Tea and Cakes

Cornwall was lovely.

I’d been down there twice before, once as a sulky teenager on a family break in Mevagissy, and once on a geology field trip.

The family holiday I remember very little of. I suspect this is because I was stroppy and sulky and antisocial and generally horrible to be around and I’ve blocked the whole thing from memory.

The a level geology field trip was mainly spent on beaches in the rain, mapping the layers and taking notes on the folds, or down mines. Actually, it was probably only one mine, but quite frankly that’s enough.

This trip was different. This was a few days relaxing by ourselves as a treat after lots of rushing around.

We stayed in Lostwithiel, a lovely little village with a pretty river to walk along and a surfeit of delicious places to eat. With only 2 full days we had to be selective about what we did, and I’m very happy with our choices.

We spent a day at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which were beautiful and fascinating and I can’t recommend them enough as a day out. I’m halfway through the book written about the history of the gardens and their restoration and it’s really interesting.

The Jungle

Mud Maid

Giant Head

Our second day we decided to spend exploring some of Cornwall, ignoring the pull of the nearby Eden Project.

We started off in the little port of Mevagissey for a walk up above the harbour and to see if we could find where Merry lived.*

Then we headed off to just outside of Fowey, for a hike along the cliffs by Menabilly, the house that Daphne du Maurier lived in for a while, down and around to Coombe Farm.

Coombe Haven, a smugglers cove that I have no photos of because as we walked by it was playing host to a naked elderly man stood up to his knees in the sea.

While in Mevagissey we’d cunningly bought our lunch: pasties.

Cheese and onion pasty, and a chick pea and cumin one that was delicious. I now want to make everything into pasties.

After our big long walk it was time for a treat, so we headed into Fowey for high tea:

The Dwelling House is a grade 2 listed property, and serve absolutely fabulous teas and cakes. High tea in the garden was a delight.

I think next time we visit Cornwall we’ll be heading back there. I may have to diet first.

*Mevagissey is the model for Trewissick in The Dark is Rising books by Susan Cooper.

Cornwall is trying to kill me with delicious food.

Today we started off with breakfast at Muffins, an award winning tea shop.

Cornish tea (yes, grown in Cornwall), fruit with local yoghurt and museli, followed by fresh granary toast with local orange marmalade.

We spent the day at the absolutely wonderful Lost Gardens of Heligan, where I had a roll with Cornish brie and cranberry sauce followed by a fresh cream lemon cake.

Then a snack of vegetable crisps and organic St Clements (lightly sparkling orange and lemon juice drink).

Back to Lostwithiel in the evening, to Trewithen Restaurant, for one of the best meals I’ve had in ages. I can barely move right now, but I just couldn’t stop.
Parmesan and herb bread, and olive bread as a pre-starter.
Pea, spring onion and pesto risotto with parmesan shavings to start.
Red and yellow pepper tarte tartin with chilli and mango as a main, served with fresh steamed vegetables, new potatoes and potatoes dauphinause (yeah, I cant spell that.)
Then strawberries and champagne sorbet almost to finish.
I say almost because our enormous pot of great coffee was served with home made petit fours.
An awesome meal, in a lovely location, with great service.

Everywhere we’ve been, on top of all the delicious food (actual choices for vegetarians!), everyone has been super friendly and nice and helpful.

I don’t think I need to eat at all tomorrow.

I had a flying visit to Bulgaria last week, and it was really interesting and challenging and lots of fun.

We flew out really, really early on Thursday morning. That time of day should not exist.
My journey: Taxi to airport - fly to Frankfurt - fly to Sofia - taxi to city centre - bus to Plovdiv - lift to hotel

Our taxi from Sofia airport to the bus station in the city centre cost twice what it should have, and twice what it cost on the way back. I think we were brought around the city a bit, while the driver tried to convince us that we should pay him to take us all the way to Plovdiv. Nothing that we could do though, and at the end of the day it meant a €10 taxi ride rather than a €5 one, and my taxi out to Dublin airport that took the same length of time had been €30, so it’s hard to get too upset about it.

Buying bus tickets, finding our way around, everything really, was a bit tough. The alphabet is Cyrillic rather than Roman so it’s really difficult to read, and I just couldn’t get to grips with Bulgarian. Most people were friendly though, and between their smatterings of English, French and German we got by.

Plovdiv is a lovely city. It’s about 2 hours by bus from Sofia, and is the second largest city in Bulgaria. Everything felt and looked really run down, with lots of communist-era apartment blocks. However, there was no litter on the streets, and although the buildings were run down they weren’t vandalised, and there were loads of trees and lots of greenery everywhere. The city felt safe.

The Old Town was interesting to walk around, although we didn’t have a huge amount of time for exploring. (It was a working trip). The city was founded by Alexander the Great’s dad, so is very old. There are Roman ruins dotted around the place, and an amphitheatre in the Old Town.

