Bakewell is another place which we visited on our recent trip to Derbyshire. The river Wye runs through the middle of it and as you can see from the above photo it’s full of geese, ducks and swans. I love towns with rivers, in fact I think it’s the thing that I find most important about a place, I suppose I like them because all old towns were built on rivers and I prefer old places.

Bakewell is very close to Chatsworth, we’d seen it recently on TV and as we’re partial to Bakewell Tart – the Mr Kipling kind, we thought we’d like to try out the original Bakewell Pudding. The problem is there are three shops in Bakewell proclaiming themselves to be the only one selling the original Bakewell pudding, which one should we choose?

We plumped (and that is a significant word) for the ones which looked nicest because it seems that about half of the shops in Bakewell are selling the puddings but most of them look very amateurish and frankly not very appetising. So we bought two slices which were enormous but being greedy we decided to buy a Bakewell tart too. This was the only shop selling tarts, the difference being that the tarts have icing on top. Most Scots have a very sweet tooth (it’s something to do with our cold northern climate I think) and I could quite happily eat a bowl of icing on its own so the tart was just too tempting.

We ate the slices first. I have to say that I wasn’t all that struck on the flavour of it. It certainly didn’t taste of almonds which is the most obvious flavour of the Mr Kipling Bakewells. Another bite was required though to try to work out what the flavour was – then another and another and before I knew what was happening I had scoffed the whole thing, still none the wiser as to what it really tasted of. It was very slightly fudge-ish or maybe butterscotch-ish. What was worse was that I thought to myself that it was so heavy it felt like it must have been about 1,000 calories of glook.

All that I can definitely say about the taste is that it was over-egged and I really hate puddings and cakes which taste eggy. So why did I eat it? Who knows? – not me anyway, but if I ever find myself in Bakewell again I’ll be giving the puddings a wide swerve. As we bought a tart too we ended up eating it over the next few days and I must say that it tasted a bit better, due mainly to the icing on top I’m sure. It would have been better with custard!

We’ve had so many meals out over the holidays what with celebrating family birthdays and being away, also it was our 35th wedding anniversary earlier in the month and we just had to have a meal out then too and as a friend said to me – the main reason for eating out is to have the lovely puddings. The result is that I’ve put on an amazing three inches around my waist which I only discovered when I tried to put on my favourite skirt. It’s down to two inches now but I bet it takes ages to shift those two extra inches. Such is life!