Bed and Breakfast and Dinner

We wanted to stop overnight near Standon so Mark could catch up with an old friend. He'd booked a room at the Kick and Dicky, a B&B that supposedly served food. It had good TripAdvisor ratings and the pictures looked very inviting. We booked it before we left Texas. When we arrived on Sunday afternoon at a construction site, we were a bit surprised. The proprietor told Mark that the room was available for sleeping, but no food. And he was very understanding when Mark said he wanted to look elsewhere. It looked nice before. Once it's renovated, it should be very nice.

We went on to visit with our friends and asked if they had any recommendations. The first country inn they recommended made it clear that they did not do food on Sunday evenings. The second place we called, The Chequers, also said they did not do food on Sunday evenings but that there were any number of restaurants within walking distance. That worked for us.

The room was nothing special. Not incredibly large nor remarkably small. Average on all counts - what you'd expect for a room over a pub. We ate dinner at the Royal Bengal which served exceptionally good Indian food. (All kinds of award stickers in their windows.) The next morning we missed breakfast by 15 minutes. If they'd have told us what time breakfast was served when we checked in, we might not have missed it.  Since we didn't want to head up to Manchester with empty stomachs, we walked down the high street in search of a cafe serving breakfast.

Since it was starting to rain, we went into the first place serving food. I can't remember the name of it. Which is lucky for them because I don't have anything flattering to say about the experience. You know how some restaurants (Denny's and IHOP, for example) show pictures of menu items? This place had a picture of every single menu item except for the side orders. I suppose it caters to people who can't read and need to point. The thing was that the pictures made the food look so bad that I didn't want to eat any of it. And from what I could see of the food on other peoples' plates, those pictures were fairly accurate. We had toast.