[Sample Post] Breakfast at the window table

The window table seats two and faces the valley, and it is booked by the guests who were here last year before it is offered to anyone else. This is not a policy. It is what happens when people write in January asking for it.

What is on the table

Bread from the village oven, which is lit at four and sends a boy up with the loaves at half past six. Butter from the farm below the inn, which you can see from the table. Jam from our own orchard, apricot in summer and plum in autumn. Eggs from the neighbour, whose hens are the noise you heard at six. Coffee we roast ourselves, in a drum in the woodshed, badly at first and adequately now.

What is not

Anything that came up the valley in a lorry, as far as we can manage it. There is no orange juice, because there are no oranges within two hundred miles. There is apple juice, pressed in October and kept in the cold store, which is better anyway.

The window

It faces east, so the table is in sun from the moment the sun clears the ridge until about ten. In winter the sun is low enough to reach the far wall. The view is the valley, the river, the village roofs and, on a clear day, the pass road climbing out of the far side in hairpins.

How to get the table

Ask when you book, and ask early. Failing that, come down at half past seven: the couple who have it usually leave for the lake by then, and the table is free until nine.

What we will do differently

A second window table. The carpenter is coming in April, and the room will lose the sideboard nobody uses to make space for it.