Short break - to The Provence

A big thanks for all your lovely comments recently, they are so appreciated. It's been a busy time so I haven't been able to reply personally on my posts. It's so nice to get comments and lovely that they come from far and wide from like-minded people who are interested in what you have to say.

We're off to France on Wednesday - The Provence in the south.  We leave from Ebbsfleet in Kent on the Eurostar which will take us to Lille, where we catch the TGV train to Avignon and are due to arrive about 4pm.  I was not able to fly for several months this year so booked this alternative way of travelling which I'm really looking forward to.

So - unless I can get wifi in our hotel, will be unable to keep in touch.  I'll be back next week when I can catch up with all your posts but in the meantime have a good week.

See you soon

Patricia



Auntie Rosa's Chicken Crunch recipe

A couple of weeks ago my sisters and I visited our much loved Auntie and Uncle (my late mum's brother Jack and his wife). They live near Lymington on the edge of the New Forest in a gorgeous bungalow with a wonderful garden.

 

The sort of garden that I'd love - with little hidey holes and paths leading to secret places

 

and ponds,  and seats tucked away in corners

 and apple trees you can sit under when it's too sunny

 

 

a garden filled with all kinds of insects -  bees, dragon flies and

butterflies - this beautiful one was hovering around us all afternoon

 

 

 

Ooh it was heaven - well a girl can dream can't she!

 

 

Anyway back to the title of my blog. Auntie Rosa is an excellent cook and over the years we have revelled in the delights of her cakes and bakes, with many a recipe hastily written out before departing for home. This is her Chicken Crunch which will serve 4 large helpings.

 

1 lb cooked chicken - chopped

3 sticks of celery

1 large onion

2 tins of condensed mushroom soup (not diluted)

2 tablespoons of mayonnaise

2 tablespoons lemon juice

4 bags of crisps - crumbled

1 - 2 ozs flaked almonds

2 ozs grated cheese

 

Mix the chicken, celery and onion with the mushroom soup and add the lemon juice and mayonnaise.

Place in a dish and sprinkle over the crisps, almonds and cheese.

Bake for 30 minutes at 200c.

 

It really is tasty - enjoy!

 

 

See you soon

 



PS - you wait until you see her coconut and chocolate

picnic slices - mmm they're divine. That's for another time.

The Great River Race

John and I belong to a local walking group in Leigh on Sea, they organise walks and cycle rides and other social activities. There are generally two or three walks a month and a couple of bike rides. Mostly we drive out to a designated area and are guided by a fellow walker who has reccied the walk beforehand. Sometimes however, we take the train to -  guess where?  yes London.

Yesterday saw ten of us on the Isle of Dogs with a view to watching the start of the Great River Race where some fellow members - four boats in all - rowed up river 22 miles to Richmond. There were hundreds of boats taking part and some with as many as sixteen rowers.

 

We took the train to Limehouse and boarded the Docklands Light Railway to Crossharbour

and proceeded to walk to the start

It was a race in itself just getting their boats into the water!

 

 

 

and across the road!

 

 

The sun shone all day - it was glorious

 



After the starter gun went off we continued our walk along the Thames Path

These old wharf buildings are everywhere - restored into luxury apartments

 





 

And some were so pretty too

 



 

 

You wouldn't expect to see so much greenery in such a heavily built-up area

After about three miles we arrived at our Lunch destination -

The Prospect of Whitby - supposedly the oldest Riverside Inn

 

 

Where we sat upstairs and ate our lunch overlooking the river from the terrace and later viewed this fabulous skyline of London's financial district known as "Canary Wharf"
 

We continued our walk which totalled approx five miles, towards
The Tower of London, on our way to our train home.

 

 

 

All in all a wonderful day, with plenty of sunshine, good company and a peep into life on the Isle of Dogs. A return visit is definitely on the cards.

 

 

Bye for now - have a good week

 

Problems uploading photos

Is anyone else having problems with Blogger not allowing you to upload photos?  I've been tweaking my blog over the last week just for a change and removed my collage photo from the heading so that I could upload another. Well Blogger is saying "We're sorry but you've exceeded your photo upload quota. For more information, take a look here.......". So I went there and basically I would have to pay to have the privilege of uploading more photos!! What a cheek.

I can upload photos on my posts, hence this one - to take place of my heading! Also I can't upload photos to my sidebar any more either. I've only been blogging for about ten months now, and don't think I've uploaded any more than others. but its blooming frustrating and there doesn't seem to be anywhere you can go to enquire/complain.

Well that's my moan for today but I just wondered if anyone else has had similar problems?

Mudlarking - a different hobby

You know how much I love London and yesterday we spent a lovely day there with our friends P & B. We met up at our favourite Covent Garden pub The Crusting Pie where in the courtyard potential opera singers spend many an hour delighting the patrons of the pub with their renditions of popular opera arias. A wonderful experience and one that we've seen many times.

We enjoyed our day and ended up over on the South Bank before going our various ways home. We decided to walk back to our car parked near Tower Bridge.

