The Doctor Who Experience

During the Christmas holidays we surprised Lucas with a trip to the Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff.  (Although, he worked out where we were going shortly after we passed the sign for Newport through a series of deductions that were Sherlock-worthy (and mildly annoying)).  Brace yourselves for epic (and yes, belated) geeky pic-spam!

The entrance hall of the Experience has a selection of props from the show, some classic and and some very, very new ones.  We were incredibly excited to see Handles on display, only a couple of weeks after the Christmas special!

If you happen to find yourself visiting on a busy day then it gives you something to ooh and aah over while you wait for the Interactive Adventure to begin.

Handles--probably the Doctor's longest-serving Companion

The Moment

"Spoilers, sweetie."

Unfortunately no photos are allowed inside the interactive adventure, but having done it twice, I can tell you that it is awesome!  I really, really don't want to spoil the fun, so you'll simply have to take a trip to Cardiff yourself.  Now, if you want to adventure through time and space with the Eleventh Doctor, you'll have to be quick.  The Experience closes on the 1st of September so that it can regenerate into an all-new adventure with Twelve.  I expect the exhibit hall will also get a swift update!

Eleven, in wax.

One of the first things we saw when we walked into the exhibit hall was a replica of the First Doctor's TARDIS console, used in the filming of the excellent An Adventure in Time and Space drama last year.

The First Doctor's TARDIS

I pored over the display of sonic screwdrivers and TARDIS keys for a while.  I love that while all the signs are in Welsh as well as English, sonic screwdriver is the same in both languages!

I love the display of the Doctor's costumes, all laid out in order.  There are also plenty of companion costumes, although mainly from the new series, which is fair enough as those costumes probably weren't preserved!

The Second Doctor also felt that bowties were cool, although not quite in those words.

K-9 was looking most dapper

There was a spot of bother with one of the TARDIS consoles.  Luckily Lucas and Dave were on-hand with sonics to sort it all out!

There are so many wonderful prop displays in the exhibit hall; I could post a hundred photos and still not scratch the surface.  So I'm going to cherry-pick my favourites to finish with.

The Doctor's cradle, just beautiful design,

Special Weapons Dalek

"Don't blink."

We had a great time at the Doctor Who Experience, especially Lucas who bounced excitedly between exhibits, operated a Dalek, and hid behind me to escape from the Weeping Angels!  (Thank goodness they didn't have any children in gas masks otherwise I'd have tried to hide behind him!)  We'll definitely be back for the Capaldi adventure and to see all the lovely new props that keep being added.

If you love Doctor Who and haven't gone yet, then you absolutely must go!!  In fact...run!

"I'm the Doctor, nice to meet you.  Now...run!"

PYO strawberries at Chosen Hill Farm

This year we spent our wedding anniversary picking our own strawberries at Chosen Hill farm near Chew Magna.  Not quite our usual anniversary celebration of a table somewhere fancy and gorging on amazing food, but, this was just as good and we had so much fun in the sunshine!

Chosen Hill farm is tucked away, up a hill overlooking Chew Valley lake.  The views are spectacular--I bet it looks amazing in autumn with all the trees ablaze with colour.  With the perfect growing weather we've had recently, it's really hard to spot the lake with the trees sprawling everywhere!

Strawberries on tables!

One of the nicest things about Chosen Hill is that they grow a lot of their strawberries up on tables to make strawberry picking as accessible as possible.  It's also rather nice for those of us who remember just how back-breaking traditional strawberry picking is!

Stepping into the strawberry field was an incredible experience; the rich and heady scent of ripe strawberries settled around us like the most delicious blanket imaginable.  I'm sure that alone made us keep picking and picking and picking.  And when we tasted a berry each, well...we nearly went back for a second basket!

Romance abounded in the field--Dave found a heart-shaped strawberry and presented it to me.

There were some monstrously large berries, so large that their weight was ripping them away from their stems.  I suppose they could have been full of magic, like Roald Dahl's giant peach... We stuck to smaller berries who were perfectly ripe and ready to feast upon (and turn into jam, but that's a story for another day).

The farm shop handily sells local cream and meringues so that you can make an almost instant Eton Mess or pavlova--what a wonderful idea!  We stocked up on both and that evening Dave made me a gorgeous Eton Mess, lightly tinted pink with strawberry juice.

I'd thoroughly recommend Chosen Hill farm for PYO fruit.  The flavour of the strawberries we picked utterly blew away any supermarket berry and were better than I've had in many a starred restaurant, too.  We ventured into the raspberry canes--these smelled amazing, too--and had a look for gooseberries so that Lucas could see what they looked like.  They have a really good variety of fruit, with some that I'd never tasted before, too.  I could happily spend a day there, picking fruit and then taking it all home to make jam!

