Tent Sniffing for Beginners

As the spring weather is here, I'm making more of an effort to get out and about, I'm also nagging myself to blog more! I am still 'iffy' about using my stick when I walk - despite falling an impressive 3 times last week - because I worry it makes me look old. Obviously I don't worry that I'll look a prat if I fall over. So a plea to other mildly disabled or wobbly folk - and to stick suppliers everywhere - what's a good stick to use that will still look cool? Feel free to let me know in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter (links in the sidebar) Anyway - on with the walk. Mr TS and I decided to take her ladyship Fizz the border terrier for a stroll along the River Adur. We only walked from the airport at Shoreham as far as the first car park but it was a nice meander, the weather was lovely as were the views and Fizz enjoyed herself. Lancing College Fizz, mistress of all she surveys The mix of excitement and disappointment when a...

As a festival lover I've mentioned before that it's not all mud, tents and music. There are all sorts of festivals and one of the best must surely be a festival of Food! Even if you are dieting there is joy to be found at a food festival, outside, breathing in the glorious British weather (hopefully sunny and warm, though one never know!) and gazing at the glory of fine local and not so local foods. The chance to discover new goodies, to buy for an impromptu picnic, or something more special. And then there are recipe ideas and demonstrations, competitions and all manner of cakes!

I rarely share this sort of thing, but seriously how cute is this 'outdoors indoors' kids room design from Cuckoo land? I just adore it! I need to find an excuse to get the bearskin rug! “Set up camp in the mountains!”   Teepee Bed, £399 Clockwise from top left: SNURK Butterfly Duvet Set , £44.95 Stag Wall Sticker , £9.95 TweedMill Throw in Mustard , £75 Knitted Fox Hottie , £19.95 Henry Bear Rug , £89.95 Tree Bookcase , £565 Kids Wallpaper in ‘Into the Wild’ design , £70 Olli Ella Storage Basket in Coda design , £59 Zuny Owl Paperweight , £24.95 Teepee Cabin Bed , £399 Single Hanging Cacoon , £220 Finlay Fox Rug , £55.95

Fabulous foraging! I love free food - who doesn't! Free food tastes better than any other kind except maybe food you grew or picked yourself. So just imagine the joy of free hand picked food! Foraging is something that can be taken to extremes but I'm a fairly lazy forager. I'm the sort of mum that will pack some empty tupperware on an autumn walk in case we spot black berries, but I'm not usually keen enough to bring the car to a halt on an A road and climb on the car roof to pick apples growing among the trees on the verge (ok I did that once). Sloes are a very British thing to flavour gin with though and while I don't actually make my own gin (there are limits!) it is nice to have something you have (almost) made free. I buy the cheapest gin the supermarket has to offer. And then I pick my sloes. Don't try this unless you are sure of what you are picking. A sloe is the fruit of the blackthorn , they have white flowers in the spring (spot them then and mak...

CTC Cymru, Open MTB, Welsh Cycling and British Cycling have applauded the Welsh Government’s proposal to adopt similar rules on access to the countryside as those enjoyed in Scotland. Currently in Wales the Rights of Way system is based upon recorded historic use of routes instead of suitability. As a result, cyclists have rights to use just 21% of the network, with permission to ride along narrow rocky sheep tracks on steep ground but denied access to thousands of miles of public footpaths lying on metalled farm and forest roads. As a walker I can see how frustrating this is, some tracks are so wide two cars can pass each other on them! It seems rather silly to deny cyclists access. In Scotland, following the Land Reform Act 2003, it is very different. Scotland enjoys ‘presumed access’. This means there is a presumption of “responsible access”, subject to exemptions laid out in the Outdoor Access Code (eg forestry operations). Consequently, Scottish off-road a...

Autumn is upon us! It’s October and I have fallen behind with my blog posts due to slacking but also time, I seem to be always on the go! Grabbing 5 minutes to tweet is not so hard, but finding a chunk of time, an hour or so to blog seems almost impossible. The long lazy days of summer festivals seems far away. But I’ve seen a few blogs in the last few weeks where people have been cooking and eating not only food cooked outside but food they have been picking and gathering with their own fair (or muddy) hands. Earlier in September I picked both apples and pears from the trees in our garden and made some crumble and also some apple pancakes, both delicious. Does hand picked food really taste better or do we imagine that? I haven’t made sloe gin for several years but that’s another fine foraging food idea (gin is a food right?). I haven’t even managed to pick any blackberries this year, always good to give an apple pie some extra colour and also great in cakes. We have a gooseber...

