Last Blog of the Year

Merry Christmas Everyone, (or to both of you, as I only know 2 people that read this blog!)



This year we celebrated our 10th anniversary at Brook House Inn, we are all still working hard. I am pleased to say that we are in the 2009 Camra Good Beer Guide, 8 years out 10 – not bad going. In June we had our eighth Boot Beer Festival and the busiest yet, with over 40 beers just at Brook House Inn.

Ten years here also means that Emma is 10 years old, how time flies! She moves up to big school next year so we have had to choose which one. We picked Millom in the end because it‘s teachers seemed friendlier and more animated, it is slightly further away but they finish at 3pm so Emma will be back by about 4pm.

After spending May and June with a bad back, I have had quite an active year. Emma learnt to ride her mountain bike so we have been going on little rides up and down the valley. Ben, one of my diving buddies is also a canoeist so I have had my boat out a couple of times, down the river and on the sea at St Bees, and as of December I have taken up caving!

Sarah and Shaun's two boys are growing up fast, both are now in school which gives Sarah a bit of piece and a little more time to work without the help of Ben and Jacob! They both have bikes so with the help of Emma have spent most of the summer tearing round the car park and trying to drag us all out on bike rides, but Jacob is only 4 years old so that is a little scary on our narrow roads. Jacob loves to climb things and has just discovered the stone wall in the passageway - I think he needs a "no fear" tshirt for Christmas and I wish I had his strength to body weight ratio. Ben is a bit more sensible but likes to get his own way so there is plenty of arbitration to do between him and Emma. When it was not raining in summer, we spent time down by the river, I am glad to say that all 3 kids can now swim, but Jacob is not too keen on the cold water!

At the end of last year I was allowed away on my own so I jetted of to Florida to complete a cave diving course, after a week training and lots of diving I passed the course to become a certified cave diver. So from now on our family holidays will revolve around not only places where I can dive but also with caves to dive in! I have had a good year with some great dives, especially in Mexico at the beginning of the year, the cenotes and caves are truly amazing, incredibly peaceful in water so clear I imagine it's like floating in space with white stalactites like a thousand knitting needles suspended from the ceiling and the floor a bed of shining calcite crystals. Emma and Lesley really enjoyed Mexico too, we went to see Chichen Itza, now rightly one of the seven wonders of the world.

In Summer Lesley, Emma and I escaped for a week to Roccamadhour, in France, I met up with a cave diving buddy who brought my kit down in his car so I managed a few cave dives. We had a day canoeing on the Dordogne which Emma liked a lot. I will have to buy her a life jacket soon so she can come rafting down the Esk with me!


In November Lesley and Emma fancied going to Egypt where we have been before but only so I could dive, this time it was to be educational - to see Cairo, The Pyramids, Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, on a 2 day whistle stop tour.

The Temple at Karnack is immense, the workmanship is stunning, and some of the paintings are still clear and colourful on the walls, 4000 years on, we have to get our building painted every 5 years or so, they were damned clever those Egyptians! and the river Nile is pretty impressive too. After the tour we spent a few days on the coast near Marsa Alam and you guessed it I did a spot of diving, all very pleasant, no proper caves though. But I had forgotten just how reliant on the guide, holiday only divers are- no watches, no depth gauges that worked, it was only after 3 people had asked “what depth did we reach?” when I realised I was the only diver apart from the guide with a dive computer! We went through some lovely coral “caves” on the way through the reef and saw lots of Turtles. and a shark.

Although I do not get out onto the fells as much as I should, Owain and I did manage to climb Harter Fell in the snow last week, which brought back fond memories of winter holidays in Scotland. This was Owain's first trip out in the snow, we even managed to play with the ice axes and some frozen turf! Shame the weather has turned wet again.

Mum and Dad are now back from their trip of a lifetime down to New Zealand, with lots of tales to tell of scary aeroplane rides and beautiful mountains.