All round the residential parts of the city were play areas - playgrounds, basketball courts and the like. Mostly a bit overgrown, but attractive in their way.

Yes, those are rocks taking the place of the net, and yes, it does get used - we saw kids playing table tennis there earlier in the day.

I had been a bit worried about food for me, being vegetarian and not liking eggs, but I ate really well - heaps of salads and delicious vegetables. The coffee was mixed, but I realised that it was partly due to the preponderance of UHT milk, so stuck to espresso and Viennese coffee and it was top notch.

Cake wise, I did well. I wasn’t there for long, and was too full of salad and fruit most of the time, but did sample a giant portion of apple pie in Sofia along with my knitting on World Wide Knit in Public Day on my way back to Dublin.

Bargain apple pie: €2.00!

The weather was fabulous - really hot, which caused the noisiest thunderstorms I’ve experienced in a long time. I had a great view from the hotel window.

Saturday morning we got up early, had a quick breakfast outside (Outside! In the sun!), took a taxi to the bus station, the bus to Sofia, had lunch in Sofia, took a taxi to the airport, flew to Frankfurt, flew to Dublin, and was collected from the airport and brought home.

All in all it was a lovely little trip. I’m looking forward to heading back there in August. Need to brush up on my cyrillic before then.

As you may have gathered from my previous posts, I was up in Belfast this weekend. It was for Sara’s hen party, and little miss smarts here forgot that the location was supposed to be a secret, and posted here on the blog about it for Sara to see. And I think I probably let it slip before then too. Well done, me.

I went up on Friday afternoon by myself, and had a relaxing evening wandering around the city before a swim and an early night at the hotel, which was just what I needed after a long couple of weeks.

I’m still not completely sure what I think of Belfast - it was strange seeing Dunnes Stores right next to BHS, and O’Briens Sandwich Bar right by the City Hall with the statue of Queen Victoria in front of it.

Saturday morning I did much the same - a wander and then a sit for a nice pot of tea in the Linenhall Library. I forgot to document it, but my teapot totally looked like it was the sort to spill tea all over the table, but turned out to be a perfect pourer.

At lunchtime I met up with Diane and then the rest of the group, and we headed out for a delicious lunch, then back to the hotel, off to the Belfast Wheel,

and then on for cocktails, a delicious dinner, and then the rest of the night!

Sunday we went out for breakfast and a quick spot of shopping before heading back down to Dublin.

Sara’s sisters did a wonderful job of organising everything, and it was a lovely weekend.

~~

Side note about knitting:

I picked up the boyfriend sweater again to find that I really don’t have that much more to do, so I’ve been working on it over the last couple of nights. It’s dark here, and it’s not easy to photograph anyway, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s looking great, fits well so far, and doesn’t have too much further to go. (The neck looks a bit small here but that’s only because the stitches are all bunched up on a 40cm needle.)

In Belfast I also cast on for Cozy from Knitty in a 4 ply cashmere yarn. I wanted a soft, light, warm wrap that I could use as a sort of small blanket on aeroplanes and also squish up around my neck as a scarf, and I think this is going to do just the job, although it’s hard to tell at the moment:

~~

Now, after a weekend away, preceded by a full weekend of work, 3 weekends of guests, and a different weekend away, I’m quite looking forward to spending the bank holiday weekend at home. Although maybe there are some last minute deals out there…

The long weekend here coincided nicely with other family members’ visits back to the UK too, so we took the chance to head over for a bit of a break. It was super fun, super relaxing, and super busy too.

Friday passed in a blur of pottering and visiting my grandma, who is amazing. Over the summer she had to move from her flat to a nursing home, she was very ill with neuralgia, and there was talk about how much longer she’d be with us. I visited in early September, when the prognosis was a little better, but still grim, and found her confused about a lot of things. She’s 91. It was sad, but that’s the way things go. At christmas she was heaps better and almost back to herself. Still quite frail, and after an hour she asked us to go (which was fine, she’s a short walk away from home so several short visits are easy to make).

This visit she had improved even more, and it was hard to tell that she’d been so ill before. She reads a lot - this time last year it was the Times bestseller list, now it’s whatever the visiting library brings in large print, but The Guardian’s still her newspaper, and she’s in tune with everything that’s going on.

Knitting for her is hard - she knows what she wants, and it’s acrylic, machine washable and soft. A hat had been requested, so I duly provided:



I’d be lying if I said that it was the item I was most proud to have knitted. It’s some form of novelty yarn, and my pretty swirly decreases are lost in it. However. It is the softest yarn I could find, and it’s really cosy and comfy and what she wanted, and that’s what matters most.

