No, this isn’t going to be a blog of existential angst. This is a ‘hello, and nice to meet you’.
So who are we? Referring to Amelia’s Kitchen as a ‘we’ makes me feel like the queen. We are Amelia and Ed. Though the Amelia’s Kitchen bit is mostly Amelia (the clue is in the title). Ed is henceforth also to be known as ‘The Beard’. If AA Gill had The Blonde, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have The Beard. But I digress. We’ve newly relocated from the dreaming spires of Oxford to the rugged hills of the Yorkshire Dales. The Beard comes from not so very far away – his parents have a farm just outside Kirkby Lonsdale (on which, no doubt, more later). In our previous incarnations in Oxford, The Beard was a chemist and then did lab work in archaeology (making a mass spectrometer sing and dance, as far as I understand). I was a classicist and student of renaissance Italian literature, before jacking that in to train as a chef. I did a Cordon Bleu diploma at Tante Marie (in Woking), before working in restaurants for a couple of years. I then teamed up with the fabulous Sophie Grigson to run Sophie’s Cookery School, a pop-up school teaching everything from pasta-making to marshmallows. Sophie’s Oxford classes are going from strength to strength – if you’re ever down that way, you should DEFINITELY go on one. In the meantime, I will try to persuade her to make a guest appearance up here.
Okay, so you now know who we are. The next question is presumably ‘and what are you doing here?’. WELL, the answer is that we are trying to set up a B&B and cookery school. After the years with Sophie running pop-up classes I was ready for somewhere a little more permanent, and with the draw of The Beard’s parents and the fact that it is quite miraculously beautiful around here, the Dales seemed like a good place to settle down. Cue a year or so of searching for the perfect place in which to do it. We needed to find somewhere within reach of Kirkby Lonsdale, with enough bedrooms or Potential Future Bedrooms to fit in a host of lovely guests, and with space for a teaching kitchen. We eventually found the perfect spot at the top end of Littondale, in the picturesque, friendly (and incredibly listed) hamlet of Halton Gill.
That spot is the Manor Farmhouse. It was built in 1641 (we know, there’s a datestone over the door), has a pantry bigger than my kitchen was in Oxford and a barn just begging to be turned into cosy, en-suite B&B rooms, and just happens to have an enormous kitchen complete with slate floor and an AGA. We’re now just trying to get everything set up and works done ready to start welcoming guests next year. It’s a big project. A bit mad and a bit daunting, but an awfully big adventure nevertheless.
So if you’re curious, or maybe interested in coming to stay somewhere that allows for big walks, big bike rides and big meals, or maybe a fellow foodie looking for some new ideas. Watch this space. I’ll be trying to blog about our adventures on the way. Think Grand Designs but with added food.