Well it is nearly Christmas eve so there I will end, is has been a good year for us all.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Gareth and all the gang at Brook House Inn

New Years Eve Menu

New Years Eve Dinner 2008

As of today we still have some tables available. Please note that you must pre-order, preferably prior to Christmas. The menu and a selector sheet can be downloaded from our events section on the website

Appetizer
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Poached asparagus with fried quails egg and minted hollandaise
Chicken, chive and pancetta ballotine with basil vinaigrette and roasted plum tomato
Smoked eel with wasabi potato cake and caper relish
Braised hock of ham timbale with homemade piccalilli and caraway crisp bread
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Melon and ginger sorbet
Scallop soup
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Fillet of brill with a lobster tail spring roll, tarragon and fennel sauce and saffron rice
Cumbrian salt marsh lamb with mutton & oyster sausage, lightly pickled vegetables and a smoked garlic and rosemary sauce
Wild mushroom and barley risotto, blue brie fondue and red pepper bread
Baked fillet of local beef with confit of braised oxtail, winter vegetable puree and fondant potatoes
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Warm dark chocolate fondant with liquid toffee centre and Baileys cream
Vanilla pannacotta with passion fruit coulis, and jewelled wine jellies
Clementine and pomegranate syllabub with chocolate shortbread
Hazelnut and raspberry roulade with laphroaig & honey cream
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Cumbrian cheese board
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Champagne at midnight
Please arrive 7 for 7.30pm
£47.50 per person

Summer is over

Thank goodness for that, summer comes to an end and the rain has stopped! I do not know if this was our wettest summer but it has rained a lot, I even managed to get my kayak out for a trip down the river!

September is my favourite month of the year, I like the changing points of the seasons, and love the still, cool mornings when I get up to cook breakfast and the dew is thick on the fields, with mist hanging over the beck.
September is always a busy month for us, but this year the weekends have been exceptional, our real ale sales are well up and we have had some very dedicated malt whisky drinkers!
Hawkshead Bitter and Tim Taylors Landlord remain our best sellers but we have had some great guests from Yates, Cumbria Legendary Ales, Barngates and many other breweries.
Eskdale show is on the 27th of this month and is now all set to go ahead, a dry spell now should see the field in good condition, it is always a great event and was sadly missed last year due to a F&M scare. So if you get the chance pop down to the field by the King George, there will be lots of events, from fell running to carrot judging, stalls selling all kinds of practical out door gear, locally produced food and handicrafts.

Oh yes and a beer tent!

Boot Beer Festival

I would like to start with a big THANKYOU to all those that attended the beer festival, we had a great time. The Roosters playing live on the Thursday night set the tone for the weekend which was very busy but we managed to keep the beer flowing and even had a few still on the bar on Sunday!
We were once again blessed with good weather which really does help so thanks for that!

We are now getting some much needed rain, 6 dry weeks were making the place look a little dry- (I was going to say like Spain in summer but that just would not have been true) Everything looks really green now through the mist and the Esk looks like a river instead of a series of puddles.

Next Sunday we have been at Brook House Inn for 10 years so I think there may be a bit of a celebration! and a special quiz from Lesley.

Sunshine, Beer and more Beer

A little bit of sunshine really does make the world a better place, I am not sure if it is because spring has finally arrived and the landscape has turned green, or maybe, as we are busier there is less time to think about events in the wider world - ie outside Eskdale! Anyway me and the rest of the gang up here are happily getting on with preperations for events such as the Boot Beer Festival, which kicks off on the 5th of June at Brook House with our curry night and also excellent local band THE ROOSTERS will be playing from about 9pm.

This year we will have over 30 real ales over the weekend on 11 handpulls with at least another 45 at the other 2 pubs. Hollins campsite is fully booked but Fisherground just a mile or so down the road and Parkgate Farm (3 miles) still have availability. see http://www.eskdale.info/ for more accommodation

So cheers to a happy sunny summer

Thanks to Homer for reminding me to post a blog this month.

