Castle Howard

Quite possibly the worst soup I've ever had. It was a meagre, thin leek and potato soup with two small pieces of bread and cost £5.70. For £7.95 we could have had a gardener's lunch with an individual quiche, lots of cheese, far more bread, salad, grapes and chutney. On the plus side they did serve the best scone we'd had for many a long day, with a good cup of coffee. I was going to say something but the opportunity didn't arise.

The rest of the visit was very good though. The castle lived up to its billing and was brought to life by the knowledgable and personable staff who lurked in the rooms. I do have a gripe about these stately homes in that I'm never quite sure of the story they are trying to tell and they don't make it easy to understand the history of the place. We had to ask questions of the guides to help us understand what we saw in front of us.

Interpretation is they key here or all you get is aimless wandering through endless bedrooms, dressing rooms, dining rooms, drawing rooms and the like superficially looking at paintings of long dead men and their wives or mistresses or collections of sculptures , crockery and tapestries which have no context to set them in.

Anyway, Castle Howard was better than most in helping you gain some sense of the building and people, which is to be welcomed. They also had an interesting farm shop from which we procured a considerable quantity of excellent Gloucester Old Spot sausages for tonight's dinner.