A Smashing Time

At last I am back on line having spent several weeks doing my best to get rid of all my IT technology. How disabling! First the dear small dog ate my mobile. That is to say when I came down one morning there were the deconstructed bits in her bed. No apparent ill effects from mangling the battery glad to say. I replaced that and back in action. We had a great 2 night break in Tavistock at the Bedford Hotel a wonderful old place where neither the corridors or the walls are level but the food was excellent and the staff charming. Midnight mass in the church 100m from the hotel was magical with the church lit by real candles such a difference. Full of people standing room only.  We spent 2 days walking on Dratmoor sometimes in low cloud but we all enjoyed it enormously.  On Christmas Day we went up to the sister Hotel Two Bridges and walked up to the old oak wood of stunted trees. A good prelude to a large lunch and back to the Two Bridges for coffee. Not really possible as they had had a fuse go and only just sorted out the problem by 11am. What a terrible thing to happen to an hotel on Christmas morning. No power!

Not our fortunately and lunch was very good except why the chef or whoever plated up felt that it was necessary, after making excellent crispy roast potatoes, to cover them in turkey and make them soggy I cannot imagine. A lack of understanding of the basics. I love Christmas pudding but hate brandy butter/sauce etc and sadly the poor pudding had been drowned in a very sweet overbearing sauce. That aside it was a very good lunch and they can be forgiven the detail as it stopped me eating far too much!

We headed home on Boxing Day via a pub for lunch in Woodbury Salterton. Excellent. We had been given the 'Good Pub Guide' and found it there.

On getting home yet again...no phone. Sat down to write a bit of blog and caught the mains lead in my foot. Disaster hard disc destroyed. All documents and photos lost. I'd only backed up to the hard disc...Serious mistake. I now have a new hard disc but fidning all my user names and passwords has been a marathon task. As for the info the geeks are trying to reconstruct but I fear they may not be able to. I must get an external hard disc NOW!

As to the phone I now have an android as have been challenged to be able to use it and it has a GPS so I can find it if it gets lost so they say.  I found the other one eventually when the floods receded. Not a well phone.

LET THE VILLAGE BUY A WOOD!

Long Ashton, a very long village by Bristol, has just found that a wood in the village is up for sale, last bids tomorrow morning.  We are trying to raise £100,000 by then! Its all quite exciting as we have only had 4 days to bring this bid to reality. £50,000 and rising will we make it?

Ancient Woodland..A chance for all the village to learn old woodcraft, copppicing and the like. Lots of exploration possible. Easy learning in a natural environment what could be better. How much fun is a wood?         Endless.

We have been trying to buy these woods for the village for 40 years. Now is the moment!  We are trying to alert all of Long Ashton to this fantastic opportunity to get a piece of old England for everyone.  Henny was on Radio Bristol this am.

It would be great if it works!!

 

Among all this we are still crushing apples. A great season all who come are so pleased not to be wasting their apples. The juice is sweeter now and even the Bramley cookers are tasting good. We have crushed our pears, apples and have added some home grown beetroot. that 'superfood' which gives a wonderful colour to the juice, sweetens it up and gives a certain earthiness to it.  I even ate a ripe blackberry coming down from the hen palace yesterday. David has done a wonderful job on the grass roofed abode and the girl's are coming up the valley at the end of the week to take up residence.

The B n B is ticking over, very cosy with heating and after a few trips through the rest of the house I think I'll move in!

Loads of apples

In the last 6 weeks the apples pressing business our 'Court' industry has been working overtime. Not something to suit all as we are madly busy for 2 months then nothing til next year's harvest. One does not the n get bored of apples and the heady scent of juice, the roar of the chopper, watching juice run down the press adn feeling good that so many apples are not being wasted.  The wasps have had a field day and buzz around while the dogs think that its great sport to try and catch them. From time to time they get stung but seem to mind not at all, just shaking their heads and carrying on regardless. Pip is curled up behind me now getting ready for a days apple pick up and 2 builder's bags of apples arrived for pressing.  We have had some wonderful feedback from customers. 'Wonderful labels! Took a bottle to a dinner party last night was a HUGE success. Very very delicious. Such fun.'  Well it is down to the quality of the apples and theirs were excellent so that makes our job easier but it was the first time that all their apples had been used and they had also had a good pick.  They will keep (if not drunk) for a year or two.  So for me a good ethical business.

