi’ these….’”
Another drive, then it was back to the “Shoot Shack” for a hearty lunch of stew and dumplings, followed by apple crumble and custard.
“The Shoot Shack”
Musings from the field:
• Periods of waiting are interspersed with bursts of adrenaline, and the excitement as the birds break cover. Snap decisions are made, whether to take the shot, or leave it to your neighbour if he’s better placed.
• At one point I thought a gentle drizzle had started when I heard a patter on the ground, but quickly realised it was the sound of spent pellets falling around us.
Waiting in the field
• The shoot captain’s shout to a gun who was standing at the wrong peg: “Fookin’ move, Derek! Fookin’ move!”
• The trailer was ready to take us to the next drive, when someone noticed one of the beaters was missing: “where’s Alan?”
The shoot captain got on the walkie talkie: “Alan, where are yeh?”
“In the artichokes” came the reply.
“What yer doin’ there?”
“Lookin’ fer a duck.”
Great care is taken to retrieve all fallen birds, so that none are wasted; all the birds from this shoot are eaten. It’s not run commercially; it’s organised by a group of friends, and outsiders only attend by invitation.
“Should have worn more tweed”
As a town dweller, I want understand how food arrives on my table, and to take responsibility for where it has come from. I felt more comfortable taking home a brace of pheasant as “beater’s perks” than I would buying meat reared in a factory farm.
The beater’s perks
In my next post, “Of Pigeons, Pheasants, Pies and Flakey Flossy” – clay pigeons, a game pie, advice on how to deal with pheasants, and a recipe.
“The Shooting Party”
Set in 1913 on the verge of the First World War, “The Shooting Party” is a novel by Isobel Colegate, published in 1980. It was adapted for the screen in 1985, with a cast of British stars, headed by James Mason.
The Ethical Butcher has been a wholesale supplier of ethically raised meat since 2014. This month they are launching a crowdfunding campaign to expand the business into e-commerce, working with farmers to supply their meat direct to household consumers and to restaurants.
Speaking at a presentation to potential investors, founder and CEO Farshad Kazemian said “we really are trying to make this quality of meat available to everyone across the UK, we want to drive up demand, re-invest our profits to train more farmers in holistic land management and have a positive impact on the environment.
Currently in the UK meat can be labelled as grass-fed if only 51% of the animal’s diet has been grass; this is a very different product from 100% pasture fed meat. 100% Pasture fed animals are healthier, happier and their meat is better for us.”
The presentation brought together four farmers to explain the benefits of raising their beef animals on pasture.
“My neighbours think I’m a loony, they call my farm ‘Jurassic Park’.”
Andy Aldridge farms Lincoln Red Cattle, from the “original population” which dates back to the 1930s. The breed was shorthorn until the 1930s/40s when it was “de-horned”, now all calves are born without horns. The Lincoln Red is listed on the Rare Breed Survival Trust’s register as “At Risk” of extinction. As well as cows, he keeps Lincolnshire Longwool sheep, and Tamworth and Large Black pigs.
Talking to Andy afterwards, he said “it felt right to do it this way. I have a conscience; the business has to be profitable, but there’s no imperative to expand the farm.” He owns the land, so apart from some incidental costs, such as silage and mowing, grass on the farm is virtually free; “it makes no sense for us to buy feed.” The herd grazes happily outside, and is only brought inside in extreme weather conditions.
Farmers Robert Laycock, Andy Aldridge, Jonathan Chapman & Fidelity Weston, with Farshad Kazemian and Glen Burrows of The Ethical Butcher.
Beef from continental breeds is “tough as old boots.”
Jonathan Chapman contrasted his native Red Ruby Devon cattle (one of the UK’s oldest breeds) with Continental breeds, such as Charolais and Limousin, which are bred to be big, lean animals, with a “covering” of fat. They are “finished” on cereal, quickly losing the flavour of a beef animal grazed all its life on grass. The resulting beef, he says, is “tough as old boots.” It made me reflect on how many times I’ve struggled to chew a tough steak in a French brasserie.
Jonathan pointed out that while hungry human populations are unable to digest grass, they could be fed on grain and soya, which are currently used as feed for intensively reared livestock.
“Why am I doing it? I’m very greedy, and I want to eat the best beef.”
