Please Look After This Duck

We came home with a new addition to the family, thanks to Bevosity. I am sure she will please to hear he has a new home at the foot of our stairs! He is called Westwood, in her honour!

And so we are home, and I have to look back over a frustrating eight days.

Yes we had some good times. The meal on Saturday was great fun. That stag in the setting sun will stay in my memory for sometime to come. It was great ticking off another few RSPB Reserves, and I did get quite a few more year ticks in the end.

But I have to say something about where we stayed from Friday night.

It was a right enigma of a place.

We arrived to find the place closed at 3pm. We got in after a bit of door knocking and bell ringing. We were told it was shut until 6pm. Shut then appeared to be it's natural state of rest!

Have any of you ever stayed at an Inn that is closed more than it is open? For all intents and purposes it was a guest house! We had two cracking meals there on Friday and Saturday, but when we went to be bed Saturday night, that was the last time we saw it open again, and didn't leave until Tuesday.

We were told there was no food Sunday, but when went to go out for food, we discovered it was completely in darkness! It meant one of us had to drive and not drink! As my back was crocked that meant Dawn!

What was annoying though, was to find it was closed other than 12-3pm on Monday, and had we not spoke to the owner by chance, we would have had no idea! We were suddenly confronted with having to go back out, after a long day at Minsmere. Not a happy bunny at all!

As chance would have it, we had one of the best meals I have had in ages at The White Lion Inn, and that means, if we ever go back to the area again, we would book that over the Dolphin Inn any time. The manager of the White Lion was as perplexed as we were as having all three rooms full of guests and closing the pub completely! The other guests were eating the The White Lion as well!

It just seemed a bizarre way of doing business. The owner says on the review site I just reviewed the place on that from September they go into "Winter opening hours", which is fair enough, Thorpeness is not the hub of Suffolk by any means, but there is no mention of this anywhere on their website. Should it have said, I would never had booked it, as it wasn't what we were looking for!

Off the quacks tomorrow about this niggling back problem! (See brought it back to ducks there!)