The Wellington Inn

... I was determined to get out of the house – I didn’t care where; all I knew was it had to be the opposite of the city. I wanted a drive, sunshine, English country air and, most importantly, a pub at the end of it. The week at work had been draining and dull; I wanted to feel good again.

We’ve all been here. Some of us have our favourite places to go; I know I do. It was onto one of those places once that we passed The Wellington Inn, which sits proudly nestled in Darley, just near Harrogate. I made a mental note. It looked good, and the carpark was packed - an excellent sign.

So it was with fierce Yorkshire determination that we headed out, through a couple of snowstorms (I’m not making this up), to sample what The Wellington had to offer. For the record, we're glad we did.

This is the kind of place you dream of stumbling across. I'm talking ‘Old English’ pub-style here – the roaring fire that greets you is huge and angry, the beers on offer are well-kept favourites and the place is full, but not too full, of smiling, red-faced locals.

We took our seat near the aforementioned fire, and spent the next ten minutes reading the food-boards. It takes that long. Every taste is catered for; it’s a huge menu that serves both the general dining area and the restaurant toward the back of the pub. I plumped for a roast belly of pork on red cabbage and my partner for a simple sausage sandwhich with onion marmalade.

The pork, a burnished slab of juicy meat, was just enough to fill; tender, sweet and sticky, with a good amount of crackling. The red cabbage it lay upon only enhanced the dish with a sharper jamminess. Wonderful. The sausages were good also, real and with a good, porky taste that we all know can be so woefully absent from sausages these days.

All the meat and produce on the menu is sourced locally, and this was evident in the quality. Talk about ‘food miles’ all you want – the meat on my plate probably only travelled a matter of yards to the kitchen here!

This, my friends, was a real good Sunday lunch. A dessert of espresso-flavoured crème brulee rounded the meal off on a note that little bit higher than your usual Sunday-pub-lunch fare;
add to this the most helpful and genuinely happy staff that i have encountered and you have a real pearl in the Yorkshire countryside.

The Wellington Inn

Darley, Harrogate

North Yorkshire

HG3 2QQ

Telephone: (01423) 780362

www.wellington-inn.co.uk