Gala Dinner at Castle Howard

After the VisitBritain conference on Friday we were invited to a Gala dinner. This was at our grandest of grand stately homes in the county, Castle Howard. Only 10 miles from us. I have visited the house on many an occasion and really like going when it is dressed for Christmas. This time we were very honoured to go to this Gala Dinner. Simon Howard was always a generous host to the tourism sector over the years. There was a canape reception followed by walking tour through state rooms to reach the Long Hall. Jack was as much impressed by the chateaubriand as he was with the beautiful paintings and portraits that adorn the walls. You can imagine how thrilled the foreign buyers were seeing such a house in all its glory. I loved the flowers that had been arrange by Kim Queen and were very British as one would expect in red,white and blue. Rachael Underwood had been working until very late to create a super evening -see the red ,white and blue colours lit up the Castle. Along corridors in each window candles in hurriance glasses lit the way. Peter Dodd gave an opening speech. As each course of food ended we welcomed another set of buyers to the table.So throughout the evening dined with Polish,Chinese,French and Belguim. The evening was ended by a display by ribbon actresses. My evening was complete when I handed around my calendars as guests boarded buses for their departure. A Danish journalist said he was very touched that a small business like myself had thought to do this and thought it very enterprising of me. And that it was good to see both large and small businesses working side by side to create this Yorkshire brand. Gary Verity might have been missing on this occasion as he was busy lambing.I am sure he would have been pleased with how Yorkshire pulled out the stops to make this a truly memorable night for people from across the globe. Gary we presume was teaching Mrs Verity to pull out the lambs.