Heya, Adventurers! This is J.K.’s friend Beth, reporting from England, where I had many culinary adventures and remembered to take pictures of some of them.
I have cousins in Colchester, Gary and Jen and daughter Emma. Emma has actually worked in the States and is a baseball fan, disappointed she didn’t get to go to a Giants game when she was on the West Coast. I made a standing promise to take her to one.
Gary and Jen have a friend, Pauline, who’s a docent at Sutton Hoo, a 6th century Saxon burial site north in Suffolk. The lady of the manor, who was something of a spiritualist, had a vision of a warrior standing on one of the many mounds on her property. She hired an archaeologist, Basil Brown, to do a dig. He was good, but he didn’t have the degrees or affiliations to get treated with importance locally. When he went down to the pub after a day’s work, people would tease him by asking, “So what did you find today, Basil?” And one evening he answered by pulling out a big, beautiful gold belt buckle with really fine inlay work. No more teasing, even if he did have to put up with an important archaeologist who went to The Right Schools becoming the public figurehead.
They’ve now found three of these ship burials, with someone important being buried in each ship, laid out in the cabin with treasures. Those Saxons were trading with Byzantium, so there’s been some fabulous jewelry.
Between a site tour and Pauline’s special museum tour, we went out for lunch at the Coach and Horses pub in Melton, outside nearby Woodbridge (where Gary and Jen first met). Pauline and I each had a smoked fish platter (trout, mackerel and salmon) that came with a dessert, a lemon posset with almond biscotti. Salmon and mackerel and trout, oh my! I went for a local brew, an Adnam summer bitters. Yum.
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