Birding by the Ponds

Hey Taff, in Wales I'm a Siff Saff! 

Amazing that these tiny birds, marginally bigger than a wren, have just flown in from Africa. Every year millions of Chiffchaffs fly north at the end of March and beginning of April. My early morning walks with Skip often include a circuit of Little Bradley Ponds, a Woodland Trust reserve which was formerly a series of clay pits now fully treed up and wilded. About a week ago I heard their unmistakeable 'chiff chaff' call and a couple of days ago I spotted several of these brave little birds flitting around. The photo is appropriately from the Woodland Trust website. Close to the reserve is a large pond known as the Bradley Fisheries, another favourite walking spot of ours. On an summer morning it's a peaceful scene, not quite deserted normally as occasional anglers sit on the bank rod in hand and lunch in basket.

It's a traditional ethnic hairstyle?

The fishing is unfortunately shut down for now due to social distancing so there's  been no one around just lately. Normally I'd just see a few Mallards and the odd Moorhen but the regular residents have now been joined by some pretty little Goosanders. I've seen three females, at least I think they're all ladies as the male birds have green heads - a bit more like Mallards. This photo is of a female and if somehow a male has managed to find his way here when I've not been looking perhaps there will be chicks in the near future - this should be interesting because the chicks, when they're young, go for rides on their mother's backs. Goosanders are not popular with anglers as they have quite an appetite and a bird like this can easily put away a carp of half a pound or more in weight!

Before the big lockdown!

No bull!

No it's not my photo but I spotted a couple of bullfinches this morning caught in the early morning sunlight and they were just stunning - I've seen bullfinches before but they always seemed to be a rather pinkish colour but maybe at the height of breeding season they are a fair bit brighter. Which didn't half brighten up the morning! This was the reddest bullfinch I could find online but this morning's birds seemed to be even more scarlet.

Still got a sprint finish!

Not knowing that this would be the last weekend for parkruns for a while we headed for Falmouth for a couple of days and zipped down to Helston for the beautiful Penrose parkrun. This heads out and back along a fairly flat trail up to the Penrose Estate which is a National Trust property and we both achieved pretty quick times, in fact at 32:20 Vicky got her best time since last July. We followed this up with breakfast at the Penrose House cafe. We were especially impressed with the camellias in bloom in the Falmouth area, the climate here seems to suit them down to the ground. Overall it's a pleasant town, perhaps it might be a bit overloaded with tourists in summer but at this time of year it was very relaxed. Falmouth was the scene of the Great Gold Dust Robbery of 1839, £47,000 worth of gold dust had been offloaded from a ship from Brazil and was bound for London. A young shipping clerk named Lewin Casper misappropriated the bullion but was quickly apprehended. Together with his father and accomplice he was transported to Tasmania and the unfortunate lad, despite being commended for good behaviour whilst in prison, died there of Scarlet fever after a couple of years. His father on the other hand was released after serving his time and built a successful business in Australia as a clockmaker.

Here we go, steady at the start!

I'd spotted a few days before that the Falmouth Half Marathon was due to take place on the Sunday.Rather optimistically I looked to see if there were any entries left and was surprised to find that I was able to get a place - perhaps runners had pulled out in anticipation of a crackdown on travel, etc. And as it turned out this was my last run for a while. Starting at the impressive Pendennnis Castle the race looped round the headland and snaked off into the countryside on some very undulating backroads. I stuck at it and was happy to find that I'd finished first V65 (beating all the V60 runners as well) and came away with a nice bottle of wine for my efforts. And so we're all locked down for some time now, parkruns were very quickly suspended and other races that I've been interested in are in abeyance.

Running round Madeira

Not sure what I had on my head here!

And so, back to the Funchal Half Marathon after a two year break. This time I came away with an interesting looking trophy for coming in second V65. It's a well run event, the course was altered slightly which was a benefit as it meant less running on cobbles in the old part of town. We met up with Julian and Jo from Macclesfield who also found themselves on the podium. Vicky didn't quite make the prize list but was happy to get through another half marathon in one piece. We thought we'd introduce Julian and Jo to the Fugicidade bar for a few local craft ales to  avoid the ubiquitous Madeiran Coral lager. On tired legs we walked into town to find the bar was shut on Sunday evenings - we had to settle for The Hole in One, not a golfer's pub but a bit of a tourist bar - not very busy at this time of year but still on the noisy side.

