Yesterday’s walk — woods and Woods

Tim, Piglet and Kate

Piggly and I went for a brief trot around the woods yesterday, on the way back from Waitrose.

The woods were rather dismal. They’d been snowy earlier in the day, but the sleet had turned to rain and washed all the wintery beauty away.

In the woods

Heading towards the sand hills

A glum scene

Decorated tree

Each year somebody festooons this tree with baubles and cones, but the wind had blown quite a lot of them to the ground.

Piggly launches herself after a rabbit

Dogs aren’t allowed in this bit, and people are only supposed to enter with (readily available) permits, but since there’s no good reason for the ban I ignore it. Bloody dictators, trying to tell me where to walk… *g*

Into the woods again

Illegal walking

On the way home we stopped at Tim and Kate’s, to drop off Christmas goodies and to say a last “Hello” before they leave for Christmas. Kate and Tim spoil Piglet and me, and we both love dropping in. Piglet grows quite hysterical with excitement in the back of the car as I fasten her lead to her collar to walk her over to the house *g*

Tim’s a keen photographer, and he spent quite a lot of time trying to get a good piccy of Piglet to enter in the local show next year. Piglet’s almost as bad a photographic subject as me, though, and she refused to sit still and smile winningly.

Tim trying to get a good piccy of Piglet

Trying a different angle

Piglet consents to sit still for a moment

Tim, Kate and I had a glass of wine to celebrate my birthday, and Piglet had a glass of Ribena. They sent me home with the rest of the bottle. (The wine, that is: not the Ribena.) Yum!

Upon our return to Chez Peewiglet I fed the monsters and then myself.

I have to say that I was a little disappointed in the tub of Waitrose pepper sauce I’d bought earlier. I spotted it on a shelf and thought it would be yummy, because most Waitrose food does seem to be, but sadly it wasn’t. It had a very disappointing taste and a markedly synthetic texture, and there was very little evidence of the cream and brandy it was meant to contain. There weren’t a lot of peppercorns either, for that matter. I should have made some myself, since it’s so extremely easy to make a yummy one. Not to worry, though. I’ll make my own tonight.

Quick update — cars, cooks, celebrities and rain

I’m still mired in car-related chaos, here, but I hope to be finally getting it sorted out either today or tomorrow. I’ve settled on a Skoda Fabia Estate, subject only to the fates performing a further backflip and turning my plans around once again. Now, I hope, it’s simply a matter of choosing the actual car. Fingers crossed y’all, please, and a special mention for Mango Terrier, who knows far more about cars, and buying them, than I’d have believed possible until a week ago.

What is it with the contestants on Come Dine With Me, I wonder? I can’t understand why so many people who choose to enter a dinner party hosting competition appear to be averse to eating/trying such a wide range of foods!

Catching up with a few episodes via the wonderful TV on Demand yesterday, I saw great swathes of people who didn’t like/wouldn’t eat/had never heard of/were unwilling to taste bog-standard varieties of fish, cheese, chocolate and meat. One bloke made what looked like an absolutely scrumptious fish stew, only to find that one of his 3 guests simply didn’t eat fish whilst another one couldn’t face fish that came in shells and “…looks like this!” she said, dragging a snarl onto her face and arranging her arms into a pointy, aggressive-looking attitude in front of her eyes. It turned out that she was referring to the langoustines. After that she folded her arms and went to sleep on the table, though she was eventually able to rouse herself for a bit of chocolate pudding. In another episode, a woman was so appalled by cheese, and everthing that it involves, that she had to leave the room and watch a bit of television next door while the others tucked into a bit of cheddar. Profoundly weird, ISTM…

I dunno about you, but I’m already addicted to this year’s round of I’m a Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here! It’s the only one of the ‘reality’ TV things I watch, and it’s always a lot of fun (unless you happen to be a creepy crawlie living in the Australian rain forest, of course, in which case I’m sure it’s all a bit depressing).

The celebs that make up this year’s bunch are less immediately entertaining than the last lot, but it appears that things are finally hotting up. Last night’s drama between Kim Woodburn (a bit of a bully) and Joe Bugner (a bit of a bully, but larger) made such uncomfortable viewing that I had to watch through squinted eyes, and Piglet became upset and had to be comforted by the cat. I reckon Jimmy White’s going to come through strongly as things progress, and that American bloke, George Hamilton, seems to have a sneakily wicked sense of humour.

Speaking of food, I’d like to have said something about Raymond Blanc’s The Restaurant, but it’s so extremely odd that it seems to have left me entirely unable to comment. Well, other than to say that I was very sorry to see the two army blokes go out, and that my money’s been on the two cheery peeps from The Front Room (or The Living Room, or whatever it’s called) from the outset. There! That’s prolly the kiss of death for them, then! *g* More next week, perhaps.

