Tea pigs and traditional English ale

It’s about time I continued the series of tearoom related posts with a long overdue review of Ginger Two. In other drink related news, the Southampton beer festival has been running the last few days, so there’s a slight change to the previous two tearoom format. Unfortunately my acronym based link between the two is more tenuous than it might have been since the Hogs Back Brewery’s Traditional English Ale wasn’t even at the festival. Oh well.

Ginger Two, Winchester

Ginger Two is tucked just out of the way off the High Street. Winchester has much more choice for tea and coffee these days but this is definitely my favourite. We’ve been here before and they seem to have increased the amount of space they have since our last visit, so I guess they must be fairly popular.

We ordered cream teas this time; unfortunately they didn’t arrive, so we weren’t able to assess the jam to cream ratio. Apparently they noticed that the scones weren’t fresh enough. I’m impressed they care that much about the quality of the food they serve. (I wonder what they would make of Gavin’s misguided views on how to apply the jam and cream!)

Plan B was cheese scones with chutney, which I’d order again just for the smell! I’m a big fan of cheese and chutney so everything worked out nicely there.

I haven’t been anywhere else where the tea comes in temples but they do make an excellent brew. We even indulged in some tea pigs of our own to keep us going until our next visit, although you don’t get many in a box so I think we’ll be saving them for special occasions!

Southampton Beer Festival

I almost missed the beer festival this year but thanks to Twitter I managed to get hold of a ticket at the last minute. I had the usual dilemma of whether to try some of the local beers, or stick to beers from further afield which I’m less likely to see. I had a few from Hampshire last year so decided to do the opposite this year. Having flicked through the list of Hampshire beers after the event, it appears that I might have chosen unwisely! Apparently Botta’s Best is brewed just down the road in Botley- will have to try and find that somewhere before next year. Any ideas?

Of the tiny fraction of beers I managed to try, I think these two were my favourite:

• Heritage Ale (Three Castles, Wiltshire)
• Eddystone (South Hams, Devon)

And the wooden spoon goes to:

• Chimera IPA (Downton, Wiltshire)

Of course they were all a million times better than anything at my local!

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3-in-1 weekend

Nothing interesting happens for months, then three days out come along at the same time! On Saturday we swam against the tide, driving past all the traffic jams heading for the coast, for Jo’s birthday present: an evening at the Old Vic theatre watching The Cherry Orchard (some famous director and Hollywood stars on stage all lost on me, but much appreciated by Jo).

Conveniently timed the day after was the league one play off final at Wembley.

Really great day out, although from Jo’s point of view, the less said the better.

Last, but not least, a chance to look round what is probably the reason for Eastleigh’s existence at the Eastleigh 100. I mostly wanted to go out of curiosity after years of passing by on the way to Winchester, but there were quite a collection of trains to have a look at as a bonus. She’ll probably deny it but Jo seemed to enjoy herself as well, although mostly for the low flying planes coming in to land at Southampton Airport rather than the trains. (More about the event from the BBC.)

And next weekend? That’ll be the Southampton beer festival!