Guy Fawkes

Young’s Hotel, which used to provide a mean lunch­time curry back in the 70s, served by two ancient women, pos­sibly twins, who stomped about the place from kit­chen to table com­plain­ing loudly about cus­tom­ers and their own poor feet, has trans­formed itself into the Guy Fawkes Hotel.  It has long claimed to be on the site of GF’s birth, though this has been dis­puted, but only by a hun­dred yards or so.  It now has some cosy drink­ing rooms, a real fire or two, and a good selec­tion of real ales.  Rudgates Vik­ing was good on our visit.  The lunch­time menu had some vari­ety also — I had fag­gots for the first time, which in this instance clearly included liver. As I had never had fag­gots before, I can’t tell you where they were on a scale of 1–10, as fag­gots go, but they were very accept­able, espe­cially with mushy peas.  I can’t remem­ber if GF was burned or hung, but I hope fag­gots weren’t involved.