S. Worthen | Weblog

From the parking lot of Bashell Barn Farm Shop and Restaurant, Pendle, snow-scarred and illuminated, shone over shadowed Clitheroe. In Clitheroe itself, we went back for sausages, of course. They were out of pork-and-chesnut, clearly a popular flavor at the moment, but that still left us no end of other options.

At the wine shop, I finally found a bottle of elusive chocolate liquor. Months ago, I think it was, I posted asking for advice on chocolate liquor brands. I went to shop after shop which had no chocolate liquor at all. Finally, at M&S I found their in-store brand - but it was dire. At D. Byrne in Clitheroe, they had milk chocolate Mozart and milk chocolate Thornton's. I went with Mozart. They said they couldn't currently get ahold of the white or dark chocolate ones. A national shortage, perhaps, explaining why I'm having so much trouble tracking them down?

Afterward, we walked up to the castle, one of the smallest Norman keeps in England. It may be smaller than my house. A pile of single rooms would have formed the interior, unless they were cut down to the size of closets. As is the way with keeps, however large, it was never a self-sufficient building, but part of a complex. Later versions of those buildings, now a museum, clustered just downhill. The floor on the ground of the keep was raised enough that I could gesture my fingertips into the timber holes marking the base of the next floor up. A pigeon, just as startled as I, flew out from the timber hole from where she had been nesting. We only barely made contact with each other.