Robert Laycock, new to farming cattle, observed “the Australians are 20 years ahead of us. Their beef used to be terrible, but they addressed it by working on breed and feed”. Robert chose English Longhorns for his farm, a breed developed for taste in the 1780s, and decided to graze them on pasture, which he firmly believes is better for the environment.
English Longhorn. Image by www.benpetercatchpole.com
Tasting meat from their farms
As the three of them spoke, we tasted their beef, all from traditional native breeds. In each case we tried it raw as a tartare, and then a grilled piece of rib-eye. The raw beef was served like an Italian Carne Crudo, with a minimal seasoning of good olive oil and salt. The farmers advised us to take the meat off the crackers it was served on, which they said were a distraction from the flavours of the meat.
Each of the samples we tried had distinctive characteristics. The textures were different; one piece of cooked ribeye was firm, with a tender springiness that Jonathan said comes from intramuscular fat (that’s marbling to you and me). The raw beef was mild with sweet and savoury umami, and something vegetal, grassy, even mineral, that I could only put down to the soil and pasture the cattle were raised on.
Fidelity Weston, farmer, and Vice Chair of the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association,spoke about the need fora new vocabulary for tasting meat.
Thinking about the tasting later, it occurred to me that analogies could be drawn with tasting wine: the breeds are like grape varieties, with their own characteristics; pasture is equivalent to the terroir of a vineyard, (you can taste it in milk and cheese produced at different times of year); husbandry in the field is like viticulture, and ageing the final product to achieve its potential could be compared with cellaring a wine to maturity.
The Pasture-Fed Livestock Association.
Around fifty farms in the UK so far have signed up for certification by the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association. In animal husbandry, pasture grazing is the best system of rearing cattle for beef. They love to browse and feed on grass, wild herbs and hedgerows, and their manure regenerates the soil. Ruminants are efficient machines to break down cellulose; feeding them on grain is like giving children a sugar rush – these usually placid animals become skittish and disruptive.
Farshad added: “We strongly believe that it is possible to raise animals in a carbon-neutral, sometimes even carbon-negative, way. Farming this way increases biodiversity, repairing land damaged by traditional agriculture, and can invert the often cited statement that ‘eating meat is destroying the planet’, as rearing animals on pasture can actually combat climate change.”
The evening was hosted byThe Ethical Butcher, with the support of restaurant Enoteca Rosso.
To read about the project, or if you are interested in becoming a ‘steakholder’, click here:
Wines were sponsored by the Garofoli winery in Italy’s Le Marche region.
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here ….”
On a sunny Sunday in August 2014 I walked round the perimeter of the battlefield of Agincourt. It is now farmland, ploughed earth and pasture. And trees. Even allowing for the intervening 599 years, it was easy to imagine the French army advancing in overwhelming numbers towards the English line.
Site of the French advance
The field still narrows today, as it did then, between the clumps of trees on either side, causing confusion among the fast-approaching French cavalry as it was forced into the narrower space. It was then that the Welsh and English archers released their devastating arrow-storm from behind an improvised palisade of wooden stakes.
The French fell on muddy ground
The French fell in such numbers that they lay in piles on the muddy ground, and the English emerged from their lines to set about the murderous business of finishing off the wounded with daggers and mallets.
At the roadside there is a crucifix marking the pit where the French dead were buried after the battle.
Memorial over the French burial pit
Fast Forward 600 years:
Standing where the outnumbered longbowmen inflicted a crippling defeat on the armoured chivalry of France, I was reminded that I used to see archery targets set up on the London Welsh rugby ground next to Kew Gardens, near where I live; I wondered whether archery was still practised there.
The following April, passing through Kew, I noticed a sign advertising a “Have a Go” day with the Royal Richmond Archery Club – “turn up and shoot 12 arrows for £5”. With my memory of the battlefield still fresh, I went along. When my turn came to shoot, I told my instructor about my visit to Agincourt; when one of my arrows missed the target, embedding itself in its leg, she cheerfully said:
“never mind, you’d still have wounded a Frenchman” . . . .
Encouraged by the experience, I signed up for the Beginners’ Course. Three years later I practise every week, keeping my memory of Agincourt alive.
The Royal Richmond Archery Club, 2018
Founded in 1873, no-one could tell me why the Richmond Archery Club is allowed to call itself “Royal” – over the years, their clubhouses have burned down three times, and with them all the club records.