Elderflower Cordial

Every year I promise myself that I'll make my own elderflower cordial, and every year I promptly forget until the leaves are turning gold and I'm left kicking myself for being an idiot.

This year I vowed that things would be different.  I would make that bottle of cordial and it would be awesome.  So I went out on an elderflower foraging walk with my friend Claire.  We scoured the banks of the duck pond near school only to discover that the council had ripped all the bushes out along with the brambles, leaving behind a swathe of opportunist jagged, green nettles.  As much as I'm growing to love foraging, I don't think I'll be making nettle soup any time soon!

So we started walking the lanes near school and eventually found a lone elder bush.  Well, more of a tree, really.  The only trouble was that someone had beaten us to it and all the lower branches were stripped bare.  After jumping up and down, snipping wildly at far-away blooms with my longest pair of scissors like a crazed Edward Scissorhands, we admitted defeat and Claire popped home for a step-ladder.  Things went much better after that!

© Julochka via flickr

Sadly we only managed to reach eight heads so I headed to a park and managed to snag another two heads of flowers with my umbrella.  Not quite the romantic basketful that I had in mind!  Enough, however, for a half-batch...

I prettied up my bottle of cordial with this gorgeous label generously created by Holly at Hollytron Blogs.  I didn't have any proper sticky-back label paper to use, so I printed it out on regular paper and used Power Pritt (the grey one) to stick it on.

I'm so pleased that I finally got round to making my own cordial.  It's just as good as Bottlegreen's and so much cheaper, plus there's the satisfaction of making it yourself!  I've been experimenting with it in cake, drinking it over plenty of ice, and I've also had fun trying out cocktails.

This little beauty is vodka, a couple of slices of chopped cucumber lightly muddled with the vodka, ice, a dash of cordial and all topped up with lemonade.  (I have a sweet tooth, but tonic water would probably work well.)  Cucumber and elderflower goes amazingly well together!   No proper measurements, I'm afraid...I put a couple of fingers of vodka in a jam jar--why yes, I have succumbed to this hipster trend--and went from there.  So good.

Elderflower season is over in my part of the country, but if you're further north then you might strike it lucky and find some elderflowers blooming in a park.  If you do, go forth and make your own little bottle of summery sunshine!

Elderflower Cordial

from Countryfile

Notes: I've read that a lot of people have difficulty getting hold of citric acid these days.  (Apparently Boots don't sell it any more as drug addicts use it to cut heroin and cocaine!!)  I ordered a 50g box from my local independent pharmacy, and you can also get it from wine or beer-making shops.  Of course, Amazon sell it too.  (Is there anything they don't carry?)

900g caster sugar
600ml boiling water
30g citric acid
1 lemon, unwaxed
10-15 heads of elderflowers--do not wash. Pick in the morning on a dry, sunny day.  Check for insects and pick them off before using!

Place the sugar into a large bowl.  Pour over the boiling water and stir until all the sugar is dissolved.  Add the citric acid and allow to cool for about 10 minutes.

Grate the lemon zest directly into the syrup, then slice the lemon thinly and add the slices to the syrup, too.  Place the elderflower heads in the syrup, ensuring that all the flowers are immersed.  I left the stems sticking out as some recipes say that they add a bitter flavour.  Cover with clingfilm and leave to steep for 24 hours.  (Some of the flowers may turn brown and look yucky; it's normal.)

Strain through a sterilised muslin into a sterilised jug.  (A still-hot jug straight out of the dishwasher will be fine, and pour a kettle-full of boiling water over the muslin or even a clean tea towel.  You want everything to be squeaky clean so that the cordial will last for as long as possible.)  Fill sterilised bottle(s) with the cordial and add a label.  Store in the fridge.

Le Weekend (in pictures)

I spent Saturday manning (womanning?) the book stall at the PTA summer fete with my friend Claire.  Luckily after some apocalyptic rain during set-up the rain gracefully agreed to hold off for a couple of hours while the fete itself was on.  (Which gave me just long enough to dry out.)  Lucas joined me for a stint and turned out to be an enthusiastic (and rather successful) salesman!  My crocheted flowers were a hit with the girls, and made our stall look extra-pretty.

Sunday was Bristol's first Armed Forces Day celebration in Queen Square.  We always go to the one up in Staple Hill but since (a) the weather was crap and (b) it was on the same day as the school fete, we opted for the one in the city centre.

I got to play dress-up with the Royal Marines and donned a fully-loaded bergen (36kg/80lb) and carried a general purpose machine gun.  I walked a little and could probably have made it round the square once, but I absolutely cannot imagine being fit and strong enough to do the 12-mile qualifying march with all that weight.  I didn't even have half of the kit on!  The Sergeant I spoke to said that they typically wear 100kg of gear.  Imagine getting up in the morning for work and slinging a whole extra person on your back?!

