More please Westmorland!

Yep, I've had a rather long break from blogging, I was getting bored and it was feeling like a chore.  I wasn't inspired anymore.  Plus, with a plethora of instagrammers and Facebook foodies to contend with I no longer felt special, my voice was being drowned out in the clamour.  Recently though, with the days growing mercifully longer and lighter, I have once more felt the urge to write about food.  My appetites have been stimulated writing a number of reviews for the Nottingham and Derbyshire Food & Drink Guides.  In the last few months I've eaten at venues as diverse as the Derby Casino, the Ostrich in Longford, A Thai restaurant in Burton and a pub in Nuthall where I sampled a fabulous venison carpaccio and got insulted by the bar staff. (Reviews to follow once the guides have been published!)

I'm glad to be back and will continue in the vein in which I left off, by telling you about anything that inspires or excites me in the world of food and drink.  This week it isn't a recipe or a restaurant but a motorway services on the M6. 

Services suck.  You know what to expect; overpriced Costa Coffee, Krispy Kreme donuts and the horror that is Scotch egg bars (one of these once fuelled me for an entire weekend in Scotland, but that is another story.)

Between Junction 38 and 39 of the M6, near the Cumbrian village of Tebay, you will find a services with a difference.  Westmorland services is the only independently owned and run services in the country and boy, does it show.  We stopped on the way up to Scotland last week for a very impressive breakfast.

We Marvelled at the pleasant, airy canteen space, and ate looking out onto a duck pond.  We used the clean, pleasant toilets, which have showers, a make up area in the ladies and vases full of fresh lilies.  Best of all is the shop.  Not a Scotch egg bar or Rustlers burger in sight, this is one of the best farm shops I've had the pleasure of setting foot in.  Mining a rich vein of local Cumbrian produce, as well as niche groceries from further afield, it has a butcher's counter to die for and rows and rows of homemade pies.  We left laden with organic duck eggs, pheasant sausages and rosemary jelly.

I am almost looking forward to my next slog up the M6 if it means we get to stop here, and I'd thoroughly recommend you make it a pit stop.  We even saw a duck getting on a coach.  Word.

http://www.westmorland.com/tebay-services