I have a notion that when my children have left home my husband and I will organise our holidays around Michelin stars and, while self-catering somewhere beautiful, will treat ourselves to memorable meals in charming dining rooms with bread waiters.
One day our three daughters may even club together and for some significant anniversary offer us a meal for two at The Fat Duck Restaurant, of Heston Blumenthal fame, or an equivalent to El Bulli in Spain, depending on their earning power.
The likelihood is somewhat cloudy at present, given the ages of our trio: three, one and one. There have been many times in the last year when I would have gladly taken a pill containing the required number of calories instead of cooking while looking after the babies and my toddler. (This is a round Masterchef should consider – cooking does not get tougher than this.) So, for now – grandparents willing – I am elated at the chance of a foodie break somewhat closer to home. The plan: to go to Perthshire for two nights and enjoy the food grown and nurtured there.
It doesn't start brilliantly with a burned panini in a sullen-service cafe, saved by a cheery chef who offers my husband an extra egg with his mixed grill. But we are soon out the door and weaving our way to Heather Hills Farm at Bridge of Cally which specialises in honey.
There we pull up at a work-in-progress visitors centre which gives me, somewhat falsely, the sense of having discovered something different ahead of the game. This is the entrance to a mini honey plant where the produce of 52 million bees is prepared for sale in Sainsbury's, Waitrose, and Asda not to mention Japan and Germany.
Think that you are not much of a honey fan? Then let Heather Hills' staff scoop a little of their different varieties onto the end of some tasting sticks and you will probably change your mind. The bees split their year between the rapeseed fields and the soft fruit farms which edge Blairgowrie and the eponymous heather. We are taken to see some hives hunkered down in a muddy corner by some polytunnels. Here in the spring the bees will feed on the flowers making what becomes pale Scottish Blossom honey.
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