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Weston’s Cider Mill

I’ve taken the week off work, for some much-needed down-time in between bids. I had made all sorts of plans to go out and do things, including a day-trip to Oxford where the Ashmolean museum has an interesting exhibition on about the discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb. However, I’m absolutely shattered, and have decided to stop pushing myself so hard, and actually have a week of lazy lie-ins and doing very little. So I’ve pretty much abandoned the idea of trekking all the way to Oxford, in favour of catching up on my sleep and pottering around locally.

This afternoon, on a bit of a whim, I went on a factory tour of Weston’s Cider Mill, in Much Marcle, about 10miles from me in deepest Herefordshire. Weston’s is a family run business – on I think its fourth generation by now – and despite growing fast they still keep to their roots. All of their apples come from the Three Counties, and they mature their cider in huge oak vats, some over a hundred years old. But they have also invested heavily in new equipment to enable them to expand, including huge stainless steel mixing and storage vats, and a bottling plant.

It was fascinating being taken on a factory tour around the site. They’re not actually pressing the apples at the moment as its still too early in the year, and the fruit hasn’t yet been harvested. But we were shown several incarnations of cider press – the original manual press used from the 1880s, a hydraulic press in service from 1924 to the 1990s, and the modern Swiss-made presses, one of which was so new it was still being commissioned. They were hurrying to get it ready for the harvest next month. The Weston’s site is on a slope, and it was interesting to see how they made use of gravity and spring water to wash the freshly-picked apples down the slope from the initial drop-off point to the pressing shed.

The tour finished with a cider tasting session in the inevitable gift shop, and I was really quite concerned that I’d have to drive home afterwards! The tea rooms must do roaring trade, as I wasn’t the only person to decide it was safer to sit for half an hour with a full cream tea before getting in the car!

27 08 2014 icyjumbo Day out Comments (2) Permalink

A Wet Bank Holiday

It’s Bank Holiday Monday, and it’s been pouring with rain all day. The cloud is so low that I can’t even see the ridge of the Malvern Hills, less than half a mile away. There was no point in spending my holiday getting soaked outdoors, so I have instead spent the day constructing a wooden model biplane that I was given last Christmas, and which I’ve deliberately saved for a wet weekend.

A wooden model biplane

A wooden model biplane

According to the instructions, it should only have taken me an hour to build. It’s quite simple – of the form “insert tab A into Slot B”. The parts came in the form of two sheets of very thin plywood, with the shapes stamped out of it. But the kit was actually quite poor quality – the plywood kept splitting, and the parts all needed significant sanding to get the tabs to fit into the appropriate slots. It also required glueing each joint to give it structural integrity, which meant that I had to let each joint dry before doing the next. So although it might only have been one hour of sitting at the dining room table working on it, it’s actually taken me most of the day. Which is fine – a constructive way to spend a sodden Bank Holiday!

25 08 2014 Gillian art
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Shopping locally

On Fridays, if it’s not raining, I like to try to finish work a bit early, leave my car on site and walk into the local village to shop for my dinner. Barnards Green is a flat, level, ten-minute walk away (unusual for somewhere as steep as Malvern!), and unlike the town centre, still has a full range of food shops. There is a butcher, two bakers, a fishmonger, a cheesemonger, and a greengrocers. The fishmongers in particular is not necessarily terribly well stocked, particularly at 3pm on a Friday, but what he has is fresh, and he’s very helpful. I rather like the challenge of putting together a meal from what I can buy from several of the shops, and having to improvise and adapt recipes depending on what I can get.

A few weeks ago, I came away with a handful of monkfish cheeks – not something that I would normally cook with, but actually very tasty and with absolutely no waste. This week I’ve got some fresh haddock (which the fishmonger de-skinned and boned for me), some local bacon, local stick beans, and a lemon. I shall make a variant of a Jamie Oliver recipe for fish steaks (he specifies cod, but I’m sure haddock will do just as well) baked with runner beans, garlic, bacon, lemon halves, pine nuts and olive oil. Very simple, but really tasty! I also got some local strawberries and cream for dessert, and a really tasty freshly-baked florentine from the bakery as a mid-afternoon treat.

