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Tres Corazones, Wendover

 


As we had some good friends staying with us for a short visit, we spent the day visiting first the windmill at Pitstone and then Ascott, both owned and maintained by National Trust. The Trust describes the mill as 'a rare and striking example of an early form of post mill'. It is set on arable land near to the pretty village of Ivinghoe and can be viewed against a backdrop of that village's eponymous Beacon, the hill marking the eastern end of the Ridgeway long-distance path which is one of England's oldest extant highways. It is a lovely icon of historic England.

Whilst charming, the mill was not our principal destination for the day as we moved on to Ascott, near to the Buckinghamshire village of Wing. The house there dated from 1606 as a farm house, but had been developed over the centuries by one branch of the Rothschild family who still have use of the estate as required.

Set in beautiful grounds, it holds a varied collection of paintings, furniture and porcelain together with a library of books that would take many years of wet afternoons to catalogue, let alone read.

We were fortunate enough to visit on a day when the manager of the collection was available to give us guided tours of both the house and grounds. An excellent excursion.

To top the day off, we had booked an early evening table at Tres Corazones in Wendover.

This is a local gem serving tapas dishes and a good range of all the usual drinks. We ordered a small dish of roasted almonds and another of chorizo bites and crispy breadsticks to share whilst choosing the dishes that would make up our meal. We agreed to select three dishes each plus a double helping of patatas bravas which are, in my opinion, obligatory.

There was one other duplication, the excellent smoked haddock, but the remaining ten dishes provided a very wide range of flavours and textures including: meat balls, croquettes, pork belly, salads, sardines, oxtail, chickpeas and roasted aubergine. It was only the last of these that underwhelmed although the unavailablity of the crema Catalana was disappointing. The disappointment was alleviated, to some extent, by the option of churros with warm chocolate sauce.

This was not our first visit and it will not have been our last, however, next time we may limit choices to two and a half dishes each, or forgo the churros!


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