Saturday we took a family trip up to London - although despite all starting from and returning to the same station we managed to travel on separate trains quite a lot (lets just say that mum ended up on a train that the rest of us didn’t and it was my fault and I don’t expect to hear the end of it). Anyway, we had a lovely lunch by London Bridge, took the excellent Thames Clipper boat service down the river, under Tower Bridge

to the Millenium Dome O2 Arena, which is very grubby.

We were there to see the Tutenkhamun exhibition. The Dome itself is, well, a giant tent filled with chain restaurants. Meh.
The exhibition was fascinating, and it’s hard to take in how old the pieces are and the exquisite craftsmanship that went into them. I have two howevers though. Firstly, I would have loved a lot more explanations of things - the history, the process of making the pieces, the discovery of the tomb etc. Secondly, and this is an important one. I had the impression that the death mask would be there. It was what I had assumed I was seeing on the website and ads for the exhibition, although I now know that the pictures are of the very small (but exquisite) container that once held his mummified liver. The exhibition sort of gave that impression too - all the rooms told a story, that seemed to be leading up to the death mask, or one of the coffins. When I turned the last corner though, there was just a big screen playing a recording from BBC News 24 and a person asking for my audio guide. It felt a little flat.

However, we had a great family day out in London. I have very fond memories of mum bringing my brother and I up for day trips to various museums, and it was nice to do it again with all our partners there too.

Phew! Tired yet?

Sunday then. Sunday was a lovely family day, notable for getting to spend time with three of my youngest relatives, who are all adorable and good natured and beautiful and lots of fun. It was far too short a visit, but a lovely one. There are many more notable pictures from the day, but the one I’m going to share is this:

My mum and my aunt are both fabulous cooks, and I’ve come back a good few pounds heavier from so many delicious meals. The picture above is Glenys’s chocolate pudding and oh my it was soooooo good. There was lemon meringue pie too, which I know from experience is delicious, but I just couldn’t manage it.

OK, almost done!

Monday was another visit to see my grandma, another giant delicious meal, and then home to Dublin, with a bag full of chocolate from the weekend that was in it. Might take a while to shift those pounds…

Yes yes, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. It was also the first day of the Avoca Handweaver’s Yarn Sale, so five girls bundled into a car and headed off over the mountains in search of great value yarn and fabric.

We braved heavy fog and low visibility on the way over, pausing only to admire the burnt out cars and santa gnome shrine by the side of the road:

About half way there the sky cleared for a tiny bit, the sun came out, and some of the beauty of the mountains was revealed:

Lets take a closer look at that view:

We arrived at Avoca at about 10.30 - an hour after opening so we’d missed one or two tasty purchases (that earlier visitors were paying for as we arrived).

I’m happy with my purchases though - I managed to grab what feels like a 2kg cone of blue tweedy wool for €20 and one or two other pieces, including some lovely, lovely handwoven fabric that would usually become a high priced Avoca blanket.

Holly, Cheryl and I were very restrained, and there was even space left in the boot of the car…

So, after this photo Cheryl and I popped back in to buy more!

At the weavers in Avoca you can pop in and take a look at the wonderful hand and machine weaving in progress - it’s very colourful, mesmeric, and noisy!

Then, after a brief restorative rhubarb crumble and cappuccino, it was time to head back over the mountains. The fog had cleared, so we were able to appreciate the beautiful bleakness of the peat and heather.

Time for a quick cup of tea in the lovely Bell House, then home for wonderful Valentine’s evening with my love.

Super.

Two lovely, relaxing weeks away. We travelled over by ferry, which takes 17 hours, overnight. Irish Ferries have one ferry on the route, and it’s due for replacement at the end of the year which is a Good Thing. Some parts of our cabins had been repaired with duct tape, the boat had obviously had several owners as there were signs up with the old Stena line logo, and there was a frustrating lack of places to sit. It didn’t really matter though, because we were both so tired, and the crossing was so rough, that we spent to whole time in bed, being tossed* around in the dark. I don’t really mind the sea, so I read for most of the way. The other good thing is that we were able to take our car over, which meant we could bring over all the stuff we wanted and not have to worry about weight allowances or pointless security checks. The war against moisture’s not being fought at sea.

Our first week was spent in Northern Brittany, in a little gite in a national park.

It was lovely and I really couldn’t recommend the place (Kergudon House) enough – the owners had really thought everything through, the gite was lovely, the welcome bottle of wine much appreciated, and there was heaps of really useful information on what to do in the area.

The weather was much the same as Ireland for our first couple of days, so we headed out for a 14km walk from an excellent walking book leant to us by the gite owners. It was quite a hike in the wind and occasional rain. There was a small mention in the book about being careful on the wooden duckboards over the marshes.

