Here we go then, after all those months of digging, fruit cage building, seed sowing and watering the allotments finally starting to repay all that work, and I'll tell you something, there's nothing better that freshly picked, home grown produce. Having spent weeks watching them grow and slowly ripen the feeling when you pop the first Strawberry into your mouth straight from the plant makes all the graft worthwhile. You can keep your shop bought, perfectly shaped, uniformly ripe offerings, these bad boys are the real thing. They may be odd sizes, uneven colours, and funny shapes but they knock the socks off those tasteless shop bought attempts, they're just so sweet and tasty. And while we're on the subject of allotments and cooking, how about this little lot? Fingers crossed and as long as everything goes according to plan we will be pretty much self sufficient in vegetables from now until the end of the summer and beyond. I'm currently picking; Strawberries, Loganberries, Cherries (Not many and from the front garden orchard), Peas, Broad Beans, Rhubarb and Radishes. In the next few weeks we're going to be into; Gooseberries, Red and Black Currents (Not many due to cutting the bushes back hard to make space for the fruit cage), Courgettes, Cucumbers and Cabbages and from there on it will be more vegetables than you can shake a stick at! Talking of getting some miles in to burn off the cake calories, I was out early Saturday morning working on my appetite and came across this little fellow. It was accompanied by a sign saying "Hello, I'm Sally the Snake. Please add more pebbles to my body to see how long I can grow".
I don't know why, but I've been struggling a bit with the old motivation this week and when I got up on Sunday morning I just couldn't face the thought of going out to play on my bike. It was a beautiful morning though so staying at home was out of the question, maybe a bit of slower paced walking action would be the answer and help to get a bit of adventure back in my life? So, decision made, I stuck a brew in my flask, found some leftovers in the fridge for lunch and headed up to Kingsclere to pick up the Wayfarers Way. I could quite easily have started from home and done pretty much the same route but going out in the van for a change seemed to make it a bit more of an adventure. 99% of today's 16 miles was on paths that I run from home on a regular basis, however it's all a bit different when your walking instead of running. It's a bit easier to just stop and take in your surroundings and because your not constantly looking to see where your feet are going to avoid falling flat on your face, you see the little things that you don't get to see when running. With 16 miles of glorious Hampshire countryside under my feet, I got back to the van, feeling refreshed and rejuvenated just as it started spitting. It doesn't get much better than that and you know what, I'm looking forward to going out on my bike next weekend!
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Paul PerrattOld enough to know better, young enough to still feel invincible, stupid enough to keep on trying the same thing again and again. Cyclist, Gardener, Runner, Hiker, Cook, Woodworker, Engineer, Jack of all trades and master of none, Anti social old git and all round miserable bugger. Archives
March 2024
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