Marvellous Miscellany

Seven things that you may or may not find interesting. But first, a picture.

Weekend Cottage 2 by Toby White. Note the numbers above the doors, the chimney (and are those solar panels?) on the roof, and on the right, a tap with hose attached. All his houses include this feature.

1. I have six growbags in the back of my car. This is the cheap and cheerful approach to starting a vegetable garden. Once the frost has finished, the plan is to fill them with courgettes, spring onions, rocket, green beans and tomatoes. Out of all those, tomatoes are the only ones I have grown before, but apparently they are all easy to cultivate.

Shiny seed packets!

And yes, I will take the growbags out of my car first. Unless the weather is so bad that I need an impromptu greenhouse solution, in which case mine's the vehicle with green beans hanging out the window.

2. Toby at dinner tonight: "I've tried the fishcakes and they're not good. And I have nothing to dip in my ketchup. So... I'll just have a bacon sandwich."

So I'm running a restaurant now?

(Since he actually did try the fishcakes twice, we compromised with a tuna sandwich, as long as he ate his peas.)

3. Recently I saw a man walking along the cold, muddy canal bank - barefoot. Apart from that, he was fully dressed, had a dog, and looked like any other man walking along the cold, muddy canal bank. Was he doing it for the health benefits? And are there any? I think if I tried that I'd be amputating my frostbitten toes at the end of the walk.

4. My latest recipe trial was peanut butter and orange cookies. I don't think I'll be sharing that one with you. They're OK, but as I said to Graham, they lacked something. He responded, "What, flavour?" Oh, that'd be it.

You can have a picture. They looked good.

5. Things that Theo likes doing that we don't like him doing, in order of disgustingness:
   - headbutting his reflection in the mirror
   - investigating the kitchen bin
   - peering into the toilet

6. Things that Theo likes doing that we don't like him doing, but are preferable to those other things so we let him do them anyway:
   - rearranging our carefully ordered boxes of CDs
   - emptying all the plastic boxes out of the kitchen cupboard
   - pressing all the buttons on the TV remote

7. I just found out that we will be able to see a 90% solar eclipse on the 20th of March! Weather permitting, of course (please please please let it be clear.) Googling "UK solar eclipse 2015" brings up several links to local newspapers, and I was amused to see that the one for my place of birth carried the heading, "Reading, Bracknell and Wokingham are set to be plunged into gloom on Friday, March 20." Meanwhile, the rest of the country will be enjoying a spectacular astronomical event.

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One hundred churches

About the middle of January, I was walking to school one afternoon when it occurred to me that I must have visited quite a few churches on my explorations. I started counting them. But I quickly ran out of fingers, so when I got home I plotted them on Google Maps. Not only was the number much higher than I was expecting, it was also tantalisingly close to one hundred. Only a few dozen to go. So of course, every walk since then has had to include at least one church! Last Monday I visited my hundredth church: St John the Baptist, Dethick. It was a beautiful little 13-century building with an unusual tower - I was glad it had claimed the 100 spot. I haven't been inside every church. Sometimes they were locked; sometimes I was in a hurry and didn't try the door. St Leonard's Church in Alton had bellringers practicing, and I almost interrupted a funeral when I stuck my head through the door of St Mary's, Marston-on-Dove. A few, such as St Oswald's, Ashbourne, and St Wys...

Derwent Valley Heritage Way: Steep drops ahead

It's been a long time since I fitted that much up and down into an eight-mile walk! 740m of steep climbs and steps. My legs were not very happy with me the next day. Between Matlock and Cromford, the Derwent River runs through a deep valley, with Matlock Bath - a landlocked town which pretends to be a seaside resort - down at the bottom. The ridge of high ground used to run all the way round to Scarthin Rock, cutting off Cromford from the rest of the valley, until somebody blasted a hole through it to build the A6. Matlock Bath: pavilion and amusement park I started in Cromford and climbed over the ridge at Harp Edge, then followed a path along through the woods, with the ground dropping sharply away to my right. There were a few small caves among the trees. At Upperwood someone had thoughtfully provided a bench. I wasn't in need of a rest just yet, though. In fact, I was feeling so bouncy that I went down an entirely unnecessary flight of steps, instead of staying on the reaso...

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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