It must must have been a first. Whoever heard of a mouse eating a squirrel? I didn't set out to boldly go where no rodent had before, but the lure of the pâté-gently spiced and served with fennel and homebaked-sourdough toast- proved impossible to resist. I was in Notting Hill, seeing the shooting season out in style. The Ark, that Tardis-like restaurant at the top of Kensington Park Road, has been reborn as The Shed, a little piece of rus in urbe complete with corrugated iron and tractor parts.
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Its co-owners, Richard and Oliver Gladwin, come from a farming family and had thrown their weight behind the Countryside Alliance's Game to Eat campaign with a special end-of-season menu. Diners perched on seats half-inched from John Deeres, sipping Sussex Reserve (the Gladwins have a vineyard back in Nutbourne) with their wood-pigeon salad. The squirrel was just the start of it: every course (or ‘drive', as per the menu) was a delight. Pheasant bullshot, rabbit cutlet with wood sorrel, meltingly tender venison -this was game to conjure with.
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Everything you need to know about private jet travel and 10 rules to fly byDespite the monetary and environmental cost, the UK can now claim to be the private jet capital of Europe.
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'I'd willingly give a year of my life for a fortnight there': The green dream that is the garden of DerreenExotic woods, labyrinths of narrow, mossy paths and thousands of tree ferns make this an internationally important garden, writes Charles Quest-Ritson. Photographs by Jonathan Hession.
