blogging about the area of Preston, Lancashire and there-abouts
Food makers, sellers, growers and the like related to the region around Preston.
The Victorian Covered Market has been updated with a stylish structure creating an internal market space under the canopy. On entering from Orchard Street there are 3 smart stalls, as it’s just opened there are a few stalls still being made. The Earl Street entrance is for butchers. At the time some of the stalls were still being fitted out.
Big surprise that Booths Supermarket, headquartered in Preston, is said to be up for sale. After last year’s loss some have speculated that a buy out, perhaps by Waitrose, could be on the cards. The company says it’s one option in a review being carried out by consultants.
That’s Lancashire, the local TV station, have a good YouTube video on the subject. A speaker from the Grocer Magazine suggests someone like Amazon could take a slice.
Booths have traded for 170 years starting from a store in Blackpool and now with 28 stores. They had a smart store in Preston where Waterstones is now. Sometimes the store has appeared a bit old fashioned but they changed tack to move out of town centres and recently closed smaller stores to open brand new smart and modern stores.
Viva Booths!
I had a cheesy grin. It was a visit to cheesemakers Dewlay just 8 miles north of Preston on the A6.
Their cheesemaking site has a viewing gallery, exhibition, meeting room and a shop. So we decided to pop in while passing. You can’t miss it with that windmill towering over the building.
Set back from the road is a modern building producing all kinds of cheese including award winning Lancashire. The exhibition isn’t large but it contains interesting information and old cheese making equipment. Then upstairs is a long viewing gallery where the manufacturing cycle is explained on boards and you can see the cheese being made through windows.
After that it’s off to the shop for some cheese and there are biscuits and other cheese related items.
While we were there a talk of some kind was being arranged in the large meeting room.
Not a big trip but worthy.
Preston Guild is once every 20 years so we weren’t going to miss this one. We loved the Royal Jubilee, the Olympic Games and we were sure we’d enjoy Preston Guild.
It seemed everyone was in a great mood, the weather was good. The streets were packed and the Square Food Festival ram jam full. The Vintage Weekend filled after the procession and Miller and Avenham Parks were in good form.
Read our account with photos on the webiste.
http://www.madeinpreston.co.uk/General/PrestonGuild2012report.html
Preston comes together as events are announced for the 2012 Guild. Here are four unmissables:
The new multi-million pound ‘Discover Preston’ display in the Harris Museum, opened on 28th July, is something I’ve been burning to see. On Friday 17th August 12noon to 3pm it will be closed for it’s official opening. There’s a joke there somewhere. Read about it on the Harris Museum website:
http://www.harrismuseum.org.uk/current-exhibitions/7-new-history-gallery
The Vintage Guild Weekend website and video have been produced with style and the food, craft, art, music, dancing, pop-up theatres will show Preston off in the attractive and decorative Miller and Avenham Parks and the Winckley Street area on September 1st and 2nd: http://vintageguildweekend.com/
Watch the Vintage Guild Weekend YouTube video with Paul Hemingway:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXH_8iNrgKM&feature=player_embedded#!
The Deltic prototype at the Ribble Steam Railway in Preston is something I never thought I’d see and represents one of the most iconic things ever made in Preston. Deltic locomotives were the pride of the East Coast Main Line hauling the top link expresses from Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley for over 20 years. Find out more on their website:
http://www.ribblesteam.org.uk/
The Made in Preston theme has been adopted by the Guild and 9 projects covering an imaginative range of themes including memories of English Electric and Leyland Motors will be presented.
http://www.prestonguild2012.com/made-in-preston
It can never be allowed to pass that Made in Preston has been the name of this website for over 10 years and will support the Guild whole heartedly but has no official links with it and gets no thanks. None wanted though and no worries. Come together, right now:
http://www.madeinpreston.co.uk/
The very large wind turbine built at the Dewlay Cheesemaker site at Garstang is now operating. Driving past it is very impressive and creates quite a landmark. Yesterday was a very light wind but the turbine was turning and seemed to be going at about 6rpm. How much power will that produce?
Looking at the Dewlay website the turbine is called ‘castle of the clouds’ as named by a local schoolgirl and announced at the opening by the government Minister for Climate Change – Charles Hendry on the 9th November 2010. Although the turbine has been installed since September.
As a single turbine it has a strong visible, contrasting and iconic impact like the Angel of the North, although not unique, and can be seen for several miles. It could be said that adding more turbines would spoil this and create a more industrial feature undesirable in such a location.
Visited the Southport Flower Show today, Thursday, only 16 miles from Preston along the A59. Enroute was impressed by the large flat fields that are now on the Ribble Estuary. Don’t recall fields being that far out before. Would it be worth laying a road towards Lytham that could be used at low tide. Around half a million people live on the Fylde and millions travel to Blackpool, such a link might benefit the regions on both sides of the river and be an interesting novelty crossing.
The flower show was a lot better than expected. Spread over Victoria Park fairly close to the centre of Southport. Lots to see including; mmmm …..flowers, stalls selling mainly garden stuff but quite a lot of fashion and food producers; had an excellent steak pie in great pastry from the food tent. There is an arena and a bird handler had a very large eagle and vulture which were one of the high spots, incredible, as well as dog handlers and some stunt men.
