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Times
25-06-2025
- Sport
- Times
Sculthorpe Mill review: ‘You could just charge people to stand here'
I am not a massive one for getting out of London to review restaurants, as you may have noticed. To be honest, as a restaurant critic, it just feels silly getting on a train to leave the place where all the restaurants are, to go to one of the places where they aren't. But I tell you what I am a massive one for getting out of London for: U12 cricket matches in which my son is playing. I grew this boy specially, you see, and led him to the various wellsprings of cricketing beauty, to Lord's and the Oval, to my own back garden and to North London Cricket Club in Highgate, from the age of two or three onwards, and encouraged him to drink deeply, in order that he should grow into a leg spinner of great guile and cunning, so that I would have something to sit and watch with a pint in my old age, from the shade of a creaking oak tree. Most of his cricket for school and club is played around north London, but he is also a regular for the London Schools Cricket Association under-12s, which plays against most of the counties within what is considered viable reach of London. When they played Northamptonshire a couple of Sundays ago, it was just about feasible to drive him there and back on the day. But last weekend they played Norfolk, right up by the coast, with a 10am meet time. That's two hours forty with a prevailing wind and no accidents. So the only option was to stay over the night before, ideally somewhere cute with a restaurant I could review, thereby clawing back some of the immense cost of doing my bit to safeguard the future of England's summer sport. Sam and I have had good and bad luck in the past. He remembers very fondly the Artist Residence in Bristol where we stayed for the Gloucestershire match last year: beautiful room, huge bed, magnificent roll-top bath, epic cheeseburger, and his first uninterrupted eight-over spell the following morning (beating the bat repeatedly, for a creditable one for 22 during a brutal run chase). Less fondly a place called the Grim's Dyke Hotel, with its hot little room, creaking floorboards, janky service and evil 1970s Birds Eye-style beefburger. 'I'm never staying in a hotel with 'grim' in its name again, Dad. We should have known.' But for the Norfolk game, I found a place right out of the wildest dreams of the city dweller. Or, rather, Esther did, thanks to a local friend. Because she had decided that she and Kitty might as well come with us. Not to the match, heaven forefend. But to Norfolk, to the gorgeous old pub with rooms, and then to Holkham Hall and Burnham Market and Blakeney Point to see the seals, while the menfolk did what menfolk do. We picked up Sam from his school match on Saturday afternoon (in summer, he is never not playing cricket) and drove straight out from there, two and a half hours, no traffic dramas, and arrived in an Eden I had not anticipated. Sculthorpe Mill comes upon you, gratifyingly, a few miles short of the heaving holiday zone of Cley and Wells and the Burnhams. You turn off the A148 down a narrow lane between seething hedgerows and after a few hundred yards hit the prettiest dead end you'll ever come across: a flint rubble and red-brick mill with a Norfolk pantile roof, which was built in 1757, turned into a pub in the 19th century and then taken over in 2021 by Siobhan and Caitriona Peyton, who reopened it this time last year after a redesign by Shaun Clarkson. (The sisters have got some previous, having opened the famous Atlantic Bar & Grill in London and a number of other places with their better known brother, Oliver.) The easterly aspect at that point in the late afternoon was shady and cool, squeaky with history and flickering with bees. But out back a sunlit garden shone green as goblins and there was the sound of water lapping all around us. Inside, a handsome young lad called Joe checked us in from behind the low-beamed bar while pulling a punter's pint and then showed us to our rooms, which were high up in the mazy rafters. (I paid for these myself, don't worry; you'll only be billed for my supper, as usual.) Room 1 had a huge double bed and sofa and could easily take a less fussy family of four, but we took room 4 as well: smaller bed, smaller everything, but cooler, and with a view down onto a lush lawn with the River Wensum running both sides of it, trimmed with