We were about halfway up the hill when the 1950s gun bus carrying me and nine other guests across Guy Ritchie’s Wiltshire estate slowly stuttered to a halt. We had just finished the headline dinner of a weekend-long culinary retreat hosted by London restaurant Carousel, which invites acclaimed chefs to take over the director’s private countryside estate for intimate fire-cooked feasts. After dining beside a serene lake, we were being ferried back to our accommodation when our host, the delightful Rebeca, began wrestling with the antiquated transmission.
With each attempt to get her started, we rolled backwards before lurching to a halt. Mercifully, Rebeca gave up before we ended up back in the lake and we made the short walk back to our lodgings for a well-earned nightcap with an adventure to add to our unique weekend.