There used to be a fuller range of specialist food shops in Malvern town centre, but I think the arrival of Waitrose was the last straw for both the butcher and the greengrocer, and they’ve both closed over the past few years. I do like the quality of the food Waitrose sells, but I also try to support the local independent shops too. Provided it’s not raining of course! If it is, then I’ll drive to Waitrose after all, rather than making a 30 minute round-trip walk and getting soaked!

22 08 2014 icyjumbo food Comments Off on Shopping locally Permalink

Sunday Lunch at the Inn at Welland

Christopher’s stepfather, Peter, usually goes to stay with friends in Wales for a week over the summer, and his route home to Kent takes him through Ledbury, only a few miles from me. We don’t see each other very often, so it makes sense for him to time his journey so that we can meet up for lunch. Last year we had thoroughly enjoyed a meal at the Inn at Welland, so we decided to go back there again.

The pub gets very busy, especially for Sunday Lunch, so I thought I’d better reserve a table. However, when I called them mid-week to do so, I couldn’t get anyone to answer the phone. Annoying, as I didn’t just want to turn up on spec without a reservation and get turned away. I had another look at their website to check I’d got the right phone number, and saw that they offered the option of booking on-line via something called OpenTable. I’d not come across that before, but I can report that it works well. I was able to choose a suitable time-slot, received a confirmatory email from the pub, plus a reminder yesterday that I was due to eat there today. I was pleased to see that when we arrived at the pub this lunch time, they were indeed expecting us. And it was just as well that we had booked, as by 2pm the place was heaving!

We both had the roast pork, with herby roast potatoes, cider-braised onions and mixed vegetables, followed by a freshly-baked cherry clafoutis. It was all delicious. I also thoroughly enjoyed the home-made fudge that came with the coffee. In fact, the only problem was the over-designed coffee cups, which looked very elegant but were only designed to be used right-handed. I am extremely left-handed and found the cup very awkward to drink out of. I commented on that to the bar-man, and he said that this has been raised before and they do actually keep some lefty-friendly mugs in stock for use on request. I shall have to remember to ask for one specially next time!

17 08 2014 icyjumbo Day out
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Wet Rot, Dry Rot and Lead Flashings

Well, three burly tattooed roofers have been here all week, fixing the roof of the extension, and their verdict is now in. A damp-proof course has been fitted under the bottom tile, all the way around the roof, to stop water soaking in to the barge boards. It doesn’t look much different to before, but should cure the underlying problem.

One gable end has been particularly badly affected by the poorly-constructed roof, as my painter suspected. The woodwork on left hand side of the gable is sopping wet, as water has been dripping onto it and soaking in, rather than flowing into the gutters. There is a bit of wet rot, but that is apparently easily dealt with. The builders have added some more leading to throw the rainwater away from the woodwork into the gutter, and that should solve the problem at source. The wood will (eventually) dry out, and is otherwise sound.

The bigger problem is with the right hand side of the gable. The same design flaw with the roof has led to the woodwork getting saturated, but in this case dry rot has set in. And that apparently is nasty. If the infected wood is not cut out and replaced, the fungal spores will spread and cause significantly more damage. The foreman tells me that currently the problem is contained, and that is partly due to the fact that the extension is built largely of stone, which is impervious to dry rot. The plan is to replace all the infected wood, fix the underlying problem with additional leading, and repaint the repaired sections. So the team will be back tomorrow (Saturday) and possibly into next week too.