French guests

We have just had some delightful guests to stay who came for their wedding anniversary. Specificaly to visit Casa Mia an Italian restaurant in Bristol which has a Michelin Star. Luckily I asked them if they knew how to get there and they happily produced a google map (clearly pleased with their preparation and rightly so, they had seen the restaurant on tv and decided it was the place to visit). Unfortunately google were not aware that one of the major roads that they were directing them to take has been closed for well over a year and for the forseable future. We lent them a street map of Bristol, suggested another route and off they went. Good thing, had they tried the google route they would have had to go at least another 6 miles and might still be searching for their supper.

Next day they reported that they had had a lovely time and showed us photos of the different tasting dishes that they had eaten.  It looked very interesting the final course full of dry ice and funstuff which had rounded off the evening well.  It just happened that it was the Bristol half marathon when they headed home. One of my liveries had taken hours to get out of Bristol as many roads were closed so I suggested to our guests that again they should ignore google and take another route back to London. Nothing like a bit of local knowledge.

mountain bikes, woods and co

So out for a ride with my own horse and two others we are picking our wayalong the deer trail  through the newly scattered brash from the tree harvesting that has been going on in Ashton Hill Woods, the forestry above Gatcombe. There hard at work with a couple of spades are three young men. Mountain bikers they tell me, they are not 'we only do jumps'. This is apparently not the same as down hill. 'You simply don't understand, it's about the adrenalin rush. The jumps just give us such a rush. You wouldn't understand'.  Well he was speaking to one of the people who just might. I know that I am now old (in his terms) and cranky, but age doesn't allow you to forget the rush of riding fixed fences at speed, point to pointing, recovering from near falls, as Lorna Clarke puts it 'getting off' with some mad risk that one takes in the heat of competition.  No young man, No idea.

I put it to him that many people use the woods and its not for their exclusive use. He felt that there should be; give way to bikes, that walkers, riders of a slower form be they bikes or horses, pushers of prams and dogs should all fall back into the undergrowth to feed their desire for an adrenalin rush. Hmmm. I suggested that the accident in Still Woods above Long Ashton had led to there being closed as the person injured had been too difficult to get out. To my amazement one of them admitted that it had been him. That he had had a broken arm and that his friends had called the air ambulance to help him but that when it could not reach him he had wlked out. Why on earth hadn't he done that in the first place? I am a great believer that if you do a dangerous sport then you suffer the consequences, falls and injuries, with as much dignity and little hassle to those who have to look after you as possible. Long ago my horse bolted when a poacher fired a gun nearby while I was in the woods. The horse fell, trampled me when she got up and ran off leaving me with 2 broken ribs. So what do you do? Walk home, go looking. Last thing that you want to do, as collapse with many pain  killers and feel sorry for yourself is top of the agenda. Possible on a bike but not with a potentially injured animal who may also be causing a multiple pile up. We had a call from the police at 10.30pm she was near the motorway at Gordano. Get vet, stitch up leave with friend close by as too shocked and too late to move. Home 2am. Up 6 am fetch horse, work at 8.30 washed brushed and clean.  No excuse not to be at work. After all you could call the injury self inflicted! I am not alone, many of the people that I evented with appeared to have the same ideology. One comtemporary  rode round Burghley with a collar bone wired up. Fell off, broke the other one and completed the show jumping with both strapped. Now that I think is mad as with a fall you cannot be in the reckoning. But we admired the grit.

What a lot of softies some of these bikers must be. One had a fall the other day and just left his bike in the undergrowth no-one, neither him or his friends moved it for weeks. I believe that these bikes are quite expensive. But hey. He's hurt poor chap what does the bike matter.

Mid August

8.15am. Our guests breakfasted at 6 leaving for the airport in good time for the 10 minute journey and their flight to Dublin. As they said in their very king comments in our guest book. So easy for the airport and not under the flight path. We are so lucky on that one. Beds are changed and all would be bliss if it were not for the shower having inexplicably no cold feed.

