No painting in the evenings...Le Tour en Angleterre Tour Food and Drink stages one to three

The Tour on the Embankment.  What is it about the British and mobile phone cameras?  You don't see it on the streets of France but maybe, given their tanking economy, they can't afford smartphones!

Well, no evening painting for nearly three weeks anyway. as the Legatus is glued to the Tour de France.  I record it during the day and watch it in the evening which does present a slight Likely Lads type risk during the day, as I endeavour not to find out the result.  For those not familiar with the British sitcom The Likely Lads our two heroes try not to find out the result of a football match so they can watch it on TV later.  It has been called the single greatest British TV comedy episode ever.

More importantly, I try to match appropriate food and drink to each stage.  I am rather surprised that no-one already does this for the Tour; not that I have been able to discover anyway.  The drinks matching always has holes in it due to non-wine regions or small ones where obtaining the wine is tricky.  Try and get a Savoie wine in a British supermarket and see how far you get, for example.  Still, its about getting a general atmosphere of the particular region.

This year we have five stages of beer to start with and for the two Yorkshire (didn't they do well?) stages we went for Golden Sheep from the Black Sheep Brewery in Masham, which the Tour actually passed through on stage 1.  Golden Sheep was originally produced just for Tesco's supermarket but now is on sale generally.  At 3.9% it is very light so won't induce sleep after several bottles during a long stage! 

In fact, on stage two I went for the Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Yorkshire bitter which is also made by the Black Sheep brewery and is a toffee flavoured delight, although a bit stronger at 5.0%.

On Monday I actually went up to the Embankment to watch the Tour tear past and, amazingly, didn't find out the result so was able to enjoy Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwin's typically rambling commentary when I got home.

Stage 3 saw a nice chocolatey London Porter from Fullers.  Appropriate as I had been in Leadenhall Market (formerly London's poultry market) earlier.

I need an appropriately English supper to accompany the Tour so I have been having a nice combination of pork pie, sausage and cheese (Wensleydale, of course) with wholegrain mustard, pickle and pickled onion.  The mustard is Wilkinson's Tiptree which is from Essex (Stage 3).  Unfortunately, both Tesco and Sainsbury's supermarkets only sell French wholegrain mustard (horrors!) so it was Waitrose to the rescue again.   Perfect!

More Tour food and drink soon!