Back in the day, Palmer Flatts Hotel at Aysgarth Falls was the place to go for Wensleydale’s young crowd on a Friday and Saturday night, especially if there was a disco down the road at the nearby Motel.
It would get busy with over-excited and under-the-influence young people but they didn’t need security when they had landlady Sue to keep order.
She could do more to calm things with a glare than any bouncer could with his fists.
These days Sue and husband Richard run the White Rose Hotel, along the A684 in Askrigg.
It’s presumably not as lairy on a Saturday night at the White Rose, known locally as the middle house as it’s the middle of three pubs in the village, but it was busy when we called in with the family on New Year’s Day for the carvery which is normally served on a Sunday.
I do love a carvery almost as much as a hotel buffet breakfast. The idea that you can fill your plate as high as the laws of physics allow appeals to the glutton and the Yorkshireman in me.
There was three choices of meat on offer – turkey, beef and pork and, if you’re a bit of a pig, you can have all three. I am and did. All meats were excellent, particularly the beef which was good and pink in the middle. You know the meat is going to be decent when the local butcher, Nigel Hammond, is one of those also dining. There were different gravies for the meats which is a minor point but important – the idea of putting beef gravy on chicken or turkey is faintly preposterous.
There was also a good selection of trimmings: pigs in blankets, veg including cheesy leeks and red cabbage, roast potatoes and mash, and large Yorkshire puds.
At £9.95 a head with half portions available for kids, the carvery was great value and a super way to start 2018. There was time afterwards for a game of pool as we would have done at Palmer, although try as I might I couldn’t get the kids interested in a game of killer.