What do you think Betty?

Of course we had to go back to Fugicidade the following day and met up with the very pleasant and knowledgeable owner Duarte and his wife. Their business plan involves bringing over craft beers from Lisbon and one of their favourite breweries is Musa who supply fine ales with a musical theme. Regulars on tap at Fugicidade include Red Zeppelin and Born in the IPA which are a couple of American style IPA's. We were quite happy to drink the Frank APA (which was on tap rather than in bottle) - Frank, we were informed by Duarte, is named after Frank Zappa!

 I can see our house from here!

Here's the famous botanical gardens, photos of which feature in just about every travel brochure for Madeira. Even out of season the patchwork terrace garden looked good but the rest of the gardens were pretty interesting. We'd decided to walk up from town and it was certainly steep, glad we'd brought a backpack with our lunch in it! It's a little bit cooler up here than down in the port area so on a hot summer's day it must be a welcome relief from the heat. We took a minibus tour of the North of the island seeing as we got some cut price tickets - this was thanks to us sitting through a two hour presentation from a persistent Portugueser who was trying to sell us rooms at the Savoy Hotel for the rest of our lives! The tour was excellent though enabling us to see a different side of the country including banana trees planted on every available plot of land!

Fishy Madeira

Don't go too close!

They're fond of fish in Funchal. Here's one near the cruise ship terminal outside the CR7 Pestana Cristiano Ronaldo hotel made entirely of debris collected from the sea. From a culinary perspective we ate some wonderful fish including varieties that we are familiar with such as tuna, bream, sardines, hake, calamari, etc., but we also came across locally popular specialties such as Parrot Fish, Black Scabbard, Cusk, Corvina and Nile Perch. Thinking that these might all be locally caught we found that in fact only the Parrot Fish and the Black Scabbard came from Madeiran waters. The dastardly Black Scabbard is found deep down in the ocean and is a strange looking creature with big eyes and long sharp teeth - at the Funchal fish market we found the fishmongers cutting the heads off and they were selling them separately - must be for some tasty Portuguese fish stew!

Chips as well perhaps?

Here's a jolly row of Black Scabbard fish on the slab at the market with a tuna steak sitting behind them at the top of the picture. They are a good metre or so long so you can get plenty of the firm flesh from one fish and very tasty this is too. They live about a mile beneath the sea surface but rise up at night to feed on all sorts of other marine life, so presumably that's when the fishermen can snaffle them. The other strange fish that we found at our hotel restaurant was the Nile Perch, this is a large freshwater fish very common in lakes and rivers in Africa. Again it's a firm fleshed species and can reach 2 metres in length. One night the restaurant buffet display of fish one night featured just one of these huge things. Two of these could certainly feed a multitude!

Another strange export form America!

And along with the various interesting fish we were served a variety of vegetables, many of these are fairly commonplace such as carrots and potatoes but some foxed us a little. The Madeiran chefs are big into something they call Christophene, this consisted of pale green slices of something that looked like marrow but was firmer and a little chewy. On further investigation we found examples of Christophene at the local market, I thought I'd seen these before, they're called Chayote elsewhere and are widely used in South American cooking. America  is indeed where they originated - maybe the name of this vegetable is connected to Christopher Columbus? They are now grown worldwide and in Australia, where apples are hard to grow, McDonalds made their apple pies with Chayote instead of apple - or so the urban legend goes!

Getting Ready for Christmas

She's fourth from the left - if she'd put the beard on I wouldn't have known!

Vicky decided to do the local Bovey Tracey Santa Run instead of a parkrun - here she is in suitable attire with some of her friends. Several hundred santas and elves raised money for Whizzkids and the local lifesaving club.  This was a Santa Run with a difference as the run was followed by a dip in the open air swimming pool, heated specially for the occasion. Oh and lucky Vicky won a prize in the raffle - Mango Bathsalts!