I have so much respect for our Armed Forces...they do the world's hardest jobs in highly unpleasant conditions and for the most part, come out smiling.

Lucas tried out a few guns, but decided that a grenade launcher was more his style as it was "cooler" than a machine gun.  He was fascinated to learn that army surveillance drones are steered with an X-box controller!  Mind you, he still wants to be a professional footballer who drives a F1 car in his spare time, so I don't need to fret about him going off to war.  (Especially as he decided that two sports bags were too heavy for him and delegated to me...)

We lounged around in the deckchairs at @Bristol for a while, eating ice-cream and watching science videos on the big screen--no tennis! Shocking!--before heading home.

And because any decent weekend must involve cake, I baked some salted caramel cupcakes.  OMG...so good!

What did you get up to this weekend?

Field of crimson

"Many scarlet poppies blossomed all about across the meadows that were so brilliant in colour they almost dazzled Dorothy's eyes. "Aren't they beautiful?" the girl asked, as she breathed in the spicy scent of the bright flowers."
―The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

Crimson flowers, gently rippling in the breeze, too many to count...a breathtaking sight...
Luckily these poppies didn't send any of us to sleep.  Instead they were pretty damn uplifting.  I've never seen so many poppies in my life, and just look how tall they are!  Wading through hip-deep poppies, some taller than Lucas, was quite the experience.  We kept to the little paths already trodden in the field and just admired.
Such an amazing place.  It might even be better than the bluebell woods of my dreams...
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Foraging for Wild Garlic

A few weeks ago, I dragged Dave and Lucas out for an early morning walk in the woods to forage some wild garlic.  After discovering a veritable sea of wild garlic at Arnos Vale Cemetery, I've had it on my mind ever since.  Arnos Vale were quite happy for me to pick their wild garlic, but it felt a bit wrong to pick it from the old graves it was growing over--it would be like eating our ancestors--so I asked around and came up with Baddock's Wood in Westbury-on-Trym as a prime spot for wild garlic.

They weren't kidding.  There was wild garlic as far as the eye could see!

I was planning to do all the picking myself, but Lucas got really enthusiastic about it so I let him carry on and watched as he scrambled up and down slopes looking for the biggest, glossiest leaves he could find.  He filled a carrier bag--I really need to get a trug for more idyllic foraging gear--before we called it a day and zoomed home to turn the leaves into pesto.  (The leaves wilt quickly, so ideally need to be used within an hour.)

Astonishingly, Lucas turned out to be the biggest fan of the wild garlic pesto!  He ate loads of it, slathered in ham sandwiches in place of chutney or mustard, tossed into gnocchi and in pasta, too.  Dave and I liked it, but by comparison, Lucas was nuts about it!  Maybe it was because he foraged for it himself?  Either way, I'm very proud of my little gourmet!

Bouquet of wild garlic flowers

Wild Garlic Pesto

For every 100g of wild garlic leaves
150ml olive oil
1 small clove of garlic
50g toasted pine nuts
50g grated parmesan
salt and pepper

Check through the wild garlic leaves, picking out the ones that are nibbled, brown at the edges, or have an excess of nature on them, ie bird poo.  Put in a colander and wash really well.

Fill a large bowl with ice cold water. Blanch the wild garlic for 30 seconds in a pan of boiling water. Drain and plunge into the cold water until cool.  Drain and then dry on a clean tea towel.

Chop the wild garlic roughly and put in a blender or food processor.  Add the rest of the ingredients and blitz until a paste forms.  Taste and adjust seasoning as required.

Use in exactly the same way as regular basil pesto!  Store in the fridge and eat within a week.

The end of the bluebell season

Avon Valley Woodlands

One of my dreams has long been to visit a bluebell wood.  You know the sort of thing, a veritable carpet of bluebells as far as the eye can see and the air thick and heady with their fragrance...

After some fruitless searching in the woods behind our house, finding only a few clumps of bluebells, I asked on Facebook and was directed to Avon Valley Woodlands in Hanham.

Avon Valley Woodlands seems to be a bit of a secret place.  I mentioned it to a few people and they'd never heard of it, but undeterred I plugged the details into Google Maps and drove there early one morning before the sun got too strong.

I walked through lush green tree tunnels, past tall, sculptural cow parsley which almost sparkled in the early sun.  I wished afterwards that I'd picked an armful and put them in a vase at home.  It might be a weed, but it's still rather beautiful.

When I spotted my first bluebell, I realised I was too late.  The bluebells were fading.  Still beautiful, but definitely past their prime.  I kept walking down the steep and winding path and after a few turns I came across these beauties.