Wasps haven't been as numerous this year as other years and I for one am grateful for that. I know that all creatures have their place in the food chain, and that destroying every wasp on the planet would be bad, but it's pretty hard to love a wasp. In the spring they are industrious little gits, bringing up the wasp babies and catching and eating many a caterpillar and maggot, helping the gardener (though causing many butterfly tears no doubt as yet another baby is carried off to the paper house of death) Photo Copyright: viktor2013 / 123RF Stock Photo   In the summer they potter about looking for fruit and as the year progresses they become the total pain in the arses we all know and hate. Inebriated on fermented apple, and searching for a fight like the angry drunks they are, they waiver about the place indecisively looking for places to land. Drawn as they are to meat (I once watched amazed as one tried and almost succeeded to fly off with a piece of steak twice...

Well it's late but I'm sneaking in a Tuesday tip! I apologise for the lack of posts - I've been under canvas and enjoying myself (so I'm not *that* sorry) at various festivals - posts about them to come! But Today's Tuesday Tip is all about positioning. When pitching a tent there are obvious things to try for such as a flat level area (at a festival this is often not possible and at Camp Bestival we camped on the side of a hill - ensuring we slept with the foot of our beds down the hill), I also favour not camping in a gully if there is even a chance of rain (or the chance of a leaking portable toilet at a festival!) yet not on the very top of a hill either as that can be a windy spot and there is always the thought of storms and lightning... On a hill Trees are another thing to steer safe of , try to pitch in the lee of a hedge or trees but not so close they can be blown on top of you or a stray branch could fall and damage the tent or you! At Wilder...

Only 20 years ago I had to travel to Wales to see red kites. A majestic looking bird that feeds mainly on carrion and was once common all over London, and other cities where refuse was to be found! After years of persecution they had become extinct in England. Then in 1989 and over the next few years 90 birds were reintroduced to England from Spanish stock. The birds were released in the Chilterns, and initially placed into wooden release pens on the Oxfordshire/Buckinghamshire border before being set free. The first successful breeding in the Chilterns took place in 1992, and since then numbers have steadily increased to approximately 400/500 breeding pairs. If you drive the M40 you will see red kites. Other reintroduction programs continue but all are in the midlands and north of England and Scotland. So I was thrilled to see a red kite on my way to work this morning. I live on the South coast and although we have lots of buzzards now, I’ve never seen a red kite this far sou...

My walk in the bluebells woods reminded me of a story from my childhood, something my grandfather told me on our walks in the woods years ago. Long ago when the world was far less complicated than it is today the fairies were up to mischief. The fair folk have always loved tricks and they love to cause trouble so it should come as no surprise that they took great delight in teasing the centipede. The centipede struggled each morning to put on all of his shoes, it took him until nearly lunchtime to even be ready to go out for morning tea with his lady friend, what with sorting all the shoes and lacing them all onto his little feet. So the fairies thought it was terribly funny to hide his shoes! Bluebells They hid them at first all over his little centipede house, but later they went as far as the stream, making the poor centipede have to walk all in the damp mud in his stocking feet! They were such bad fairies, and how they giggled when they watched him from behind the bluebel...

I don't know where you live, but here Monday started with gorgeous weather. As it is spring and I live relatively close to woodland, my husband and I decided to talk a walk in the woods to look at the bluebells. We were not disappointed. It was a perfect morning, lovely lighting through dappled trees, bird song, and spring flowers. We saw so many flowers that I have made a list to give you an idea of what you look for if you go out in the next few weeks. If you have children (and maybe even if you don't) an I-Spy or other spotter book can make a walk fun, definitely grab yourself some sort of identification book, you can borrow them free from libraries as well as buying them. Or take a picture of each flower you see (I took quite a few) and use the internet to identify them when you get home. There is charming folklore about many English plants (more of that in later posts) So here is my walk in pictures... And we saw a huge long list of f...

A small post today. I don’t seem to be out and about much despite the lovely spring weather. But I have had the joy of a lot of wildlife in the garden. We have regular visitors of the usual small birds to the bird feeders, robins (we have one that has learned to hover to get at the seeds), green finches, a variety of tits and also more sparrows than I’ve seen in a while. The ‘less than neat’ borders in the garden attract the ‘rummagers’ of the bird world, so we have blackbirds and the occasional thrush. The robin gets into the undergrowth too, and some plump wood pigeons patrol our lawn. The bid baths (various odd water filled objects, with and without stones in for the smaller birds to perch on) have been popular with even a large crow having a splashy bath in the week. I have seen fewer magpies around lately, but they may be nesting. We have two or three jays visiting regularly though so we are still a popular garden with the corvids.  The squirrels are still enjoying...