They also found yet another dodgy construction on the roof – some lead flashing on the other side of the extension was incorrectly positioned and therefore not watertight. Although I’ve not spotted any leaks as a result, it’s apparently only a matter of time. Fortunately the dubious leading was spotted by the foreman, not by the boss who had given me the original quote. I’d asked the boss to check over the roof and quote to fix all visible problems, and he’d completely missed that one! So he agreed to fix it for me for free, given that the men were here all week anyway. That’s a bonus.

I’ve had a very busy week at work, and was rather hoping for a bit of a lie-in tomorrow. But that won’t be happening if I’ve got builders turning up for 9am! At least they take Sundays off……

15 08 2014 icyjumbo house Comments (1) Permalink

Scaffolding

I’m in the midst of the next chapter of the ongoing saga of my attempts to keep this house watertight. This time, it’s the poorly-constructed roof of the extension, which has been built with an inadequate overhang, and incorrectly sized and positioned bargeboards. Water has been dripping off the roof onto the cement under the eaves, and from there soaking into the woodwork behind the paint. The wood has been gently rotting away, much to the annoyance of my decorator, who took it as a personal insult and was worried I’d see it as a reflection of the quality of his preparation and painting! The extension is only about six years old, but I last saw the builder sitting in the chair next to Christopher in the chemotherapy unit at Worcester Hospital, and he died a few months later, so there’s no redress there. I suppose I could potentially go after the architect, who was meant to be project-managing the build, but I suspect I’ll get no joy there. Instead I’ve called in a reliable, though hardly inexpensive, firm of builders to get the roof fixed.

So yesterday, three burly tattooed roofers turned up and started erecting scaffolding around the extension. They are effectively fitting a “damp-proof course” all around the edge of the roof, to keep the water off the cement and the woodwork. That should fix the problem at source. The foreman explained to me in great detail this morning exactly what the problem was and what he’s doing to fix it, but unfortunately he used so much technical jargon that I only half understood him! However, I had a good look at the ongoing work when I got home this afternoon, and I can see what they’re doing and it looks like it should throw the water off the roof away from the woodwork.

I sometimes wonder whether I’m excessively unlucky in the number of times my roof leaks. But then I remind myself that my parents and sister are also on first name terms with their respective roofers, so perhaps it’s a family curse!

12 08 2014 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Scaffolding Permalink

Damascus Blades

Today is the fourth anniversary of Christopher’s death, and I wanted to commemorate it in an appropriate way.

For several years before he died, he had become very interested in “Damascene blades”, a form of steel used by the Saracens to make their scimitars. He went into far more technical detail than I was interested in, but apparently the steel was renowned for being both extremely sharp and also very tough. Normal carbon steel is either hard (hence sharp) but brittle, or tough and flexible but incapable of holding an edge. The ancient metalworkers in Damascus used an almost alchemical mixture of carbon steels to get the best of both worlds, and the resulting blades were beautiful, with exquisite patterns marking the boundaries between the grains. Christopher used to enjoy going round the armour sections in museums looking out for examples of these blades, which were sometimes also called “wootz steel”.

Unfortunately, the process by which they were made was lost, and modern metallurgists have been unable to recreate it. You can get something quite close to it though – Japanese Samurai swords have very similar properties of sharpness and toughness, and are made by a process called “pattern welding”. Bars of steel of different compositions are hammered together, folded, hammered again, folded again and the process repeated. The more folds, the higher quality the blade and the greater the skill of the craftsman. The process is often referred to as “modern Damascus blade technology”.

I don’t want a Samurai sword, but I did find an on-line supplier holding a clearance sale of kitchen knives with modern Damascus blades. I bought an 8″ chefs knife, with 67 folds in the blade, at over 60% off, which made it an entirely reasonable price. It arrived yesterday, and is a thing of beauty, with patterns in the blade that look like watered silk. Christopher would have loved it. It is phenomenally sharp though – I shall have to be extremely careful with it!

07 08 2014 icyjumbo status Comments (1) Permalink

Plant Catalogues

Plant Catalogues have started arriving through the post, trying to encourage me to splash out on plants and bulbs to plant this autumn. The photographs in the brochures are always alluring, and the prices often very attractive, but as always there is a catch.