I love how they're clustered around the base of the twisted tree trunks.  So pretty!  It's not quite the purple carpet I had hoped for, but it's certainly the closest I've ever gotten to my dream.

Apparently there were even more spectacular bluebells further into the woods by some memorial benches, but by the time I was told that, bluebell season was firmly over for another year.  I'll have to take more walks in the woods next spring to find them!

Did you find any beautiful bluebells this year?

Avon Valley Woodlands
off Castle Farm Road, Hanham, Bristol.
Information leaflet and map

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Blogtacular!

Last weekend I went to my first blog conference.  I didn't go in small...I started off with Blogtacular--talk about starting with a bang!!  Blogtacular was more than just an amazing blog conference.  It was also incredibly motivational and inspirational on a very personal level.

I came to Blogtacular a bag of nerves, full of anxieties about meeting so many new people--would they like me, was I dressed okay, did I fit in, would they realise I was there and throw me out?--and left feeling totally empowered, determined, fierce and valued.  That is probably the hippiest sentence I have ever written, but it's all true!

Seeking safety in numbers, I met up with Lucy from London Loafing for a drink before heading to Blogtacular.  I've been chatting with Lucy for what seems like forever--in the good way, I should add--and it was lovely to meet her and her family!

The opening keynote from Joy Cho of Oh Joy! fame was spot-on.  She was so inspirational and it was fascinating to hear about how her entrepreneurial spirit developed over the years from selling calligraphy services and banana bread as a teenager, to starting her own design businesses.  Her talk left me eager for more!

Saturday was a whirlwind of amazing presentations.  From the colourful passion of Will Taylor from Bright Bazaar, to Anne Ditmeyer's insistence that we get paid for our work, to Yvonne from Yvestown clear love of her blog and the community of friends that she draws upon to help her make it even more awesome.  It was clear that it was and passion and hard work that had brought major success to our speakers.

One of the presentations I was particularly keen to attend was Tilly Walnes and Vicky Orchard's "From Blog to Book".  I've wanted to write a book for years so took copious notes and I'm now toying with the idea of kicking things off with a little eBook... It's a bit scary, but one of the Big Lessons I took away from Blogtacular was to do things that scare you, because they'll reap the most rewards.

Tilly had so much great advice and it was wonderful to get advice directly from an editor.  My head is buzzing with possibilities!!  I had a very quick chat with Tilly later on and she's just as lovely as she seems.  Lucas loved her on the Sewing Bee and was tremendously jealous when he heard.

I loved Ellie Tennant's hands-on styling workshop.  It was fascinating to hear about location houses that the professionals use for shoots--I'm going to be paying close attention to interiors magazines from now on to pick them out--that get repainted to their original colours at the end of every day.  At the end of the year they have to chip off over a centimetre of paint and re-plaster the walls!  Aside from fun anecdotes like that, I also learned about colour triangles, layering the photograph, telling a story with it, and wabi sabi, the beauty in imperfection.  Ellie bravely let us loose with the beautiful collection of props and flowers.  This is what Rhiannon and I came up with.

Really need to track down a set of those enamel measuring cups!

During the breaks I wandered around the Marketplace, chatting with bloggers as I went.  I managed to resist buying some books--I've spent hours trying to cull my collection--but the strawberry jam at  The Hambledon practically had my name written on it.  I was thrilled to discover one of their gorgeous pink honeycomb balls in my goodie bag when I got home.  I may well be making a pilgrimage to their shop of delights in the near future...

The closing keynote speaker was Natalie Lue of Baggage Reclaim and Bambino Goodies.  She had so many words of wisdom, not just for blogging but for life in general.  I quite liked this: "Blogging challenges you to become the person you are meant to be."  She talked a lot about how we spend too much time obsessing over failures and not about all the amazing things we've achieved in our lives.  I am particularly guilty of this.  Everything Natalie said was either a massive kick up the ass for me or tremendously inspiring.  If you ever get a chance to hear her speak, take it.  She's a dynamic and exciting speaker with a massive amount of presence.

I met so many lovely people, too many to mention them all, but a special mention for these ladies.  A big hello to Lucy from London Loafing who is absolutely awesome, Rhiannon my workshop partner, Lauren from Natural Wedding blog, and my fellow Bristol blogger Gemma from Hello It's Gemma.

And finally, it was a real honour to visit the Royal Institute.  I've watched the Christmas Lectures for years and as a certified science geek--I've got the degree parchment to prove it--it was incredible to visit such an old and important scientific institution.  Absolutely hallowed ground for me.  I had a wonderful time wandering around during one of the coffee breaks and geeking out and soaking up all the history.

I'll be there next year--will you?

Some of the images in this post are the official Blogtacular photos, taken by Will Ireland and kindly provided by Mollie Makes.

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