I have been really remiss in not being specific about the source of all the cheese that's given us so much pleasure over the last few months. So I'll now put that right.

It comes from Goddard and Page:


A quick round-up of recent delights:

Golden Cenarth was billed as being a bit stinky, and we did feel it was wise to keep it confined to a box, given we're in a shared household. But there's nothing excessive about it:




Also from Wales, but with a bit of a travel story, was the very flavourful Gorwydd Caerphilly (the one in the picture at the top). It was originally made near Llanddewi Brefi in the Teifi Valley, but the cheese-makers subsequently moved to north Somerset, and carried on producing it there. There's actually nothing new about that geographic connection: "Despite being considered a Welsh cheese, Caerphilly has a long history of being made in the West Country; the recipe used for Gorwydd was originally used for cheesemaking in Somerset at the beginning of the 20th century."

And out of another Celtic area, all green and nettle-wrapped, comes Cornish Yarg: "The leaves, which attract naturally occurring moulds, are brushed onto the cheese in concentric circles. As the cheese matures, the edible wrap imparts a delicate, mushroomy taste and develops its unique bloomy white appearance."


Closer to home, we have Colston Bassett Blue Stilton, and the only reason we haven't visited this village is that I didn't know its proximity to Newark until just the other day. Never mind, clearly the goal of a cheesy expedition in the future.


But not in the immediate future, because we're about to set out for the Isle of Man...

So, just to pull us full circle, our last lactic hero comes from near Preston, ie near Heysham, from which port we'll be sailing. It's Mrs Kirkham's Lancashire:


After one particularly complex round of cheese-purchasing -- considering lots, as always, but choosing fewer, because, well, you can't eat everything -- I ended up not being able to identify one of the ones we brought home. I remembered a Mrs Kirkham label, but surely this wasn't Lancashire... Wasn't Lancashire much lighter and more crumbly...? On our next visit, I explained my perplexity to the cheese man, who promptly cut us a couple of pieces off the Mrs Kirkham block. "Was it this?" he asked. And it was... So we bought some more...

Apparently, "the cheese is made to the 2-day curd recipe, using the curds from the evening milking and the following morning's milking to make an incredibly rich cheese... After production the cheeses are ‘buttered up’ and cloth bound, then aged for at least 3 months... This is the more traditional form of Lancashire cheeses than the Crumbly which was produced by more modern dairies as a way to speed up the ageing process, and produces a drier, more tart cheese."

Anyway, I'm sure there'll be cheese on the Isle of Man. And of course we're planning to be back in Newark and/or environs before we eventually set off back to Malaysia.

Nevertheless, this bit of our trip is over. Which is sad, as we've really enjoyed it (and definitely not only because of the cheese).

Yesterday, nicely insulated from the kerfuffle of packing that engulfed us today, we all celebrated our stay with Christmas Dinner Mark 3 (only this time we ate it in front of the Winter Olympics). As excellent as ever, and it was good to round off festively.

Tomorrow we'll set off towards my homeland, which I haven't seen since 2018.