Best in Devon 2016

WINNERS in the 2016 Food & Drink Devon awards programme included Chunk of Devon, Ottery St Mary: Pork, Apple and Scrumpy Sausage Roll, Pork & Chorizo Sausage Roll, Steak & Ale Pie, Steak Pasty, Steak & Blue Pasty, Squealer Pork Pie (Gold award winner) and the The Well Hung Meat Company, Buckfastleigh (Best Producer).

Other winners were:

Me & Mrs Jones, Torquay – Best Café

The Lamb Inn, Sandford – Best Pub

Goierri Foods, Chudleigh – Best Street Food / Takeaway

The Cove Café Bar, Hope Cove – Best Bistro (Winner in 2015)

Old Vienna, Torquay– Best Fine Dining Restaurant      

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When in North Norfolk …

HOLIDAY letting agency Norfolk Hideaways has searched for what it thinks are weird and wonderful activities families can enjoy when taking a break in its part of East Anglia …

Alpaca Trekking, Wells-next-the-Sea – The Inca Trail it is not, but for those wanting to have a unique coastal adventure, exploring the countryside and beach by Alpaca ticks all the boxes for family fun. Choose treks of between one and four hours. More kid friendly than Llamas (which have a tendency to kick and spit). Price from £28 per hour for a group of three. www.alpacatrekking.co.uk

Snail racing in Congham – Congham might have few claims to international fame but, surrounded as it is by salt marshes – a favoured breeding gastropod ground – it is home to that most thrilling of sports, snail-racing. The rules are simple: snails are placed in a small red circle in the middle of a round table and the first to make it to the outside ring is the winner. The time to beat? Two minutes, 20 seconds, a world record established here in 1995. www.scase.co.uk/snailracing

Davenport's Magic Kingdom, North Walsham – One of the largest collections of magic memorabilia and curiosities in the world. The interactive family experience takes visitors through 500 years of magic. http://davenportsmagickingdom.co.uk

Holkham Hall and Estate – Very few visitors to North Norfolk miss a visit to Holkham Hall and Estate, but this year, the events team has chalked up some new attractions: kayaking, Canadian canoe trips, and Zorbing across its expansive lake. Starting from July 11 and running until the end of the school summer holidays, Zorbing costs from £5 for a 10-minute, tummy-tumbling experience. www.holkham.co.uk/visiting/lake-activities

Langham Dome – Langham Training Dome, which opened in 2014 tells the story of the important contribution made by RAF Langham to the defence of Britain in WW2 and the Cold War. It’s a small building with a big story. https://langhamdome.org

Fairyland Fair, Sennowe Park, Guist – This year's fair (May 29-30) has music, Fairyland Trust workshops, storytelling, puppet shows, free woodland activities, pirate games, and craft workshops. Tickets £10, under three's free. www.fairylandtrust.org

Leigh's Bees beekeeping workshops – A must-do for anyone with even the slightest interest in apiary. Flexible workshops and demonstrations in various sites in North Norfolk, with protective gear provided. You'll learn how honey is made, what a queen bee looks like, and what bees do as well as practical advice from the structure of an empty hive to hands-on time looking through a working honeybee colony. Prices from £80 per person to £200 for a family of four … and you get a free jar of honey. www.leighsbees.co.uk

www.norfolkhideaways.co.uk

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Take a 60 minute ride in space, for just £91,000

KAYAK.CO.UK has become the first travel search engine in the UK to offer #spacetravel. 

The out-of-this-world journeys are on offer with the travel search engine for £91,476 per person with XCOR Space Expeditions.

Research from KAYAK.co.uk among the British public shows a strong appetite for space tourism and found that over half of UK adults (52%) say they would like to try space travel – providing it was safe and affordable. Men were significantly more likely to want to try it than women.

More than a third of Brits (37%) think there is a chance that recreational travel into space will become commonplace in their lifetime.

Expeditions with XCOR will depart – it says here – from the Mojave Desert in California and Curaçao (Dutch Caribbean) taking approximately five minutes to get out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Passengers get a view of Planet Earth during the flight, which lasts for approximately one hour.

kayak.co.uk
http://spaceexpeditions.xcor.com

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Picture Credit:ttp://www.flickr.com/photos/38745062@N02/4132833849">Earth and North America from Space - digitally restored</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">(license)<

Eating out . . . Guernsey to Edinburgh

GUERNSEY’S food festival (September 18-27) will harness the island's produce and unique dishes in special dinners, tours, and interactive events. 

As well as cook-offs and live cooking demonstrations, there will be opportunities to sample the island’s one-of-a-kind gastronomy which has grown from its position as an island between England and France.

Full details at www.visitguernsey.com/food-festival

EDINBURGH’S historic Signet Library has opened its newly-refurbished doors as one of the city’s most glamorous lunch and afternoon tea venues. 

Following a £250,000 restoration of the library interiors, the lower library opens for lunch and afternoon teas under the name Colonnades, a reference to the building’s classical pillars. 

The venue has its own tea sommelier, Champagne experts, and an on-site pastry chef. Its signature afternoon tea will change with the seasons and reflect the best of Scottish produce. 

The Signet Library, in the centre of Edinburgh’s old town, was built in 1822 as the library of the prestigious Society of Writers to her Majesty’s Signet (also known as the WS Society), an association of Scottish lawyers and one of the oldest professional bodies in the world.

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Picture Credit: Guernsey July 2010 107 by Man vyi - Self-photographed. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons 

Fun in the forest

NATIONAL FOREST attractions and events this summer include:

Opening in July, the High Ropes course at Conkers is a dare-devil must with a 70ft zip wire; younger visitors can tackle the Low Ropes through ten different challenges.

This year's ten-acre maize maze at the National Forest Adventure Farm is a fiendishly intricate design of a giant JCB digger that will have visitors puzzling their way around three miles of paths, viewing towers, and bridges 

(July 11-September 6).

The Gibbon Forest at Twycross Zoo has four-moated islands and paths into the heart of the gibbon habitat. And there’s the Giraffe Savannah with a viewing platform to see world's tallest animals.

The National Forest Wood Fair (August 31) at Beacon Hill Country Park offers rural fun. See lumberjacks and chainsaw carvers in action, have a go at eco art or hitch a ride on a tree lift. 

The Mercia Marina at Willington is the largest inland marina in Europe … 24 acres of mood-enhancing lake.  There are countryside walks and boat trips, and a boardwalk promenade of boutiques. 

The Burton Real Ale and Jazz Festival (July 17–18) gets things swinging with a weekend featuring eight bands and a range of beers. 

The Strawberry Fields Festival at Heather (August 7–8) offers comedy, DJ sets and live and electronic music across five stages. 

www.nationalforest.org

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Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21042507@N00/519939222 >dalek, kaia, daniel</a> via <a href=http://photopin.com>photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/">(license)</a>, http://www.flickr.com/photos/95721592@N00/6108264152bear reaching for bee hive</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com>photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/">(license), </a>, http://www.flickr.com/photos/66239816@N08/16870889368 Mercia Marina</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>, http://www.flickr.com/photos/12568962@N00/12745946205">Gosport Beer Festival</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">(license)</a>