Here at The Old Stables we love a good and hearty English breakfast – who doesn’t?! However, we’ve got a couple of things that make our breakfasts a little bit special…
…otherwise known as Jasper! Broadcombe King of the Helm is his pedigree name – a bit grand for this little puppy, if you ask me 🙂 Jasper’s been home with us for about a month now, so I thought it was high time that he had his proper introduction!
We had a fantastic day out recently at The Royal Bath & West Show in Shepton Mallet. Happily for us the showground is an easy 5 minute drive away from us and we had an easy run through to the show with no parking problems!
On moving to the UK I found some confusion surrounding the pancake. Now to me a pancake is a large, fluffy, saucer shaped disc that you stack. You could do a polite pair or even a cheeky trio or quad but you definitely don’t have just one! You slather butter and maple syrup all over them while they are warm and have a side of crispy bacon (sometimes also drowning in the maple syrup if you’re not one of those people who is slightly suspicious about the sweet/savoury combo thing). I’ll have my crispy bacon by the side thanks. But this is not the case here in the UK which I found out when I added ‘pancakes’ to my breakfast menu. Continue reading
We love books and reading.  You’ll find little book nooks all over the B&B and a plethora of genres to satisfy everyone!
2016 marks 100 years since the birth of Roald Dahl – the world’s (in my opinion) number one storyteller. Throughout 2016, there will be celebrations for Roald Dahl 100, focusing on Roald Dahl’s “gloriumptious” stories and characters and delivering a year packed with “squiggling surprises” and treats for everyone.  But did you know that prior to his writing fame, he used to sell kerosene in Shepton Mallet and the surrounding area in the 1930s? He described the experience vividly in his autobiographical work ‘Boy: Tales of Childhood’ (published 1984):
“My kerosene motor-tanker had a tap at the back and when I rolled into Shepton Mallet or Midsomer Norton or Peasedown St John or Huish Champflower, the old girls and the young maidens would hear the roar of my motor and would come out of their cottages with jugs and buckets to buy a gallon of kerosene for their lamps and their heaters. It is fun for a young man to do that sort of thing. Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset on a fine summer’s day.” Continue reading
Egg-citement abounds at The Old Stables, not just because our brand new (very entertaining) hens have now laid two eggs but because we are now officially open for business. A business, I might add, that is going to need a lot of eggs!
When we made the big decision to leave Bermuda (where I was born and lived all my life and where Simon had spent 25 years of his life) we knew that whatever it was we were going to do we wanted to do it together and we wanted a complete life-style change. I had spent my entire working life in law firms and Simon in the supermarket industry which amounted to a lot of stress for me and long working hours/no weekends or public holidays off for him. We needed a major life adjustment!
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