We perhaps should have paid a tiny bit more attention to this. A good couple of km was along foot wide wooden duckboards running straight through the middle of a massive, massive marsh that had been rained on all summer. Think Lord of the Rings. I wouldn’t have been surprised to look down and see the bodies of dead kings looking back up at me. Local legends say that the marshes are the gateway to hell, and that washerwomen ply their trade along them, trying to take people to hell. The marshes were followed by a road walk through a couple of small hamlets, and then a final hike up a big hill, to the chapel of Mt St Michel. I was shattered at the end, but a nice hot bath sorted me out.

We went further afield over the rest of the week, spending a lovely day on the Crozon Penninsula,

popping to Brest**, and wandering around Quimper, a lovely old town with plenty of character.

Our second week was spent in the south of Brittany, in Carnac. For this week we’d rented a tent on a campsite – quite different from the peaceful luxury of the previous week!

Campsite life forces you into a routine of relaxation – everything takes longer, so rushing around just isn’t really an option – washing up becomes an event – taking the dishes and everything else needed up to the communal washing up sinks, and washing and drying alongside everyone else. Going to the toilet at night involves putting on warm clothes and shoes and using a torch. Being surrounded by families was mostly nice – catching snippets here and there made me smile and brought me back to how I think I might have been as a kid – really earnest about some things, and a wee bit whiney and annoying sometimes too. It also meant that at times we were witness to some not-great parenting, which was, well, frustrating.

We spent a lot of time in Carnac just sitting around, reading, writing, knitting, exploring a little bit. There are loads of megaliths around Carnac – fields of thousands of standing stones in alignment, dolmens, and a passage tomb just behind the campsite. It’s a strange feeling, standing on a passage tomb, next to a large standing stone that’s been there for thousands of years, watching the full moon rise.

I love France. It might be because we’ve both been there so many times, and will go back again so many more, that there’s little pressure to see everything and experience everything, so we could just get on with relaxing – spending an afternoon sitting in a bar by the river with an excellent coffee, having crepes and citron presse by the sea, having a leisurely breakfast of coffee and croissants with apricot jam by the tent.

After Carnac we had one night to spend before we got back on the boat for the journey home, so we headed up to Mont St Michel for a lovely relaxing evening by the simply stunning abbey

then visitied the Normandy beaches on the way to Cherbourg.

A super holiday.

~~
*You, at the back, stop sniggering.
** Yes, ok, you can snigger at that. I did.

I’m still working my way through washing, and well, to be honest, spending more than a little time procrastinating rather than doing the things I should be doing, like packing for the trip to the UK.

While I get sorted out, I suggest you go over to Donal’s site, and have a read of what we did on our last day in France. He puts it a lot more eloquently than I could.

Getting out of Dublin and away from the internet for a few days is a good thing. Occasionally I need to remind myself that life isn’t a competition, and that I really don’t need to excel at everything I do. I excel at being me, and that’s good enough.

So, it’s St Patrick’s weekend. Where’s the best place to be? “Dublin!” I hear you cry (yep, I’m looking at you Brian). No, no no no. Not Dublin is the best place to be.

With that in mind we headed out to Leitrim for relaxation in the damp countryside. My towny nature showed itself immediately as I jumped out of my skin at a cow mooing in the dark. I settled in though and was soon collecting drinking water from the well like a pro. (ok, it’s a tap now, but the principle stands).

The weather leant itself to looking out of the window:

And sitting next to a log and peat fire while consuming buckets of tea and coffee and scones and hot cross buns.

I decided to give spinning a go with the CD drop spindle that Cheryl made for me:

However, I just couldn’t get the hang of it, and, given that one of my goals of the weekend was to be happy in what I can do rather than frustrated by what I can’t, I put it away.

Does that look like a thin strip of roving just badly wound around a spindle to you, rather than an attempt at spinning? That’s what it looks like to me, because that’s essentially what it is.

Instead, I picked up my needles and knitted this:

(Ruffle rib socks from Interweave Knits Better Than Booties Baby Socks - more details when I finish them)

All in all, a very relaxing weekend, and just what I needed.

So, to contrast with the post below, some photographs from last weekend in Leitrim, a small and wet county in the middle of Ireland, to show why I love living here. The weather prevented us doing much more than sitting by the fire knitting, which was fine by me. However, we saw the countryside from the car, and from the window, and it was beautiful.

I’m not a good enough photographer to really capture the earthy colours in the landscape. The rain seemed to bring the colours up, and slate grey of the sky stood in contrast to the deep reds, browns and greens of the fields below, and the steely blue of Lough Allen.

No trip around Ireland is complete with out a black and white picture of a ruined abbey, and this was no exception.

It was a brief visit, but one I’d like to repeat. I’d like to be able to see some more of the landscape, and spend some more time by the fire with family too.