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.

5 days in pictures

Well, the weather’s been so crappy that I’ve been unable to get out and do much, so I’ve spent much of my time in the kitchen.

I’m champing at the bit to make the suggested modifications to my Competition, though, and spent an hour last night trying to work out how to use a Line Lok. Doh… I almost had to post for help, but I got there in the end with the assistance of some diagrams from the web page.

The Terror Spider also made a further appearance, followed by a permanent disappearance…

Potato, thyme & taleggio pizza

On Monday Francesca came to lunch, and I made a potato and thyme pizza (including pizza base!) from a Nigel Slater recipe. It was all yummy except for the base, which was rather too ‘virtuous’, I felt; the wholemeal flour tasting very obvious and making the edges a little cardboardy. Still, Francesca was very polite and said she enjoyed it very much. Thank you, Francesca *g*

Later on Monday I converted the cucumber, round beans and runner beans…

Cucumber, runner beans and round beans soaking for piccalilli

…plus cauliflower and shallots…

Cauliflower and shallots too

…that I’d been soaking in brine overnight into piccalilli! When I remember I’ll take a picture of the finished product. What a nice colour it is! Unfortunately I have to wait 3 months to see how it tastes. Crunchy and hot, I hope, rather than squishy and sweet, like all the shop-bought ones I’ve ever encountered.

On Tuesday I decided to wash the throw thingy I have over the armchair in my sitting room–the chair underneath which the Terror Spider disappeared when I last saw it several days ago–and I found the spider tucked up in the folds! It agreed to sit there while I ran downstairs for the camera, and after I’d taken its picture I transferred it to a beer glass (the largest glass I had) and put it out into the garden, where it dashed off into the border. Eep!

Terror Spider!

Yesterday I made soused herrings and a truly delicious soda bread loaf. Last time I made soda bread it came out like a brick, but twice as heavy. This was a different recipe, though, and wonderful. Yum!

This afternoon I made lentil soup with bacon ribs–free-range bacon ribs, that is, made especially for me by the butcher after I ordered them a week and a half ago–and it was absolutely stonking, with some red cabbage. Yum, yum, yum!!!

Lentil soup with bacon ribs & soda bread

I’ve done some other stuff too–met up with two great Challenge pals yesterday; lived through 36 hours without my desktop when the blasted thing broke down (****ing Vista…); endured an hour of terror last night when we experieced some of the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard in this country; put the tent out in the garden to air and waited 3 days for the rain to stop so that I could bring it in (I’m still waiting)–but the foody things are the ones that seem to bring out the camera.

So! Crubeens crossed that at some stage before 2009 it might be possible to get out and so some walking without a snorkel and fins…

Edited to add:

Oh, joy! October TGO has just arrived digitally, with the application form for next year’s Challenge

Foody morning — Yum! Plus fantastic podcasts, photography and a wee lolcat

I’ve been intending to make some pickled onions for about… well, probably about 25 years, now *g*

I finally got round to starting the process the day before yesterday, when I peeled what felt like a very large quantity of shallots (in the absence of baby onions), made some brine and set the onions to soak in the brine for 24 hours.

This morning I washed, polished and sterilised some jars, packed the onions lovingly in and covered them with a mixture of malt vinegar and pickling spices, with a couple of dried, habanero chillies per jar, since I like my pickled onions hot and spicy.

I like my pickled onions crunchy too, though, and I thought the soaked onions felt a little squidgy as I removed them from the brine, and so I made a third batch–following The Definitive Delia’s Quick Pickled Onions recipe–which haven’t been soaked at all: simply peeled this morning, washed in a dribble of cold water, dabbed dry with a paper towel (so as not to dilute the vinegar) and tumbled into the jar.

I think I have to wait at least 3 weeks before I try them, but I’m quite excited My mother used to make pickled onions every year, and they were lovely. The nicest I’ve ever had, though, I bought from a stall at the Southport Show a few years ago, and that’s where I got the chillies idea: they were almost hot enough to blow my head off! Quite wonderful!

I’ve been getting on with various domestic kitchen-related chores for the last week, partly because I’m in the process of mucking out the sty to put it on the market, and while I’ve been doing them I’ve been catching up with the absolutely fantastic range of podcasts over at backpackinglight.co.uk and The Outdoors Station.

Because I’ve been out of touch for a while I’d fallen hopelessly behind, but this week I was glad of that because it gave me tons of great stuff to listen to. I’ve been through loads of them, including (but not limited to…) The Gourmet Hedgerow, Foraging for Fungi, the whole of Bob’s journey with Lee along the Cape Wrath Trail, Andy’s Life as a Guidebook Writer and Life as an Outdoor Writer interviews with Paddy Dillon and Mark Richards respectively, as well as his Meet the Bloggers compilation from the 2008 Outdoors Show, Bob’s interviews with the Cicerone Team and with Gayle about the LeJog she and Mick undertook earlier this year in M & G go for a Walk, and one of Bob’s broadcasts from the Friedrichshafen Outdoor Trade Fair, which included his chat with Chris Townsend and John Manning. I’m now working my way through Bob and Andy’s Tale of Two Podcasters, as they made their way along the TGO Challenge in May of last year.

I’ve always loved the podcasts, but I was really quite staggered by the truly fantastic range, quantity and quality of the amazing recordings that Bob and Andy have now accumulated. What a brilliant resource it is, for all of us.

Thirdly, I’ve been over at Andy’s blog, excited by a new Photo Project he’s started, the purpose of which is discussion, debate and information for those of us interested in expanding and developing our photographic horizons. I’ve just bought a DSLR and I’m very keen to learn how to use it, and so I know I’m going to be spending a lot of time over there soaking up all the info that Andy and other photographers more experienced than me have to offer.

Right! Back to mucking out the kitchen, then… First, though, a quick scan at ICanHasCheezBurger… *g*

moar funny pictures