Im off work this week, and while I'll be spending most of the time catching up on things that probably should have been done weeks ago, we thought we should probably have a bit of a day out too. There are lots of touristy places around here, but we wanted one we hadn't been to before, and we also wanted a cafe with a view, as the sky was looking rather grey. When we moved we switched our old wildlife trust membership to our new local one, Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, so we thought we'd investigate one of their visitor centres. We walked round the lake first, and through a little maze. Eventually we made it into the cafe, and I confess the food wasn't great but the view was cheery and we stayed for a while before wandering around the local market town. I'm not sure it'll become a favourite haunt. It's a bit too far away, and the cafe wasn't good enough to tempt us through quite an industrial drive too often. But it's good to investigate these places, and now we can get on with ticking off all the other local Wildlife Trust reserves (which reminds me that I never did finish the ones in our old wildlife trust...)
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The local lanes are lined with bilberries. We've been watching them ripen over the last few weeks and in early July we finally got round to picking some. Bilberries are tiny, and they don't really taste very nice raw. It takes a long time to pick a worthwhile crop. But it's a pleasant evening's work pottering up and down the lanes in the sunshine, and it gave us a chance to inspect some of our dry stone walls. Eventually we picked a couple of tubs full and headed home. This lot went into the freezer, and then into a couple of batches of scones, which I seem to have neglected to take photos of.
Next up is blackberries, and I've already spotted a few ripe ones while out running, so I must pop down the field and check ours at the weekend. There's something cheery about eating food that just grows without being planted. We've had two lots of visitors this week - a friend on Wednesday and my mum this weekend. A good job really, as my ongoing list of Things That Need Doing was getting rather long. Fortunately both visitors were willing volunteers, and between us all we've managed to get a few more plants out of the greenhouse. I'm not digging the beds - just scything the grass, lifting the very top layer of tangled roots with a pick axe, and then loosening the roots before digging a small hole and planting into compost. It's a reasonable compromise as it's too late for no dig this year without buying in a load of compost (which I'd rather not do). We've had some wildlife visitors this week too, starting with a bird that flew into the window and sadly died. It's not the first we've had (although the last one survived) so we do need to investigate how to stop it. The second visitor happily didn't crash into anything - it was just basking in the sunshine on a blanket in the living room. I've never seen a lizard before so this was quite exciting. Our third interesting wildlife experience this week was a buzzard, perched on a fence post, with two crows either side of it. We often see buzzards round here, and I've seen them being mobbed by crows, but never sitting this close to them. You'll have to excuse the rubbish picture - my camera isn't great for far away wildlife shots. It's not all been wildlife-spotting and digging for our visitors - yesterday we went to a local village fete. Today has been rather sedate in comparison, with a trip to the local tip, some more digging, and my mum cut the grass inside the small greenhouse with a pair of scissors (it was nearly up to the second shelf, so it was in dire need of a cut). The sun's come out again now so I'm trying planning where to put a willow dome. At our old house we had a willow hedge in the garden, and I brought some cuttings with me - they've been busy growing in a bucket of water for the last five months so I really do need to plant them soon. I love willow domes, and never had room for one before, but I'm planning a nice big one now, maybe with a door facing east for the view, and west for the sunset. Oh, and I forgot about the most exciting thing - chickens! We've been on the list for rescue hens for a while now, and finally we've got a date. Our new ladies will be joining us on 2nd September, so before then they'll need a home. They're barn hens, so while they haven't been in cages, they also have never been outside before. I've wanted chickens for many, many years so I think I'll be quite unbearably excited over the next six weeks while we get ready.
If you followed me over from my previous blog, you'll know that I'm an enthusiastic but somewhat slow and very sporadic runner. I frequently start running, keep it up for a few weeks, enter a ridiculous race (triathlon, marathon, series of trail races etc), then stop training, come last, have a nice day out and then not run again for several months. It's a pattern that's repeated itself many, many times over the last fifteen years or so. So when I found myself thinking about running again lately, I knew I was in trouble. My most recent foray into organised running was a series of trail races my sister and I did at the start of this year, but the longest of those was only four miles, so they weren't really that outlandish. Still, that's not how the pattern starts. The pattern starts with 'I'm feeling a bit podgy/unfit', then 'hmm, I'm sure I was thinner (and I was definitely fitter) when I was running a lot'. Then I go for an experimental run, and sometimes it sticks and sometimes it doesn't. This time against all my instincts I turned to the couch to 5k. I've avoided this so far - I've done two marathons and several triathlons and countless other races, so it feels rather demoralising to admit you're starting from the couch again. But you have to start where you are, and where I am definitely classes as 'couch'. So I've just started week four, and I'm already running faster than I did when I was marathon training. I'm actively looking forward to going out for a run (although with this scenery, that's not really surprising). Four weeks in is about that time in the cycle where I start being open to suggestion about entering a stupid race. So, it seems my sister and I have entered an ultra marathon. Don't worry, it's not a scary one, not really. It's an out and back route of just under ten miles, and you can do it as many times as you like until the time runs out. My longest marathon time is just under seven hours, and for this race we have fifteen. Easy peasy, and time for a nap in the middle too. Plus it's flat, whereas my runs round here most definitely are not. According to the cycle, I've probably got about three weeks of enthusiasm left before the novelty wears off, and I'm left with an inexplicable (and expensive) race entry for an event that fills me with equal amounts of dread and hilarity.
