This was a trip for Sue and Sharon and was Sharon‘s first visit to see Ben at the mushroom farm.
I (Sue) headed off on the train to Banbury where Sharon met me en route to our accommodation in Abergavenny. We got settled in, had a good catch up and wandered to the nearest pub for our evening meal. It was pretty rainy so we did not want to venture too far.
Luckily for us, Thursday dawned sunny and dry. We walked into Abergavenny across the river and fields and with views of Sugarloaf Mountain. We picked up some sourdough in the local bakers and then headed to Ben’s for our lunchtime meet.
Ben gave Sharon a tour of the farm. She saw the labs and all the growing rooms and met the chickens!! 😃 She then harvested some nice fresh oyster mushrooms for our lunch.
Ben then cooked us the oyster mushrooms with lashings of soy sauce and quite a lot of garlic. They were delicious. After that, Sharon and Ben took out their saxophones and performed a duet.
Ben and his employee Sam were extremely busy, so we let Ben get back to work. I then continued Sharon‘s tour with a stroll through the meadow to meet the horses, a longer walk around the back of the houses where we saw the alpacas and finally a stroll through the pine forest where we saw loads of different mushrooms.
Later that evening Ben fetched us for an evening out in Abergavenny at a very nice Italian restaurant where he had been previously with Emma and her parents. It was full to bursting in there because there was a large Italian family celebrating a 90th birthday. The food was really lovely and the atmosphere was great with three generations celebrating together and the whole restaurant joining in with the singing. Altogether a great day.
We had seen that the forecast was less favourable for the Friday so had a slow start to the day, having woken to biblical rainfall!! we made the most of the day, however, and there was a lovely market in the market hall in Abergavenny where we made a few purchases. Sharon got some very nice model cars and we had a long chat to the stall holder. I got a Christmas tree decoration to add to my collection and some turquoise earrings.
We had our lunch in The Angel Hotel on the main street which felt like somewhere out of a novel! The ham hock, leek and apple pie was delicious. We then strolled to the museum which was located amongst the ruins of the castle. We were very impressed with the displays, which were over three levels, there was a mock up of an old shop with various traditional packages, a recreation of historic kitchen, an air raid shelter, various artefacts and some displays which had been contributed to by local school children and the local community. It was the perfect activity for a rainy day.
When we headed home the following morning, we drove past lots of flooded fields. Monmouth was at the centrepoint of the storm, with flooded streets and significant disruption. We were fortunate that there were no delays on our journey and felt that we had managed to cram a lot of different and interesting activities into a short trip away.
Abergavenny itself is really picturesque, very friendly, with a beautiful market hall, loads of coffee shops and pubs and quite a few charity shops. We would definitely like to visit again and might consider going for the annual Abergavenny food festival in future.
