First Problem - Where To Sit
If you just want a cup of tea, you can sit in the lounge. If you arrive early for lunch or dinner - you might start wine tasting in the shop. You buy a card to put in the wine-dispensing machine, having added enough money to cover one or more drinks.
We went straight for the main dining room at the back of the hotel. Most people choose to sit by the windows. Go early and book and ask for a window seat if that's what you want. Some seats were by the windows overlooking the greenery and distant River Ouse.
However, it was such a drizzly day that I was happy to sit at a table for two, on a banquette backing the wall. That way my bag could be off the floor and beside me.
I admired the bottle cut in half, with the lower part forming a plant pot fitting the hotel theme of wine.
Second Problem - What To drink?
As you drive up to the creeper-covered hotel, you are reminded by signs that the historic building now contains a hotel, restaurant and wine shop. The owner is a master of wine. You often see him sitting tasting wines with somebody who could be a wine buyer or a wine seller.
The wine list is extensive. I could have had a Prosecco, a kir or kir royale, a cocktail, Champagne, a dry rose, red or white wine from all over Europe, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, the Americas, north and south, and Australian and South African wines.
Dozens Of Delicious Drinks
I started with a sweet wine from the dessert list. You do have to ask for the pudding menu if you want to order a sweet dessert wine. We sweet wine drinkers are wise to this sort of subterfuge.
I remember I liked the Prosecco last time at this restaurant. However, this time I wanted to try something different. We were well attended by three members of staff who kept stopping to ask what we wanted to order. They weren't well co-ordinated - we once got the wrong drink, but they kept apologising and their relentless smiles were infectious.
They had been on staff wine tasting earlier in the day, which might have accounted for the smiles. I am particularly partial to smiling staff. Whatever they had drunk, it worked well. I do like it when staff know what is on the menu.
Best of all, when I dithered between two sweet wines, they brought me a small taste of each, and I was able to make a good decision. The two wines were very different, and although one was good enough, the other was just right, pure heaven.
I saved some of my sweet wine for where you were meant to drink it, to accompany dessert. Oddly enough I was able to savour it better earlier on, drinking the wine on its own.
Problem 2 - Which Food?
The old tapas tasting menu has gone? Will we find what we want?
Answer
Yes. The menu has an extensive list of main courses as well as sandwiches.
I went back to the old favourite of chicken and avocado sandwich. It comes with a green salad, and potato chips. I was tempted by something which had chips on the side. But with my eye on the bread pudding dessert, I felt that sandwich and bread pudding and chips would not make it past the diet police.
Such large sandwiches! My green salad was one of those impossible to cut so-called leaves which look like a tree. If you give up trying to cut it, and simply stuff it all into your mouth, it defies attempts to crush it and embarrassingly tries to climb out of your mouth, upwards, towards your nose and eyes.
I saved space for the dessert, bread pudding and this is the piece de resistance, with our only resistance being sharing one between two of us. It contains tangy orange. It comes up with cream. Divine dessert.
I went to wash my hands. The gel and moisturiser are a nice touch. The same brand, with different ingredients, is on sale on the rack outside the shop doorway.
Just inside the shop are sweet wines on your left, the tasting machine in the middle if you want to buy a card and have teeny tastes of a few more wines.
This visit they had some great accessories and gifts. I liked the dinosaur bottle opener. Most original were the sets of four legs for turning corks into bodies of animal figures, three sorts, a dog, legs plus plastic antlers for a reindeer. I regret not buying one.
The Old Bridge Hotel
1 High Street
Huntingdon
Cambridgeshire PE29 3TQ
tel:01480 424300
www.huntsbridge.com
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, author and speaker.