Such are the travails of an old house. Where exactly does the cold water come from? Those in the know are long dead and those left are opening bath panels and pulling up floor boards. We have two days to get sorted before our next guests. Rather more time than when on an old boat chartering in the Caribbean. David sent me off snorkelling with the guests while he attempted to repair the 'black water' (no prizes for guessing what that is!) pump. A diaphragm affair that had come adrift from its mountings and a rather crucial ingredient of what is known on a boat as the 'heads'. He spent 2 hours upside down in the bilges while we meandered about on a reef watching brilliantly coulered small fish. A magic row of cuttle fish which reminded me of 'little maids all in a row'. On our return for tea and cake at 4pm all was working. He is a wonderful man and very good at cobbling things together with what we have. Easier here as we can at least go shopping for bits and pieces rather more easily.

des ja vue

Tonight David went missing and suddenly my mobile rang. text; 'a dog is attacking mr'. Mr is myIrish thoroughbred horse. He was being chased around the field by a collie and was in quite a state. Fortunately the collie scarpered when David yelled at him. We shall have to watch out for a repeat visit but... it reminded me of a dog attack years ago when we had a small holding near Bovey Tracey. I left the house one morning to be greeted by a neigh from my horse 'Bale' (Harper's Bazaar) this had to be bad news; she only ever made a noise when there was a problem, and there was. I went into her field to find that she had a huge gash down one side, her whole shoulder joint was exposed and she had further wounds to her sides and rump. After 24 years with me it was clearly the end of the road. We had a wonderful vet and he came and put her down. Her two daughters came and supported her in her distress and after we had destroyed her they stood over her for the rest of the day and over her grave that night. She had clearly been chased past something sharp and David went off to check on the rest of the stock. One other 2 year old was in distress and would not move otherwise they were all right. The vet considered that they had been chased probably by a dog or dogs. As we had seen three boxers chasing the chickens in the same field two nights before we were pretty sure who the culprits were. We taxed our neighbours with it and they were adamant that it was not the case. Two days later one of the boxers turned up with a very recently live lamb's leg in his mouth and there was no doubt.

The evening that they attacked and killed my wonderful horse that had taken me round Badminton and Burghleigh on two occassions was a wake. She had always been very much a product of the island of her birth, Ireland. Brave, clever, idiosyncratic and slightly nuts but fanatical. At 15.2 carrying 75 kg she had been fearless across country and did fences that some felt were unjumpable. Frank Wheldon thanked me for jumping the triple bounce dog kennel as if it was a small grid and she was pictured jumping the Normandy bank 'with a stride' apparently impossible, easily if for me in a rather heart stopping fashion. But all that was over. Wonderful friends from up the valley came down with their digger and we dug a hole to bury her in. A couple came down as planned from Hampshire to stay and we got stuck into the red wine. Several bottles later the filly wasn't looking to good. I think I was in shock at the whole day. I'd had a three hour lecture on marketing to give Thank god for John Harvey Jones and the VHS machine for providing most of that one, I was in shock at the turn of events.

At some point it was decided that the filly should go to Langford vet college to be operated on. We loaded her up met the vet at the top of Holden Hill and drove to Bristol University Vet school arriving at 3am. She was in distress and had terrible stats. We then drove home the adrenalin that had kept me going to try and save her rapidly deserted me and we stopped again at Taunton for more coffee. Getting back to the farm by 7am we just started the day with lots of bacon and egg and a dullness that suited the moment. The vet college rang to say that the filly had died on the operating table her whole alimentary canal, twisted beyond aid, by being chased over the fence and falling and struggling in the ditch. To dispel the mood we decided to go for a ride on Dartmoor. Got the lorry stuck en route and took hours to get disentangled. Definitely a weekend to forget. Reading David's text brought back the nightmare . How can people lose such control over their dogs? It also reminded me how completely careless people are when looking after themselves. No consideration whatever of the consequences of their actions. It can be very tiring. RIP Bale