Bath Time

A quick bite in my favourite English city

I drive to London several times a year, by way of Rosslare and Fishguard, and have become very well acquainted with the M4 and its services areas (my favourite name amongst these being Leigh Delamere who surely should have been an English starlet of the 1950s?). It also means that I get to spend a little time in my favourite British city, honey-coloured Bath.

If you ever make the same journey, may I suggest breaking it overnight? On the way to London, I grin and bear the five hours of driving which, added to breaks, makes a journey time of the better part of a day. On the way home, I stop off, eat, sleep and am ready to hit the road in good time for the lunchtime Stena Line sailing. (I have travelled with Irish Ferries to Pembroke in the past, but I find Stena far more comfortable and congenial).

The Crown Inn at Dyrham, literally a few minutes from the Bath exit on the M4 westbound, is a pub belonging to the Butcombe Brewing Company from Devon. The bedrooms are all pleasant and well-appointed. They even come with books, bought by the yard and glued together so as to make what interior designers call “decorative items” – may God forgive them.

But the beer is proper, the staff friendly (there’s a barmaid who addresses everyone as “my loverr”) and the food is generous if a bit over-ambitious. As a place to rest your head and recharge the batteries, it’s excellent.

But there are times when one wants to be somewhere other than a pub on a very busy road in South Gloucestershire. Bath is not much of a drive further and on my last trip I booked into the excellent Z Hotel, smack in the centre. My room was tiny but more than adequate and it cost £85 for the night.

I had tried many times to eat in Bath’s Beckford Bottle Shop but tended to find myself in town on a Sunday or a Monday when it’s closed. The Beckford bit refers to the somewhat notorious William Beckford, ludicrously rich, seducer of the under-age William Courtenay, Earl of Devon, owner of 3,000 slaves, builder of long-demolished Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire and the famous Beckford Tower not far from Bath’s Lansdown Park & Ride. He was keen on towers and this is the only one of four built by him not to collapse.

Speaking of parking and riding, whenever I’ve tried to use one of the several open carparks in Bath, I’ve been thwarted by the impossibility of entering an Irish registration into the pay-for-your-stay machine; one the plus side, I’ve enjoyed free parking, but I’ve only narrowly avoided getting clamped. As anyone who listens to You And Yours on BBC Radio 4 will know, parking enforcers in Britain take no prisoners.

So, I parked on the street in the city centre, not quite legally, crossed my fingers, dropped off my bag at the Z, then drove up to Bennett Street just around the corner from Saville Row and the Beckford Bottle Shop. I instantly found a parking space in which I could leave the car until my 7am departure next day.

Nabbing a window seat in the bistro, I ordered a negroni and contemplated a rather lovely menu. This is the kind of place where a couple of friends share a bottle and a platter of either cheese or British charcuterie. If you don’t like the idea of “sharing plates” - and there are those who get rather hot under the collar about them - this menu won’t float your boat.

It certainly floated mine, but the only problem was that I didn’t have anyone to share it with. While I managed to finish my splendidly crunchy courgette fritti with aioli (£7.50), the pork and white wine ragù with wild garlic spatzle and Old Winchester (£15.50) was too much for me. It was a deeply flavoured affair and the addition of unadvertised crisp breadcrumbs was inspired. Old Winchester is an English cheese that seems to combine the qualities of Parmesan and very mature Gouda. Yes, as good as that.

The fritti went well with a glass of exceptionally elegant and Burgundian Saint-Clair “Omaka” Reserve Chardonnay from New Zealand (£12.90), while the ragù worked fine with a glass of Bodegas Bhilar Graciano from Rioja (£8.40). Incidentally, that Chardonnay is a snip in the shop where you can get a bottle for €23.50.

These days it takes a lot for a pudding make me order it but how could I resist something billed as “Burnt orange tart, smoked ice cream, marmalade”? Quite impossible, and it was glorious. Sweet and bitter and smoky and just enough after what, for me, was a lot of food.

Service was charming if sometimes a little slow but it was a busy evening.

Oh, and they have both Green and Yellow Chartreuse, which are very hard to get hold of since the monks capped production in an effort to spend more time praying for the world. Which, let’s face it, is something it really needs right now.

The Beckford Bottle Shop, 5-8 Saville Row, Bath, BA1 2QP, phone: +44 1225 809302

beckfordbottleshop.com