Monday, December 04, 2006

Typical English grub

We have been back in the UK for two weeks visiting a few people and getting some peace and quiet from that damn dog. It was a long and tiring journey involving a four-hour bus trip to Porto, a flight which reached Stansted at 11:30pm, a very long and slow queue for passport control and a long wait for the bus to Heathrow at 2:25am followed by another long wait for the bus to Woking, which dropped us off outside Woking Station at 6:30am. By this time it was raining so we hurried down the road to shelter outside Rachael and Pete's house until what we considered to be a good time to knock on the door and wake them up (about 7am, of course they may disagree about that being a good time :)

Despite all the things that we don't like about the UK, it was unusually good to get back and indulge in things like showers that are hot for more than a minute, (relative) peace and quiet, a change of clothes, and of course heavy traffic, miserable weather and winter colds.

We're not planning on spending much longer in Portugal - the house is cold, leaky and noisy and we're no longer considering a permanent move there, so we need to move onto other things (quite possibly France, but more about that another time). But we still have stuff there, including our bikes, so on Wednesday we are leaving again for Valpacos, with a car so we can transport the bikes and everything else back to the UK.

We'll probably be in Portugal for a couple of weeks this time, during which we plan upon inflicting Typical English Food upon our housemates. This is what we have so far:




  • Classic British cheese selection - Cornish Brie, Red Leicester, Westcountry Cheddar, Wensleydale with cranberries, and creamy Stilton.
  • Branston pickle, to accompany the cheeses
  • Thick-cut marmalade
  • Green & Black's - one bar of Milk, and one bar of Cherry
  • Biscuits: custard creams, ginger nuts, jammie dodgers, garibaldi
  • Pickled onions
  • Christmas pud
  • 4-pack of Heinz baked beans
  • Earl Grey tea
  • English mustard powder


Any further suggestions welcome, bearing in mind that this has all got to survive a car journey through France and Spain, so that battered cod & chips just ain't gonna make it.