Friday, December 19, 2008

Christmas lunch!


Today we had our work Christmas lunch at the Falmouth Hotel. This was Falmouth's first hotel and was built in 1863. "In 1850, the Post Office Station at Falmouth had closed down and the loss of a substantial source of trade and income had an adverse effect on the life of the town. Facing a bleak future, local businessmen set about exploring new avenues to restore prosperity. With Falmouth's magnificent harbour and its geographical position as the first port in the kingdom, they decided to form a company to build and operate a dockyard complex. Together with other influential people they had already created the Cornwall Railway Company and were building a line that would eventually link up with the Great Western Railway at Plymouth and thus the national network. They formed yet another company to build a large hotel. On August 6 1863, the foundation stone of The Falmouth Hotel was laid by Robert Tweedy, the first Chairman of The Falmouth Hotel Company Limited. Twenty-one months later, he was joined by 70 distinguished guests at a grand dinner to celebrate the opening of Falmouth's very first hotel."
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History is fascinating! I remember as a child that the railway line ran straight through from Paddington, London to Falmouth and it was exciting to come down by train in those days. Now the line stops at Truro and one has to change to a small branch line. Thank you Dr Beeching!
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It is still an imposing hotel and the ballroom where we had our meal was festively decorated. We had our works do here last year as well because it is one of the few places that has a room large enough to accommodate us all!

The food was good and I was pleased with my choices. I started with a prawn concoction which was delicious.


Followed by a typical Christmas main course of turkey with all the trimmings. The roast potatoes were superb! Between the starter and the main course we had a small pot of gooseberry sorbet which was lovely. I could have eaten a lot more of it! I did think that it would have been better between the main course and the dessert to refresh the palate but it was good anyway.


And the dessert was so much better than it looked. It was raspberry cream brulee with a shortbread biscuit and it was out of this world wonderful. Very creamy! I didn't eat the fruit garnish as eating one of these while holidaying in Bath I spent the rest of my holiday getting to know all the loos intimately! I was sooooo sick! So it has put me off these fruits for ever!



It was a very grey day and I think we are probably in for some high winds as there were a number of boats sheltering in the bay including a small tug which was all lit up like a Christmas tree. (the boat to the left in the picture)


All in all a lovely outing and great fun with lots of laughs! I actually one a prize in the raffle. I don't think I have ever won a prize before in a raffle so this was a first!
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There are no pictures of quilty stuff as everything I've been doing has been for presents but after Christmas I will put some pictures up. I have finished everything and it has all been wrapped and posted. I am feeling very virtuous and after the manic activity of the past few weeks it's a real anti-climax but at least I can now read some books. I had ten books out of the library and it was a real effort not to read them! But I restrained myself and got stuck in to the sewing! I'm good at working under pressure and I managed to stick to the time-table lists of things to do exactly which was very pleasing. It's always good to be able to tick things off. Such a sense of achievement!

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