willow, lined with picnic tables, children, people playing quoits … 'Drinks in the garden, now!' I cried, and down we went, and stayed for the next six hours. Barefoot with my toes in the grass, I drank delicious light, airy pints of Oaks amber bitter from the Barsham Brewery, with a sausage roll, Esther drank lager, the kids played Jenga and quoits and paddled and drank Sculthorpe's own 'Made at the Mill' lemonade, and our friends Adam and Gay from Cley (it doesn't rhyme, thank God, because Cley rhymes with 'eye'), who had pointed us towards this place, came to drink with us too. Then we moved to a terrace with lovely iron furniture, orange tulips on marble-topped tables, honeysuckle climbing the pergola, and were served by eager young local girls and a super manager. We drank just a couple of glasses of light, dry Château Beaulieu rosé from Provence (a lot of cricket watching and driving to do the next day), with Marsh Pig coppa and curls of Norfolk Dapple, house pickles and truffled honey; salad of white Cromer crab, fresh bitter leaves from a local organic salad grower called Charlie, and little segments of grapefruit; and puffy warm flatbread with a reddish, cumin-scented hummus, shards of Granny Smith and walnuts. There was a barbecue going on and the scent of local Dexter beefburgers charring on the fire was all around us, but they were not being served in the posh bit, where we were. There was a burger on the kids' menu, but that wasn't going to be big enough for Sam or Kitty, and when the manager said he could make it bigger for them, it's possible that was his way round bringing them the verboten barbecue burger, or maybe he just had a magic wand. But I'm so glad he did, for the burger was a historic one. 'The best I've ever had,' said Sam. For only the 700th time in his eight-year burger-eating career. Can I pause here to remind you that we were sitting by a low stone wall, right by the roaring river, where it emerges from under the bar (where the mill wheel must have been) into verdant, flower-filled banks, looking across immaculate mature borders towards giant English deciduous trees, silhouetted by the sun going down over the 200-acre Sculthorpe Moor Nature Reserve of the Hawk and Owl Trust … I mean, you wouldn't have to serve such good food if you didn't want to. You could just charge people to stand here. But it's more fun with a juicy pork rib eye and roasted peaches (sounds a bit suburban, a bit 1980s, but it works beautifully) with romesco and a sherry dressing; and a golden-edged fillet of halibut with a crisp potato confit, double-shelled broad beans and cherry tomatoes. And then a wonderfully rustic tarte tatin, perfectly made in what I'd call the 'Norfolk fashion' with chunky quarters of apple in deep, mouth-coating pastry rampant with burnt treacly flavours, not mimsy slices of fruit fanned out like a ladies knicker display, the way they do in France. Sam and I shared the smaller, cooler room (if I sleep with Esther in a lovely place like this, I worry she'll come over all smoochy, so she goes in with Kitty), but before lights out he went to stand on the fire escape off the main corridor and look out across the nature reserve in the late dusk. 'It reminds me of Botswana,' he said. Which tells you not only how magically peaceful this place is, but that I might, just possibly, have spoilt my children. Luckily, however, the Norfolk U12s served London Schools' arses to them on a plate the following day, so he came back to earth with a bump.
Times
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Sculthorpe Mill review: ‘You could just charge folk to stand here'
I am not a massive one for getting out of London to review restaurants, as you may have noticed. To be honest, as a restaurant critic, it just feels silly getting on a train to leave the place where all the restaurants are, to go to one of the places where they aren't. But I tell you what I am a massive one for getting out of London for: U12 cricket matches in which my son is playing. I grew this boy specially, you see, and led him to the various wellsprings of cricketing beauty, to Lord's and the Oval, to my own back garden and to North London Cricket Club in Highgate, from the age of two or three onwards, and encouraged him to drink deeply, in order that he should grow into a leg spinner of great guile and cunning, so that I would have something to sit and watch with a pint in my old age, from the shade of a creaking oak tree.