The Amateur Gardening Tent was good with some excellent veg; leeks bigger than your arm. Very tasty looking fruit presentations and flowers. All kind of horticultural displays including Robinsons Mammoth Onion, interesting modern floral displays, show gardens with an impressive winner.
Enjoyed the Bee and honey tent, photo below of the display winner in one category. That’s a lovely old hive and the display had 4 types of hive.
A long day arriving at 10 and leaving at 4 which is unusual for us and it seemed there was more catering at Southport than at Tatton so the queues were shorter. Good day out, on until Sunday, not cheap, save money by booking tickets in advance. Maybe you book ahead and pick them up at the show, check.
Went to the Garstang Show today. Bit worried the car would be stuck in the field but it was pretty dry.
The bulls are creatures of awe bellowing at the cows, not sure what it was about but imagined. Horses, sheep, miniature goats, bantams, rabbits, dogs, budgerigars and some alpaca they’re all there. The miniature goats had quite a following and made quite a nice squeaking sound.
Enjoyed the country tent with the vegetables, flowers, cakes and childrens work. Cheese tent as well. The children in Garstang did a great job with those displays. Especially the poems, miniature gardens and drawings. There was a nice crocodile made from a cucumber and several excellent drawings of grandad and grandma and other good ideas.
The food tent was good as well. Nice looking pies, jams and other good stuff. Quite fancied a hot pot in the Eden Valley tent but my wifes a vegetarian and so we went to separate stands.
The Womens Institute tent had a lot going on and learnt the Roman name for Garstang but forgot it. Had a coffee in the Methodist tent.
Overall a lot going on and stayed a lot longer than intended.
Went to visit Mr Growing With Nature at Pilling last Saturday as he was to tell us how to grow our organic vegetables better, which seemed a bit of a contradiction as he sells them to us. A murky and cold day in the depths of the Fylde with country lanes as narrow as the car and a misty view of the fells. Turned into a very narrow lane and were confronted by a convoy of 4×4’s. A local shooting club who’d been out firing at geese. A bit of a mystery to me about what sort of enjoyment there is shooting at geese as they fly in their majestic formations slowly and at low altitude, while chatting to each other, over the Fylde. I do eat chicken and turkey, and maybe the wild geese get a better life, and perhaps hunting them is what humans have always done. Yet I know that if I deliberately killed another creature that wasn’t a threat I wouldn’t sleep peacefully ever again.
The show has had empty years before but today the Royal Lancashire Show committee put into place actions to put it on ice saying the costs of 2 flooded years have been too much. The Royal Lancashire Agricultural Society also say that Ribble Valley Borough Council put the final nail in the coffin by refusing to consider a revised traffic plan. It appears there is still scope for compromise as further discussions are expected and the announcement might be thought to put some pressure on the council.
It is surprising that in a county as big as Lancashire, including its larger Palatine boundary, a location, cash and support can’t be found for such a show. You would think that Lancashire County Council would feel strongly about it but it seems to be only local councils who are involved and they aren’t being helpful either.
On the other hand why does it have these problems. Is it the date, the location or bad planning. As they say one mistake is unfortunate, two mistakes look like carelessness but three mistakes look like ………..
Shock, horror, the newspapers are carrying headlines that say organic food is no more nutritional than non-organic food.
The reputable Food Standards Agency with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have conducted a study with 162 analyses and made the conclusion that organic food contains no additional nutritional value.
Whether there are exceptions I don’t know. Whether organic food produced by someone who cares gives more satisfaction than mass produced, chemically stimulated, processed and perfectly shaped food probably wasn’t in the equation.
I always thought organic farming was about having less in the food. Less chemicals that is. Less effect on our fellow creatures and less effect on our water supply etc. Less effect on the environment in general. I don’t think the study touched this.
I havn’t read the full report and it sounds lengthy but as a supporter in general of the theme of organic farming I think it’s limited scope misses the target. I’ve never bought organic food thinking it tasted better although I might think it does if it was bread baked in a bakery that cares and maybe makes the bread nice and full, not rubbery and light. I like my food to digest with a natural amount of roughage, why take out the roughage and then have to eat a pile of bran or take tablets to make your body work. Do I need the dye contained in some foods that a study last week shows is one of the few things that penetrates certain internal membranes so helping a new drug to cure nerve damage.
So please file the report under ‘blinkered studies’ and send the cheque from the taxpayer to the School of Tropical Medicine with a note of thanks. It’s not their fault they did what they were asked to do.
Schwan the American Pizza maker in Leyland has sold out to the German Pizza maker Dr Oetker. Reading newspaper reports this gives Dr Oetker 43% of the UK frozen pizza market and this might be too much. Dr Oetker previously had 12% so it has made a step increase. It isn’t clear to me if 30% of frozen pizzas are made in Leyland, but if so it sounds like the dominant factory so you might think would be able to take on work rather than lose it. At this time the market is growing though so if there is any spare capacity it must be filling. However I know nothing about it and that is only a guess.