Iceland's gone up in my estimation!

Two days to Christmas and we've got everything haven't we? Oh no where's the Christmas Pudding. Trip to Morrisons found us walking down an almost empty aisle looking up at some tiny, one mouthful puddings on the shelf. Oh the M and S Foodhall will have some surely..........nope, all that was left were some very expensive prosecco Christmas puddings. What a disaster, we walked back towards the car past Iceland feeling rather despondent, in desperation I turned back to Iceland and what a surprise! Not only did they have a great selection but there were plenty in store - we plumped for the brandy, sherry and cognac 12 month matured pud. Saved by Iceland!

Burning Cakes

What a nice day - not had many of these lately!

Whatever next? This is the Willow Cathedral at Longrun Meadow in Taunton. We'd just done a parkrun on a route that led straight past this tangle of willow trees artfully woven to form an outdoor function area. The willow was harvested from the Somerset Levels, an extensive area of marshland nearby, in the middle of the marshes is a bit of an island called Athelney - this is where King Alfred took refuge from the invading Vikings in the ninth century and burnt his cakes; however he returned rekindled in spirit to defeat his enemy and bring peace to the country. Needless to say I'd not spotted the Willow Cathedral as I ran past but we took Skip for a stroll round and here we found it. It must look quite different in its summer plumage - which of course gives us an excuse to come back, it's a nice flat run although the trail is a bit lumpy - there's a good cafe as well!

White Nancy, a famous Cheshire landmark,  sticks out on the top of Kerridge Ridge near Macclesfield and is visible for many miles across the Cheshire plain. It was built to commemorate the victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1812 and every year the Moscow Symphony Orchestra assemble here to play the 1812 Overture using real cannons aimed at Liverpool. No I made up that last bit sorry; the date of Waterloo was 1815 and White Nancy was built in 1817 to celebrate the end of the Napoleonic Wars. We'd been in Macclesfield for a particularly sad funeral and I'd revisited old haunts with a run up the hill to raise my spirits. The photo was taken by a couple of runners who'd had the same idea and they were able to save me having to take a selfie. As an aside White Nancy is not always all white and in 2014 there was a red poppy painted on its face!

Winter comes to Devon

Right where's me skis!

So back to the UK and away from that lovely tropical climate down under - and 'Oh Dear!' we've come across some interesting weather in early November, this is Dartmoor at Haytor Rocks (in the background in this photo) on the Eastern side of the moor. I was well wrapped up and the climb warmed us somewhat but the feet got a bit cold. I had decided to wear Inov8 X-claws which were great for grip especially coming down but my extremities were clearly not yet acclimatised to the rigors of our part of the Northern hemisphere. And of course we've returned to the weekly grind - several very wet and windy parkruns in the past few weeks have seen us getting soaked and slathered with mud - still we have to keep at it - use it or lose it!

Plug through the mud!

But what's this - a ray of sunshine and a run in the sun. The Templer Way is nothing to do with the Knights Templar, rather it's the route by which Dartmoor granite was taken down to the docks at Teignmouth on the coast, (Templer was the name of the chappie who built the route and owned the quarries). And part of the trail is used as the basis for the Templer 10, a regular off road November race popular with local running clubs - and the first time I wore the local colours of Bovey Runners. Arriving at the start we found that the race was being shortened to 8 miles due to part of the course being flooded - no skin off my nose however as I enjoyed the mud and sun, and I managed to pick up a dinky trophy for being second in my age group. Strange to pass spectators saying 'Keep going on Bovey!' and 'Come on my lovely!'

The best pints we've found down here so far have been at The Taphouse in Newton Abbot - and here's a picture of it. Well the pub actually occupies a small segment of this magnificent building. This is Tuckers Maltings which sadly closed down last year after over a century of sprouting barley to create malt for brewers in the South East of England and further afield. Fortunately for us the bar serves a range of fine ales - can't be bad!