We do this walk along the Thames a lot and this pub reminded me of the times that John and I have spent on the foreshore of the Thames - Mudlarking. We first heard about it a few years ago  at The Museum of London and they are linked to an organisation called The Thames Discovery.

Mudlarking dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries when people, normally children would scavenge for 'treasures' on the muddy foreshore of the Thames during low tides, for anything that had been washed up and could be resold. This was a way of earning a penny or two in their poverty stricken lives.

Nowadays, Mudlarking is more of a fun way of searching for archaelogical finds. It has been said that the Thames foreshore is possibly one of the largest archaelogical sites to be found in the UK. Articles such as pieces of household pottery and roof tiles that go back as far back as Roman times to more recent items of 17th century Delft pottery. There were Delftware factories across the Thames at Southwark and Lambeth. A popular find are the remains of 16th century clay tobacco pipes - which would have been used just the once and thrown away, possibly over the sides of the sailing boats of the day.

When we last went we were on the foreshore just beside the Millennium Bridge (you can't take photos because of the sheer muddiness of everything so the following are by courtesy of Google and Thames Discovery but are exactly what we experienced).

It's very exciting to forage amongst the mud and stones - you never know

what you might find washed up

 

Our time is limited as you always have to be mindful of the incoming tide

These are some of the items that can be found whilst scavenging -

our collection is very similar but for the moment are mislaid

(Whoops - I really must sort through that garage again!!)

 

 

 



We've normally been on a guided foreshore 'dig' with people from the Museum but if you go on your own it seems you have to have a permit and hand your 'finds' to the Museum in case they are precious artefacts.  I found a BBC article on this subject here if you're interested.

 

Hope you enjoyed learning about one of our 'different'  hobbies.

 

 

Bye for now

Patrticia

What a day that was

First of all I'd like to thank everyone for your lovely comments recently they really are appreciated, and to say a big welcome to all my new followers, it's great to have you on board and hope you enjoy what you read.

I know I've written several times about London 2012 but I hope you'll forgive me this one more time because today we've been to the Olympic Stadium to watch the Paralympic track and field events and I just wanted to share this with you. What a day that was, absolutely brilliant. Apart from the fact that it must have been the hottest, sunniest day for weeks, the events and the athletes themselves exceeded everything we expected.

We left home at 6.45am and arrived at the Park just after 8am

 

 It was such a thrill to actually be on the site after walking around the perimeter several

 times over the last six months

And to see the Olympic flame gave me goose-pimples

 



All of the events were spectacular and as we were in row 17 had marvellous views of them all. Just high enough to be able to see the whole arena in comfort, especially these Javelin throwers.



 

and the runners

 

After our session we joined the other hundreds in the sunshine

for a spot of lunch

 

I think I was so excited about getting to the park first thing that I failed to see the hundreds of wild flowers that had been sown along the banks of the walkway and spotted on our way back to the station.

 

 



 

The helpers, volunteers and staff were wonderful - so helpful. In fact as we stepped outside the station at West Ham this morning, we were astounded at the amount of helpers standing along the walkway, guiding and showing people the way to the Olympic Park. There must have been 70-80 along the way -a walk of about 30 minutes, all with happy smiling faces and wishing everyone a lovely day. So much thought, effort and organisation has been put into the whole spectacular event that was London 2012.

 

So proud to be British

 



 

Thanks for stopping by. See you soon. 

 

Simple pleasures

Today the children go back to school - but not in this part of the country as they are having a non pupil day for teacher training - that's after having six weeks holidays!! I'll say no more.

So, instead of taking L to school today, he came round first thing to spend the day with me - and what a day we had. Simple - but fun.

Firstly L helped me bake a cake in between playing on the WII and his DSI - the cake won.

Then, after clearing away and washing up we decided to go out and collect some bits from the woods to make up my Autumn table decoration which L is helping me create. You might remember that I made a Summer Jubilee/Olympic one back in June which you can find here. So off we went in seach of acorns, conkers, fir cones and golden leaves in our local woods.

However after much foraging, we found nothing - deciding that it was too early in the season so will have to go back another day.

Then, we went to another area where we could do some blackberry picking -

I had taken a couple of boxes with me just in case.

This time we were a lot luckier with our foraging

We met a few four legged animals on the way much to L's delight

And he even managed to find a fox / badger's hole - not sure which?

and this pretty butterfly

A well deserved reward for all his hard work this morning

Back home we turned out the blackberries which weighed approx 1kg

And by this time, the cake had cooled down

Well, thanks to that silly non pupil day, L and I had an excellent time and have vowed that we are going to go back to the blackberry bushes that were not quite ripe and also to look for more autumnal bits. Looking forward to making a yummy blackberry and apple pie, but L has now informed me that (1) he doesn't like blackberries and (2) he's allergic to apples !! - so all the more for me and his grandad then.

L has asked me to tell you that he helped write this post and hopes that you enjoyed our walk today.

See you again soon