Last, but certainly not least, looking at the pictures that John Hee linked to on his blog yesterday I’m relieved beyond description that Piglet and I are no longer in The Licks…

Chally writeup — finally finished!

Phew! I’ve finally finished writing it up. Hopefully somebody will enjoy it

If you take a look and find anything broken then please do let me know, so that I can fix it ♥

Third piccy attempt

And again…

Second piccy attempt with MoBlog

Trying again…

Piccy?

Crubeens crossed…

Some weekend backpacking pics

Pulling faces with Piglet on top of Scafell Pike

Piggly and I took a trip to the Lakes this week. See here for lots of piccies.

I see that Piglet has added a few words to her blog about it…

The Dales Way

Wee Piglet

Piglet and I walked the Dales Way last week, and got back late on Friday night.

I’ve been before, but this was Piglet’s first long walk and she was an absolute star, camping happily in a tent and walking mile after mile on her tiny wee paws. She slept like a log at night, and developed a love of rivers during the day. She learned to climb the stone stiles all on her own, though she needs a lift over the wooden ladder ones. She met, and was terrified by, her first hedgehog, and was roundly told off for attempting to chase a sheep (despite her lead). Unfortunately, she also developed a habit of barking at distant dogs and walkers! She was mugged by adoring children in Kettlewell, and bore their cuddles and stroking with a patience that amazed me. She was a little reluctant to leave the tent in the morning, and tried to run into every open doorway we passed along the way, but the sight of her sprinting up and down the river banks and rolling in grassy fields on the odd occasions when I was able to let her off her lead brought joy to my heart and a wee tear to my eye ♥

Wee dog meets hedgehog!

Oooh!

Arriving in Sedbergh

Sleepy doglet in little coat

Piglet with piglet

In Appletreewick

Wet but triumphant!

I have no idea why the walk doesn’t finish in Sedbergh. I realise that even Sedbergh is actually Cumbria, rather than Yorkshire, but at least it forms a natural finishing point and has transport home. The stretch from Sedbergh to Bowness is pretty, of course, but it’s no part of the Yorkshire Dales. Besides… it’s full of malignant bullocks, and the bit just after the M6 is a bit of nightmare because sombody’s taken down a lot of the signs, which makes it very easy to get lost. What with being lost due to missing signs, and having to take detours to avoid savage cows, and being terrorised by 2 Alsations and a collie, the last couple of days were almost no fun at all. If I do the walk again–and I probably will, at some stage–I’ll finish at Sedbergh.

Having mummy love

This tune has nothing to do with the Dales Way, but it’s here because it’s beautiful and I haven’t heard it since I was at Uni, a thousand years ago…

Bought a camera tripod – officially an addict :)

After spending some hours kneeling in nettles and thistles on Thursday, and suffering from hand-shake when trying to take close-ups of tiny things next to the path, I bought a tripod yesterday and went back to the woods.

Wow! What a wonderful way to spend the afternoon! I’m totally hooked, and can’t see myself being able to leave the tripod at home when I go backpacking. I’ll have to look around for a nice light one. Any ideas, peeps?

More pics here

Toadstool piccies

I got out into the woods late yesterday afternoon to start putting Andy’s great photography advice into practice. Almost as soon as I started I realised I still didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but fortunately the camera is so clever that it didn’t prevent me from getting some great (by my standards, which aren’t high) pictures. I’m looking forward to getting back there, maybe later today if it stops raining again… aagh…

If you’d like to see the piccies then click on the toadstool above (and speak nicely to the fly) *g*

I’m currently psyching myself up to get out there and pick some wild mushrooms for eating back here at the sty, and towards that end I’ve recently purchased the most excellent and lovely Mushrooms: River Cottage Handbook No.1, by John Wright.

It’s a little disconcerting, though, to have read twice, in the space of the last few weeks, of people over here who’ve had very unfortunate (and in one case terminal) experiences picking and cooking mushrooms from the woods.

Nick Evans, who wrote The Horse Whisperer, his wife and two close relatives were poisoned by the Deadly Webcap, a relative of the Death Cap, and at least two of them have had to undergo dialysis. They picked them up in Scotland on Mr Evans’s brother-in-law’s estate in Moray.

And then, two days ago, I read that a 40 year old woman had died from eating a Death Cap mushroom she picked with a friend at Ventnor Botanical Gardens.

I can’t help wondering whether the recent reawakening of interest in picking and eating mushrooms has been responsible for these incidents. Even though Death Caps are profoundly toxic, I don’t think people often actually eat and die of them over here. Anyway, and as John Wright suggests in his book, if you only ever learn how to recognise one toadstool then let it be the Death Cap.