Growing and making

After a long wait and some disappointment along the way, the tomato plants are finally bearing ripe fruit! We ceremonially shared the red one in this picture, and its neighbours are now looking ready to pluck. (They're cherry tomato plants, so yes, the fruit is meant to be that small.)

Unfortunately the leaves aren't doing so well, suffering from something-or-other that's making them wilt and die, one branch at a time. Tomatoes appear to suffer from a bewildering variety of pests and diseases, and I don't know what's wrong with mine this time. Sometimes I wonder if this gardening thing is worth the effort. We've hardly had an abundance of crop - though it is my first real try at growing vegetables, and in a very different climate as well. Maybe next time I should stick to prickly pears.

A friend organised a jewellery-making class recently, so I went along and managed to produce something wearable. In fact the process is very easy. You find yourself some pretty paper, and sandwich two pieces back-to-back between pieces of microscope slide. Then you wrap adhesive copper tape around the edges to hold it together. The fun part is using a soldering iron to spread solder all over the copper tape for the silver effect - and the hardest part is trying to get it smooth! Add a loop and chain, and bingo! you have a beautiful reversible pendant. It seems like an infinitely adaptable technique which requires relatively little equipment - definitely one to remember.

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Trent Valley: Twyford, both ways

To complete my loop along the Dove Valley from the mouth at Newton Solney up to Dovedale at Thorpe, across to Matlock on the Limestone Way , and back south along the Derwent Valley , I needed to walk one last section along the River Trent from Derwent Mouth to Repton. Originally I planned to do it in that direction. But for various reasons I ended up doing it the other way. The walk from Repton to Ingleby was completed weeks ago, at the beginning of June, and, for the sake of completeness, I also, later, walked from Findern to Twyford, on the other bank of the river. If I had done the walk sixty years or more ago, I could have crossed the river by ford or ferry at Twyford, and that would have been my most direct route home. the Trent at Twyford Walk 1: Repton to Ingleby Starting from the centre of Repton, I made my way out of the village and crossed the fields to Milton. Wystan Arboretum Milton The Trent Rivers Trust has been busy establishing the Trent Valley Way . This sect...

Trent Valley: the march of the pylons

In the 1980s, the River Trent supplied the cooling water for fifteen coal-fired power stations, each one gobbling up coal from the local mines and quenching its heat with gallons of river water. The area was known as Megawatt Valley . As the 20th century gave way to the 21st, the mines closed, the coal trains stopped running, and the iconic cooling towers, one by one, fell to the ground. The high-voltage electricity lines which connected the stations to the grid are still there, however, and they dominated the walk I did today. The stately silhouettes of pylons stalked across the landscape, carrying fizzing power lines which sliced up the sky. At one point, I was within view of two of the remaining sets of cooling towers. Diving further back into history, I parked by Swarkestone Lock on the Trent & Mersey Canal, walked past St James' Church, and arrived at Swarkestone Bridge, a 14th-century causeway which still, remarkably, carries traffic today. It was famously the southernmos...

The Churnet Way: a wonderful walk

The loop from Oakamoor to Froghall and back was one of the most enjoyable walks I've done in a long time. It had a bit of everything: woods, ponds, rivers and railways; steep climbs and sweeping views; an unusual church, an ex-industrial wharf, and, as a final bonus, car parks with toilets. Of course, the sunny weather helped too. I parked in Oakamoor and set off along a quiet lane called Stoney Dale. This is the route of the Churnet Way, which deviates away from the river for a couple of miles. After a while I turned right and climbed up through the woods on a gravelly path, then dropped down to the B5417. a spring in Oakamoor Crossing the road, I entered Hawksmoor Nature Reserve. It has some fine gateposts commemorating John Richard Beech Masefield, "a great naturalist". I found a photo of the opening of the gateway in 1933; unsurprisingly, the trees have grown a lot since then! A track took me down through the woods to East Wall Farm. Lovely view! Nice duck pond as ...

Martha's Marvellous Munchies

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