I got caught out this spring, when I fell for an advert in the back of my Sunday paper for 9 fuchsias and I think 48 or possibly 72 perennials for a very good price. When they arrived I realised that the reason the price was so cheap was that I’d have to do almost all the work myself. The plants were tiny – to call them seedlings would be an exaggeration. They were barely a centimetre high and had no root system to speak of. They clearly had to be potted out and grown on (or whatever it is that gardeners do!) before they could be planted in the garden. That wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the original ad!

I have the very opposite of green fingers, don’t have a greenhouse, and my approach to gardening is thoroughly Darwinian – once in my garden, it’s the Survival of the Fittest. But it would have been a complete waste either to throw away all those young plants, or indeed to plant them out in my garden where they would be doomed to fail, without even a slight chance of survival. So I reluctantly bought a bag of potting compost, raided my garage for my stock of old plant pots, and turned my front porch into an impromptu greenhouse. I then promptly went on holiday to France and had to rope in a friend to keep the damn plants watered in my absence!

By the time I got back they were big enough to plant out, but one batch (I think salvias, but I’m not sure) didn’t even last 24 hours in the garden. Something – I’m not sure whether slugs or a rabbit – clearly found them absolutely delicious, and ate every single one. To be fair, the fuchsias seem to be doing ok in the bed underneath my apple trees. They have at least got some flowers on them and look moderately healthy. None of the other so-called bedding plants have flowered at all. Not one.

So when the plant catalogues arrived this week, I looked through them, admired the photos of big, thriving plants in full bloom, then put them straight in the recycling bin. I’m not falling for that again in a hurry!

03 08 2014 icyjumbo garden
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A second day in Colchester

My study day finished at 16:30, which was too late to head back all the way to Malvern that evening, especially as I was travelling by train. So I had planned to stay overnight in Colchester, and make my escape straight after breakfast the next morning. However, I found the study day so interesting, with so much to see particularly at the museum housed in Colchester Castle, that I decided to have another look at it the next morning at my own pace. The museum didn’t open until 10:00am, so I walked around the town at first, trying to put the bits and pieces I’d seen the previous day into context. When you’re walking around as part of a group, rather than navigating yourself, it’s more difficult to see how it all fits together.

The Balkerne Gate

The Balkerne Gate

Above is a photo of a Roman gate in the town walls, just a five minute walk from my hotel. Unfortunately, I was standing with my back to a planning monstrosity – a dual carriageway ring-road that cut the town in two. Our archaeologist guide was in despair about the planning blight that was inflicted on Colchester, though to be fair it’s by no means the only place that suffered. Worcester was also a victim of “progress”, probably at much the same time.

The Colchester Vase

The Colchester Vase

At ten o’clock on the dot I was at the entrance of the castle, looking to spend a couple of hours exploring the museum. It’s got one of the best collections of Romano-British artefacts in the country, and has only recently reopened after major refurbishment, having been the recipient of a major Lottery Fund grant to improve its displays and make it a more “interactive experience”, particularly for children. It seems to have worked – it was right at the end of school term, and there were several school parties having a whale of a time.

The previous day, our party was taken around the museum and shown the top ten or so most important treasures, including the “Colchester Vase” which has scenes of gladiators and hunting dogs. The top ten treasures were indeed very impressive, but I kept seeing stuff out of the corner of my eye that I wanted to have a proper look at – some Roman intaglios (carved gemstones from rings), some beautiful and delicate glassware, and a chariot-racing simulation. This last looked particularly fun – you took the place of one of the charioteers in a CGI simulation, and used reins to steer your four-horse team around several laps of the Colchester stadium, racing against computer-generated opposition. The kids were absolutely loving it, and several of us said over lunch on Monday that we’d been itching to throw them off and have a go ourselves!

