Monday, October 22, 2007
Radio rentals
On Sunday we walked up to Lanhydrock House, a National Trust property a few miles away, which is apparently one of the best preserved Victorian stately homes in the UK. The best part of the weekend was to come though - dinner at the fantastic Globe Inn, followed by the pub quiz - which we won! We got our best score ever, 18/20, and won a box of chocolates and four small bottles of wine for our troubles :)
This morning, Michael and Lesley helped us water and feed the pigs (and also tidied up my rather shoddy hedge-trimming effort) before heading back to Amersham... I wonder how long it will be before they get their own pigs?
Monday, October 15, 2007
So near and yet so far
Kat: On Friday we caught the train up to Barnstaple on the north coast of Devon, ready to ride the Devon coast-to-coast over the weekend. It was perfect weather for cycling but there's hardly anyone else on the trail, so it's a great time of year to ride. Barnstaple TIC sorted us out with a lovely B&B where we had a whole annex to ourselves including a kitchenette and sitting room (about the same size as our house in Cornwall). In Okehampton the TIC found us an equally lovely B&B directly on the cycle route, which turned out to be popular with end-to-enders as well as coast-to-coasters.The ride follows the disused railway line between Plymouth and Barnstaple as much as possible. That means miles of flat and gently sloping traffic-free paths, lots of lovely cuttings and embankments and a generous scattering of viaducts - including the Meldon viaduct which we saw from the road with Vicky and Ben on the JOGLE and wished we could get onto to avoid the hills. Despite this there were plenty of climbs - Devon is ridiculously hilly - but our hard work paid off with spectacular views, particularly as we skirted along the edge of Dartmoor just south of Okehampton.
Devon council is still negotiating access for some parts of the railway and others have been well and truly incorporated into private homes - in Tavistock we saw a house built around the platform. As a whole the route was excellent, with just a bit of signposting confusion in Tavistock. After Lydford gorge (where we took a break to look at Devil's Cauldron and waterfall) the route splits giving you a choice: lots of up-and-down or a couple of very steep ups with long downhills. We chose the latter - big mistake! The section labelled "very steep and muddy track - please walk" on our official map turned out to be an incredibly steep rocky riverbed which was near impossible to walk up, let alone push a laden touring bike up.
After much sweating and swearing we made it to the top and looked forward to a well deserved 9-mile roll down to Plymouth. This was not to be however, as Mat's bike which had already suffered a flat tyre and broken chain, finally gave up the ghost. The chain broke again and in the middle of the repairs, the chain de-linking tool snapped. Although it looked like the rest of the ride was downhill it was unlikely that Mat would get away free-wheeling the rest of the way. With the light starting to fade, Mat hung on to me as I towed him to the village of Yellverton where we smiled very sweetly at a bus driver who took us and our bikes into Plymouth. Both are now in intensive bike care having a thorough service.
Monday, October 08, 2007
My first chicken
Mat: Our friends Rob & Caitlin have a couple of dozen 'dual-purpose' chickens that they have been rearing for eggs and meat, and last week Rob asked me to help dispatch three of their noisier cockerels, to keep the peace in the neighbourhood. Having never got involved in that end of food production before I was keen, and we spent a while discussing methods and processing techniques before getting started. If you're squeamish you might not want to read the next two paragraphs, just skip down to the bit where it comes out of the oven nicely browned.Our local butcher recommended bashing them on the head instead of wringing their necks, as it is less messy and harder to do wrong. After ten minutes running around the pen we managed to catch one of the offending birds, and as soon as we had it strung up by its feet in the garage it was very calm and quiet, holding its head up as if showing us the part it wanted us to strike. I got a perfect blow with a great deal of force, and the bird immediately stopped moving. I then cut its throat with a knife, and we drained the blood into a bucket for five minutes. The bird twitched a few times, but not half as much as the one Rob did after me. His, though clearly dead (all the blood had drained out of its body) continued to blink, flap its wings and swallow for ten very disturbing minutes.
We took them into the kitchen and made a start on preparing them. Plucking is a very hard task, and after half an hour my hands were quite tired, especially from pulling out the long wing feathers that felt like they were attached with superglue! It was a strange experience to watch a chicken become chicken. By the time the feathers were off and the head and feet had been removed, it looked well and truly like a shop-bought bird, except with larger legs and smaller breast. Gutting wasn't a task I really want to write about, but I managed to get them all out intact and we fried up the liver to eat then and there. After we had cleaned up, I took the bird back home and hung it overnight in the kitchen, then trussed it and put it in the fridge.
On Sunday Dan and Sarah came to visit, and were keen to try my first field-to-table chicken. It was extremely tasty, moist and easily fed the three of us. The taste was a little stronger than supermarket chicken (in a good way) but apart from that and my slightly patchy plucking job you wouldn't realise it was home-made. It was a fascinating experience that I'd recommend to anyone who cares where their meat comes from, and it's making me think about the meat I buy.