... 'Spoons, Pentargon and I go back to the early days of my adventures. I became familiar with canal-side-fine-dining during the "Ten Canal Days" Pentargon and I spent in Hillmorton from February to May in 2012 and which you can read about elsewhere ... (Try "Canal-Time")
'Spoons in Rugby is adjacent to a very fine library. 'Adjacent' was a fine "leisure centre" where I dallied luxuriantly in steam rooms and saunas to ease the aches of research or quenched my thirsts for knowledge and ale in the Rupert Brooke.
There is a library in Daventry and a Waitrose and a 'Spoons ... see The Saracen's Head. Elsewhere you can read "Mapping My Village" and how such disparate entities as 'Spoons and Libraries and Waitrose link together in the Muddy Brown Water Grand Scheme of Things.
This article gives me a chance to mention Wetherspoons in a canal context. The chain began serving breakfasts in 2005 and by 2012 when Pentargon came onto inland waterways it had opened a continuous chain of canal locations where one could get a good morning start often five minutes walk from the mooring. The word was out on the cut ... 'Spoon up in the morning ...
Late in 2012, I left the Midlands for London and during a two month descent found 'Spoons by actively looking for them usually in the vicinity of a library and/or a Waitrose.
Libraries I could always find; I had joined Northampton early on to use the internet at Rugby and Daventry. Later Bucks. and Herts. library cards were added and a list of 'Spoons and Waitrose locations along the Grand Union was duly prepared.
The most fascinating 'Spoon' for me in terms of history has to be Bletchley, intriguingly named Captain Ridley's Shooting Party, where I boned up up on the Enigma Code, glowing valves , Tommy Flowers, Colossus and, of course, the much maligned genius Alan Turing.
It was here or hereabouts I realized that 'Spoons is a trove of local English history. The chain would become my go-to source of primary local history evidence nailed to the walls in texts, pictures and artefacts. The ten-minute wait twixt order and delivery would become a game of how much I could glean by speed-reading the walls of the day's establishment before laying into a Traditional English with black pudding or an extra egg.
2021 update Spoons no longer serve black pudding! Breakfast without Boudin is a contradiction in history. English yeomen have eaten black pudding as a staple since it was introduced by the Normans and possibly much earlier.
2022 update: The black pudding has returned to the menu but that does not mean they actually have it. The Kentish Drovers in Peckham had none on 29th March 2022.
In 2013 my first [attempted] circuit of England brought me back up the Grand Union to Braunston and on through Warwickshire and Oxfordshire where I found Spoons in Banbury and Oxford. As a result I know why the fine lady rode a cock-horse to Banbury Cross and where the Bodleian library is.
'Spoons in Rugby is adjacent to a very fine library. 'Adjacent' was a fine "leisure centre" where I dallied luxuriantly in steam rooms and saunas to ease the aches of research or quenched my thirsts for knowledge and ale in the Rupert Brooke.
There is a library in Daventry and a Waitrose and a 'Spoons ... see The Saracen's Head. Elsewhere you can read "Mapping My Village" and how such disparate entities as 'Spoons and Libraries and Waitrose link together in the Muddy Brown Water Grand Scheme of Things.
This article gives me a chance to mention Wetherspoons in a canal context. The chain began serving breakfasts in 2005 and by 2012 when Pentargon came onto inland waterways it had opened a continuous chain of canal locations where one could get a good morning start often five minutes walk from the mooring. The word was out on the cut ... 'Spoon up in the morning ...
Late in 2012, I left the Midlands for London and during a two month descent found 'Spoons by actively looking for them usually in the vicinity of a library and/or a Waitrose.
Libraries I could always find; I had joined Northampton early on to use the internet at Rugby and Daventry. Later Bucks. and Herts. library cards were added and a list of 'Spoons and Waitrose locations along the Grand Union was duly prepared.
The most fascinating 'Spoon' for me in terms of history has to be Bletchley, intriguingly named Captain Ridley's Shooting Party, where I boned up up on the Enigma Code, glowing valves , Tommy Flowers, Colossus and, of course, the much maligned genius Alan Turing.
It was here or hereabouts I realized that 'Spoons is a trove of local English history. The chain would become my go-to source of primary local history evidence nailed to the walls in texts, pictures and artefacts. The ten-minute wait twixt order and delivery would become a game of how much I could glean by speed-reading the walls of the day's establishment before laying into a Traditional English with black pudding or an extra egg.
2021 update Spoons no longer serve black pudding! Breakfast without Boudin is a contradiction in history. English yeomen have eaten black pudding as a staple since it was introduced by the Normans and possibly much earlier.
2022 update: The black pudding has returned to the menu but that does not mean they actually have it. The Kentish Drovers in Peckham had none on 29th March 2022.
In 2013 my first [attempted] circuit of England brought me back up the Grand Union to Braunston and on through Warwickshire and Oxfordshire where I found Spoons in Banbury and Oxford. As a result I know why the fine lady rode a cock-horse to Banbury Cross and where the Bodleian library is.