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First Post
27-05-2025
- Sport
- First Post
Chasing 427, England cricket side loses 10 wickets for 2 runs — including a wide
English club cricket side Richmond's fourth XI suffered one of the biggest collapses ever as their 10 batters got out for a duck in a chase of 427. read more In what may rank among cricket's most spectacular batting calamities, Richmond's fourth XI were dismissed for a grand total of two runs on Saturday – only one of which they actually scored themselves. Chasing a mountainous target of 427, Richmond's hapless batsmen lasted a mere 5.4 overs before their innings concluded in what statisticians might generously describe as a collapse. North London Cricket Club had earlier pummelled Richmond's bowling attack to all corners of the ground in the Middlesex County League fixture, amassing a mammoth 426-6 from their allotted 45 overs after Richmond won the toss. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD What followed was cricketing carnage of the highest order. Eight of Richmond's ten batsmen trudged back to the pavilion without troubling the scorers, each dismissed for a duck. The scorecard showed just one solitary run from the bat, with the other coming courtesy of a wide delivery. The performance brings to mind the old cricket adage that batting is meant to be an occupation, not a visitation. 'A lot of context but still not a result that we are proud of! Our 2's, 3's and 5's all won though,' Richmond posted on social media platform X, attempting to salvage some pride from a weekend otherwise remembered for arithmetic rarely seen on cricket scoresheets.
Time of India
27-05-2025
- Sport
- Time of India
A club cricket team in UK chasing 427 gets bowled out for 2 runs
Richmond Cricket Club's fourth XI suffered an unprecedented batting collapse, scoring a mere 2 runs against North London Cricket Club in a Middlesex County League match. Chasing a daunting target of 427, Richmond's innings lasted only 34 deliveries, including eight ducks and a single run scored off the bat. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads In what can only be described as a complete cricketing collapse, UK's Richmond Cricket Club 's fourth XI were bowled out for just 2 runs — yes, two — on Saturday in a Middlesex County League match, chasing a target of 427 set by North London Cricket Club The game began like any ordinary fixture, with Richmond winning the toss and opting to field. But what followed was anything but ordinary. North London's batters unleashed a relentless assault, smashing 426 for 6 in 45 overs and sending balls to every corner of the came the chase. Or, more accurately, the batters faced just 34 deliveries before the innings came to a shocking halt at 2. Not a single boundary was scored. Only one run came off the bat. The second was a wide. The rest was followed by eight ducks and then stunned might file this under 'record lows', but for Richmond, it was a lesson in cricket's cruel extremes. The club later tried to find humour in disaster, posting on X: "A lot of context but still not a result that we are proud of! Our 2's, 3's and 5's all won though."Still, this remains one of the most staggering batting collapses seen in amateur cricket — a reminder that in cricket, you're never really in until you're in.
Sydney Morning Herald
27-05-2025
- Sport
- Sydney Morning Herald
Adam Gilchrist's former club side concedes 426 and is bowled out for two
London: When the captain of Richmond's fourth XI won the toss and invited North London Cricket Club's third XI to bat first on Saturday, he was not envisioning a 424-run defeat that would end with his team bowled out for just two in one of the most one-sided games of cricket ever. For North London's captain Tom Spawton, it proved a great toss to lose. Playing in Division One of the Third Tier of the Middlesex League, his side, racked up a formidable 426 for six in their 45 overs, then promptly bowled Richmond out for just two in the space of 34 balls. Spawton, though, was left wondering if it could have been even better. 'One of the two runs was a wide, the other was a dropped catch at slip,' he told Talksport radio station. 'We came away from the game thinking that we could have realistically bowled them out for zero.' It was, according to Steve Deakin, Richmond's deputy chairman and head of cricket, the 'perfect storm'. The London club has a rich and proud history, dating back to 1862, and counts the great Australian wicketkeeper-batsman Adam Gilchrist among its former players. But over the bank holiday weekend, they faced an unprecedented availability crisis, leading to fielding weakened sides containing players who do not usually play cricket, let alone for the club, including inexperienced teenagers. 'Our availability this week was really bad,' he said. 'We had about 40 players unavailable across our five men's teams. We were struggling already, then had seven dropouts over Thursday and Friday. That trickles down and affects the fourths. The captains were calling friends of friends of friends just to get our teams on the pitch.' Spawton realised before the game had even started that a win could be on the cards for his team, based on the opposition's introductions and attire. 'They struggled to get a team together, what with it being a bank holiday,' he said. 'There were a few lads saying 'nice to meet you' [to each other] before the game. There were a couple of lads wearing black trainers, which is a good sign [that they do not play often].'