On Tuesday I got my chance to have a proper look at all the things that had caught my eye on Monday, and I also managed to sneak a go on the chariot racing game. It was fun – I did better than the three-year old who had a turn before me! I managed a most impressive overtaking manoeuvre down the final straight and finished in second place!

I managed to “do” the museum thoroughly before lunch, and then caught an early afternoon train back to London, and thence onwards to Malvern. I’d spent longer in Colchester than I had expected to, but it was definitely worth a visit.

29 07 2014 Gillian Day out Comments (2) Permalink

A walk around Roman Colchester

Talking of staycations, I’ve recently returned from a long weekend in Colchester. It’s not somewhere that would normally be top of my list of places to visit – it’s a rather tired garrison town in Essex, a good five hour journey from Malvern. However, my favourite holiday company, Andante, were running one of their Study Days into the Roman history of Colchester, and it sounded just the sort of thing I’d enjoy.

Colchester Castle

Colchester Castle

The group of 20 of us met our tour manager and our archaeologist guide at 09:45 on Monday just outside Colchester Castle. This is the largest Norman keep in England, but (apart from its massive size) the first thing I noticed about it is that it is in the wrong place! There’s a pretty steep hill in the centre of Colchester – my hotel was on the top of it – and from a defensive point of view that’s where the castle ought to be. Instead, it was at the bottom of the hill. Odd. The second thing I noticed was that the masonry was stuffed full of what looked suspiciously like Roman bricks – they’re a very distinctive shape, like large tiles.  Both observations were soon explained by our archaeologist guide, who gave us a short introductory talk on the history of the castle. It was in fact built on the massive foundations of the 1st century AD Roman Temple of the Divine Claudius – the most important religious site in Roman Britain. We were taken down into the vaults under the castle to see these massive concrete foundations of the temple. In an area with very little good quality building stone, the Normans decided to reuse these foundations and build their castle on top, re-using much of the stone and tile from the Roman town as building material. The Romans had in fact “got it right” defensively, and built their fort further up the hill.

Not that that helped them very much in AD60, when Boudicca and the Iceni went on the rampage and burned Colchester to the ground, massacring tens of thousands of people, many of  whom had taken refuge in the temple. After a rather good pub lunch, we went down into the pub cellars and were shown an archaeological “section” preserved in the wall, which clearly showed a burned red layer – termed the “Boudiccan Destruction Layer” – tangible evidence of the fire and destruction. It was absolutely fascinating to see it. The Romans of course ruthlessly exacted their revenge on the Iceni, and rebuilt Colchester – this time with a defensive wall, which is still visible.

Starting gates of the Roman Circus

Starting gates of the Roman Circus

After lunch we walked around Colchester and saw I think just about every bit of visible Roman masonry. Our guide had a pocket full of keys, so we were taken into locked buildings and behind locked gates, to get privileged access to the remains of the theatre and parts of the Roman town that are closed to the general public. We also went exploring in the building site that was previously army land and is now being heavily redeveloped into housing as well as improved barracks for the soldiers. Archaeologists have recently identified there the first Roman chariot racing stadium, or circus, ever found in Britain. At the moment it’s in the middle of a chaotic building site, but the archaeologists are negotiating with the planners and developers to make sure that it will be as accessible as possible in the future.

Altogether, it was a really interesting day. I saw remains of Roman walls, city gates, town-houses, a theatre, the circus, an extremely early church, as well as lots of fascinating Romano-british artefacts in the castle museum and the Temple of Claudius. Our guide was previously the head of Colchester Museums, so he knew everyone and everything in and about Colchester, and was an ideal person to give us special access to the sites. In fact, my only complaint about the day was that there was so much to see, and it was all so interesting, that the day was rather rushed. I could have done with longer – and that’s not something I ever thought I’d say about Colchester!

26 07 2014 Gillian Day out Comments Off on A walk around Roman Colchester Permalink