Here we are, on location, at the Houghton International Horse Trials, at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, about 2½ hours drive north north east of London.
First up, let me just say, Houghton House looks pretty as a picture:
But this trompe l'oeil is actually one of the jumps:
As you cross the property, you come across these cool English Long Horn cattle - their fierce looks belied by their timidity and curiosity.
… can't see these fences holding back a stampede.
Slowly making my way to the subject of Junk Food, I thought the following would be an ideal picture to capture the generic concept of food at Eventing:
as it is actual food as a cross country jump.
It looked edible but as well as distorting your minute markers, stopping to eat a cross country jump would surely earn you a few penalty points.
So on to the penalty-free edible food:
This Crispy Duck Wrap looked and tasted good - duck with hoi sin sauce in a wheat wrap. Not bad.
But I went for this simple pizza.
You could choose three from about a dozen toppings so I went for pepperoni sausage, green capsicum (called "peppers" here in the UK) and olives. Very nice indeed and what's more, made fresh in a wood-fired pizza oven.
But why would I be hanging around a nice warm toasty wood-fired oven for unreasonable lengths of time when there were cross country courses to be walked? Surely the Houghton weather can't be too different to that we had at Badminton at the beginning of the month (as typified by this huge queue for ice cream at Badminton):
Well, England's reputation for changeable Spring weather is much deserved, here is how your average equestrian photographer avoids hypothermia in late Spring
and how enterprising equestrians warm their horses up:
Note to riders: kindly remove horse blankets before entering dressage arena.
But, surely, I hear you say, there is more to England than being cold (and, following local usage, I won't write "being freezing cold" as us wussy Aussies frequently do because the temperature was all of 5 degrees Celsius thus the water wasn't actually turning to ice, a prerequisite for the use of the "freezing cold" phrase here). No, England is sometimes wet as well as cold, leading to some minor disincentives for members of the public turning up without their four wheel drive vehicles:
Fortunately the next day, Saturday, it warmed up beautifully and was actually sunny for the 3* cross country day when the public turned up in numbers, untroubled by the now (mostly) firm footing nor the legendarily bad Bank Holiday traffic.
Slight digression on Bank Holidays:
The English term for a public holiday is a "Bank Holiday" (as opposed to NSW which has an official Bank Holiday when only the banks go on holiday) and sort of like Christmas, New Year's Day, Easter, this Monday is marked on calendars as Spring Bank Holiday - note not just "Spring" nor do you see New Year's Day Bank Holiday. If you ask why they are getting a public holiday, e.g. is it for the Queen's Birthday, Abolition of Slavery, Magna Carta, staying out of the Euro, or some other celebration-worthy event, you get a blank look and the explanation that it's the Spring Bank Holiday - which seems to me like saying it's for the Spring Public Holiday public holiday. Well, when after the cold and wet, you get a gloriously sunny day like today to take off in the beautiful English countryside, I can see why the Brits deserve a random public holiday in Spring.
Still, the soft going and clay soil meant that horses and riders had to cope with deep hoofprints, left by earlier riders, a serious factor in tiring out horses that have to gallop in these conditions:
So let me wrap up with what else was notable on the junk food front here at Houghton. Well, a nice variant on pie and chips was Steak and Ale Pie with mashed potato, gravy and mushy peas (non-fluorescent this time).
Delicious. Or if panini, baguettes, wraps and falafel are not quite English enough for you, there are always baked potatoes with various fillings (including chicken curry!), but seen below with the classic baked beans and grated cheese comfort food variant.
Slight digression on Flat White:
We've stopped asking if baristas know what a flat white is (despite their confident protestations that they are fully on board with the concept, we've had everything from actual flat whites to long blacks with teeny-weeny jugs of warm milk so you can judge how "much" milk you'd like). So now we're asking for a double shot latte and taking what comes. You've been warned.
Next stop: this weekend at Bramham, for more 3* eventing and checking out of junk food. Catch you then.
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Copyright © 2013 Phil Diacono
You can read our reports from Houghton Hall here or view the photo galleries here
There's more to come from our eventing foodie blogger Phil as he and wife Jose of CrossCountry App continue their grand tour. While Jose will be glued to the horses and working on virtual guided course walks at Badminton, Houghton, Tattersalls, Bramham and Luhmuehlen, Phil will report on the food at and around horse events
Phil recently retired after 30 years in the computer industry so he and Jose are taking their trip of a lifetime, touring Europe by rail. Having worked and travelled for many years on business in Western Europe, they are exploring further east - Berlin, Prague, Vienna and Budapest interspersed with some wwoofing (willing workers on organic farms) in the countryside.
