The Log Cabin - Abridge Essex

The Log Cabin Café Abridge,

What an odd and surprising place. What appears to be a full North American mountain style log cabin. A lifesize carved Indian Squaw outside, full bear skins on the wall and what look like original bows and arrows and possibly still loaded real Winchester rifles, real, to scale, reminiscent of every old John Wayne or Clint Eastwood movie complete with a sort of mock Austrian sort of colonial lodge styled house next door. In amongst the English cottages, patches of woodland, small semis and the odd footballers or whizz kids mansion it looks incongruous, like  it’s been plucked from its home and dropped there, or a movie set.

It serves English traditional “ transport café”  food. So if you visit don’t expect anything else.  The menu looks like it hasn’t changed since the seventies and it probably hasn’t. They don’t feel like they have been wiped much since then either. But if it’s shiny you like or you are the kind of person that cleans your house with microban then you should probably not visit, lest the shock set your asthma off.

I ordered at the counter treating Friday night’s action to a full English fry up power boost and orange juice recharge. For our North American readers that’s  possibly not what you might expect as it doesn’t involve yoghurt or granola or anything remotely health based. Instead I was setting my system the challenge of a sustained assault of double fried eggs, sausages of uncertain pedigree, back bacon, heart-cloggingly fried  bread and baked beans all to be  washed down with proper builders tea and a separate glass of the aforementioned orange juice as my nod to modernity.

It’s bizarre though isn’t it, I mused, what’s an authentic log cabin doing here in a village that sits in leafy South Essex  London borders?

Sitting there though this Saturday morning at one of the solid single piece oak hewn tables that each sit eight people easily looking around and up at the full timber log  cabin construction around me, the totem pole standing tall outside and the bear and pony skins on the wall either side of the huge boulder built chimney breast I thought I’d like to find out. And then I saw him. I’ll bet he built it I thought, I wonder why?

The man came from the kitchen out back with a couple of mugs of tea and sat with his mates for a minute. Slim build, mid sixties, craggy faced from a lot of outdoors.  He stood again and as he passed I asked him the question.

Ron, as it turned out ended up with the café years and years ago, never intended to. He was  a builder by origins. Ron explained that he thought if he was going to have a café then he really didn’t want a “plaster and paint job” no Ron explained, “he liked to keep busy” Likes problems or new things as they give you things to do or solve.  So he’d thought for some time and decided to build it into a log cabin, “authentic materials, construction, the real thing”. But why a log cabin Ron? Why not an American diner or an Australian outback cattle ranch or even a spaceship Ron?” I don’t know he said “ I can’t remember. I enjoyed doing it though, it took months and months of work I did it all myself, I used to be a carpenter” He paused for a moment and I smiled. He said “I’ll tell you what though, being as you seem alright and I don’t mind you knowing” I nodded and leaned in a little.

“What people really want to know” said Ron, “when they find out” he said as he fixed me with an interesting and friendly smile,” is why I built the lake.”

“The lake? What lake Ron?” I replied.

“The one I built on the land at the back. I’ll show if you like, another day. That took me seventeen or eighteen years. People wonder about that.  Its over 14 feet deep, it’s a proper lake, a big one”

I paused for a second and said “I’d like that, I’ll come and see it, I’ll bring Jenny”  He said “Do, just ask for Ron, I’m usually around, better when it’s not raining though, it’s nicer”

So Jenny and I have an invite from Ron to visit his lake. Which he built all by himself, by hand after he turned a little part of Abridge into the Great North American West. With builders tea and a proper fry up for afters. We'll take some photo's for you.

It’s a funny place is Essex. 

Duck Sauce – Barbara Streisand, dontcha just love life?