Little Britain

Enroute with nemesis Kempy to Knightwick near Worcester to stay for one night at a nice Micro Brewery Pub called The Talbot. We are supposed to be fishing tomorrow for Barbel on the River Teme running through the Haven Fishery. Weather forecast today is for a months rain in 12 hours, with predictions of worse to come. Not ideal to say the very least, but at least there is always the Micro Brewery!

We pulled up here at this eccentric little roadside café called Little Britain overlooking Wenlock Edge. The BBC website describes the edge as "a limestone escarpment created 400 million years ago when Shropshire could be found just south of the equator and boasted a Caribbean type of environment" - mmm not quite like that now.

We had a nice cuppa, sausage buttie and a sticky bun for lunch, and sat inside this converted caravan, which turned out to be decorated like a Great Aunt's front parlour - complete with knick-knacks. Brilliant! Even better was our charming host Vic, an ex. army cook of 14 years at the Hereford base of the SAS. Sadly the Official Secrets Act was cited when we asked what the SAS ate, although he did mutter about field rations including hedgehogs and squirrels. The Little Britain café was sadly all out of them, and had no eggs left for good measure either.

Vic was 68, he said, and still works 7:30am to 7:30pm four days a week (his wife I think did the other three). Hard graft for this lovely gentleman of the old school - and he had even had his regimental tie on.

Whilst we ate, Vic pointed out a local landmark tower called Flonders Folly on Callow Hill, once owned he said, by Julie Christie. He also said that his van (which he said still had the same original tyres on), was a 1954 'Pilot'', and that it had previously been used as a police Mobile Investigation Unit. He refused to divulge any more top secrets under our probing interrogation.