April Already!

I was in all honesty going to try and post ever month at least but at this rate I might just make 4 a year.

Easter came and went with a few flurries of snow but not the drifts and travel disrupting weather that was forecast. Over doing the severity level of the weather forecast is becoming more common. I often use metcheck and have noticed this year there seems to be many more severe weather warnings, even if it is just going to rain. Yesterday I was reading an old publication called "Preview of Lakeland" Which had an article on the great frosts of 1895, 1907, 1929 and 1959, during these winters the cold lasted long enough to freeze Windermere for several weeks.
This brought tourists from all over the North West to see the spectacle. I guess that the government of the day did not issue warnings not to travel and as many came by train they must have been able to deal with ice on the lines!

Windermere became a massive skating rink with all sorts of events including cars driven on the ice, ice dancing, races and fires lit for parties. This sort of behaviour would not be allowed today, a police cordon would be set up around all frozen water to keep us off and millions would be spent advertising the danger. Maybe this over-protection is not a bad thing, walking on thin ice can be very very dangerous but we all used to have common sense to tell us what was dangerous, in future generations this will have been eradicated and this country will have lost its spirit of adventure.

Rant 1 over.

I had a lovely walk up to Cam Spout on Tuesday last, I had hoped there would be some snow in the gullies onto Long Green but alas it had all melted away by 10am. There was still some on the tops but by then my boots last worn in 2005 had caused some blisters, so I put my slippers on and walked back home. Took a few nice piccies though.

The Beer Festival is fast approaching and it is time to think about our beer list, unfortunately the Government has struck again and increased beer duty etc so this year I am going to look for good value beers to have on during the festival. Hawkshead bitter is still on sale at £2.10 but Tim Taylors Landlord has now gone to £2.70

The general pub going public are once more being chastised for on the whole doing nothing wrong. The press coin the phrase "Binge Britain" and the government jump aboard like a child onto a roller coaster and up go the taxes on alcohol. I am just a layman and have no fictitious statistics to back my ideas but it does not take a great leap of faith to connect cheap beer with drunken behaviour and where sells the cheapest beer? supermarkets of course. So has the Government tackled the consumers heroes, our benevolent givers of cheap milk and alcohol, or is the beer in your local shopping giant still cheaper than bottled water? still cheap I would guess.

The Pub is a highly regulated place to drink where rules are adhered to, as demonstated by last years high profile campaign against landlords selling alcohol to drunken customers - only a handful of convictions from the 30 or more police forces involved. Quite rightly you can do pretty much what you please in your own home, but it is cheap alcohol which fuels binge drinking. Responsible publicans sell beer etc at a reasonable price to make a living, supermarkets sell beer at below cost price to entice customers into the shop.

Supermarkets make our hectic lives easier, there is no doubt about this but once upon a time everyone had a milkman, a village shop, a local baker and a local pub.

We are very lucky in Eskdale because spring, summer and autumn is full of holiday makers so business is good, but I feel sorry for the village and town pubs who I am sure feel they are bearing the brunt of the governments whims from smoking bans to taxes and I wont even go into the new rules and regulations which seem to appear nearly ever day!

Rant 2 over

What we want is a little sunshine and a breath of warm spring air.

Lo0king forward to 2008

Another year gone! Hard to believe this is our tenth year at Brook House Inn, sounds like a good excuse for a party, but thats not until the end of June. Working backwards from then, we have the Beer Festival from the 5th to the 8th of June. A whisky tasting in May if we get enough interest, please see the whisky page on our site. Easter is early this year so maybe the fells will still have a little winter dressing, always a pretty sight and as the nights get lighter some longer walks can be planned. February half should see an improvement in the weather (well it can`t get any worse, feels like it has been raining for months)

All Our websites are undergoing a little remedial work at the moment so please be patient and don`t get too upset if links take you to unexpected places.

Happy New Year to all

Gareth