Wish me luck... Where did the last two weeks go? It feels like forever since I've posted here. As always, I can see what I've been up to by scrolling through my photographs... Hmm. But it hasn't all been entertaining visitors and eating. There's been plenty of pottering in the garden (although I'm saving all that for one post at the end of the month). I've also been creating us some footpath signs. We don't get a lot of walkers here, maybe four or five lots in total over a sunny weekend. Most of them can read a map, and it's pretty obvious that the main footpath runs straight down our driveway. The side footpath isn't so obvious though until you're right on top of it, and a couple of groups of young people have gone wandering off into the wrong field (from which there isn't an exit), or stood around looking puzzled. So I've added a couple of yellow arrows and hopefully that will clear things up (I always appreciate clear footpath signs when I'm out walking - I hate standing in someone else's yard not knowing where I'm going!) We've been making some progress inside the house too - although I use the term 'we' loosely as my involvement has mainly been providing the occasional cup of tea. We're still struggling to find a builder who will remove that wall, so in the meantime Peter has removed everything else, including a false wall, the door frames, built in cupboards and old wiring. We can't use these rooms until this work is done so the rest of the house is full of boxes of stuff that should be up here. You can see how wonky the floor is. All this sorting (and the sunshine) has at least given us a chance to air a few clothes that have been in boxes for a couple of years. In slightly less alarming news, I've been on a few local outings. First off to a quarrying trade show - not my usual nice-trip-into-the-countryside but fascinating nevertheless. The giant machines looked like toys inside the quarry. The main attraction for me though was this. This is The Man Engine, and it was both extremely impressive and extremely beautiful. The tour has finished now, but if you do ever get a chance to see it I'd highly recommend it. We've been to a couple of other localish events too - a school fair, and a Tudor fair, which I visited right at the end of the day, so was lucky enough to be given some home made butter to take home, wrapped in a butterbur leaf. It was National Meadows Day recently so we also visited a farm with a hay meadow, and had a tour from the local Wildlife Trust to show us how to identify various grasses and flowers. Quite a lot of the flowers had gone to seed because we've had such hot weather lately and so little rain. Everywhere here is dry (like much of the rest of the country) and we've had several moorland grass fires, which is very unusual round here. It's not often I find myself longing for rain, but lately I have been. So that's where I've been - wandering about the countryside, drinking tea and looking at the view. And digging and planting and being at work of course, and various other things that I'll save for another post. In the mean time, I'll go back to hoping for a bit of rain soon.
Today was the first non-snowy day without visitors for a while, so I finally retrieved my bike from the garage, pumped the tyres up, and set off for a cycle down one of the old railway trails that criss cross the national park. I used to do this fairly regularly before, but they're a lot closer to home now. Our old house was on top of a hill and surrounded by city roads, and our new one is perched on the side of a hill surrounded by narrow roads with windy bends, and on the whole I prefer my leisure cycling to be flatter and involve a lot of stopping to take photographs. I did question the wisdom of choosing today for a bike ride. It was raining all morning, and I squelched about the garden as I got my bike ready. But there was a brief break in the clouds which convinced me that it might not rain all afternoon, and I set off (clad in plenty of waterproofs). The sky was at least a little more interesting than the blank dull grey that it's been recently. I do like to see scudding clouds (although I prefer little fluffy white ones scudding across a blue sky). There was a lot of water on the trail too, and at times it was like I was cycling through a river. Needless to say, between the rain coming down, and the puddles coming up, I was drenched. I don't actually mind being drenched on a bike ride, as long as I can dry off and get warm straight after, but this was quite ridiculous. Even after removing my (supposedly) waterproof walking boots and two pairs of socks, my feet were still leaving wet footprints on the floor. I'm quite pleased I lasted for 11 miles. I've not been on a bike for months, and while this was flat, it was also quite hard going with the rain and the wind and the puddles. I was quite pleased to get home and dry though, and gained a new appreciation for the rain when I spotted this double rainbow behind the house. Rainbows aside, I'd quite like things to dry up a bit soon. Between the rain and the snow, and our many visitors with their extra cars, we've ended up with quite a churned up moat outside our front gate. I'm very grateful for my wellies right now.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with running. I've been doing it for years on and off. I've done all manner of races, including two marathons, three triathlons, and goodness knows how many half marathons, and odd-distanced trail races. I've come last in most of them - because while I love a good race, I'm not very consistent in training... I enjoy running while I'm doing it, and I love it when I've finished and am back at home in the shower, but I find it difficult to lace up my shoes and get out there sometimes. I often enter races with my sister, and we try to use them to motivate ourselves. We're currently in the middle of a series of four trail races that aren't too far from my new house - we came dead last in the first two, and I don't have much higher hopes for the last two. Still, they've been quite scenic, and a good way of getting to know some different paths (if a little muddy at times). This morning I finally got round to going for a little training run. Just under three miles, round the block as it were (although 'round the block' takes on a different meaning out here). I didn't venture off road today - everywhere is quite soggy after yesterday's snow. Mind you, the roads themselves weren't exactly dry. I can't say it was a great run. It was drizzly and grey, the hills were shrouded in mist so there wasn't much of a view. I haven't been able to find my running watch since we moved house, and I hadn't had any breakfast so it was a bit hard going. But running (and walking) is a grand way to get a feel for a new place, and there's always a sense of achievement to being out and about that early in the morning. Wandering about the lanes is also a great way to see what your neighbours are up to - one of our neighbours seems to have alpacas who were as curious about me as I was about them. Our next trail run is this Sunday, and I fear that our goal to be 'a bit faster than last time' may be rather ambitious. Although this one is flat, so who knows.
It does feel good to be getting back out there though. Next job is to fix up my bike and get out to some of our off road old railway trails. I might try that in the morning if it's not raining too much... |
Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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