Walking in Epping Forest

To help banish the winter blues, I decided to organise a walk in Epping Forest for my birthday. We followed most of this route, although we started a bit further north at Leytonstone and in the end, finished a bit further south at Theydon Bois. I'm guessing it was about 19km all up and although we tried to follow this excellent 1970s guide, GPS was our saviour on the day as even though I'd read that the route wasn't very well-marked, I wasn't expecting there to be no markers at all! I also think, given that we were doing it in the middle of winter, the paths probably weren't as visible as they may be in drier conditions...

We started bright-eyed and bushy tailed, despite some unexpected rain slightly dampening the party (although happily it got sunny later on).

After a bit of a false start (hence the need to bring out the GPS) we got back on track and picked up the pace. Well, that's not true. We tried to pick up the pace but the mud was just a bit too much!

Here we are a bit over half-way making the most of a pretty lake for a photo opportunity, and me contemplating whether I'd just stop where I was and sleep there the night...

 

And finally the end! It was pretty tough going for us city slickers, particularly given that my terrible boots ripped my heels to shreds (I'll refrain from posting that particularly unsavoury photo), and I've definitely got some sore legs now, but definitely landed on the side of fun overall. 

I'd also arranged for everyone, as well as some other friends, to head to a local pub for drinks and dinner - our large group of 20 mostly mud-covered hikers definitely stood out like a sore thumb amongst the extremely well-groomed and glamorous other patrons! I hadn't even thought we'd be heading into Essex territory (epitomised by a TV show called 'TOWIE' for those in NZ) so our muddy trousers being out of place was the understatement of the year so far... Cultural appreciation was had by all though - we'll have to go back when we're slightly cleaner I think...

So, overall I'd recommend walking in Epping Forest, but probably not again in winter! Maybe we'll head back there when all the leaves are fresh and that lovely new Spring green. 

Birthday chronicle

Despite being told by a friend that 34 is a bit of a 'nothing birthday', the fact that it's winter over in London means that I think it's all the more important to make a bit of a fuss about a birthday that you're used to spending wafting about in the glorious heat of summer.

Fortunately, I was lucky enough that the terrible weather forecast didn't really arrive (think torrential rain etc.) and was instead gifted with a beautifully sunny and crisp day. To start with, I got the coveted front seat of the bus which meant I got a stunning 360 view of the Thames from my favourite bridge in London - Waterloo. You really get a sense of how the river bends from Waterloo Bridge, and you can see nearly all of the city's most iconic structures. Here's the view looking east where you can see St Pauls, and the Gherkin hiding behind the 'Cheese Grater' (love the random names of all the buildings):

The reason I got the bus in was because I'd made an Italian apple cake and didn't want to get it all mushed up in my panniers. Here's a half-finished shot of the cake - it took six apples and it was pretty delicious if I do say so myself!

After an extremely decadent lunch of leftover lobster mac'n'cheese from Christmas (which, when separated from all the other rich food we had at Christmas, was discovered to be insanely cheesy), it was time for a quick birthday visit to the bees. Fortunately our remaining hive is doing fine (no further sign of varroa which is great) and we're looking forward to seeing the entries to the beehive painting competition, due next Friday. Here's a birthday selfie I took from the roof looking south over the Thames where you can see the Shard in the background:

And then to top it all off, Adrian took me out for a fabulously fancy dinner at Roux at the Landau (in the Langham hotel in central London). We had a glass of champagne, delicious bread, an amuse bouche (cheesy choux buns), starter, main, dessert and petit fours (quince jelly, rum and raisin macaron and handmade chocolate). It was excellent and I would highly recommend it.

The final photo above includes a shot of Broadcasting House, the main BBC building on Regent Street. I've gone past it so many times but never really stopped to look. It looks great all lit up at night I thought.

So there you have it, a chronicle of a birthday. As I said to Adrian, hopefully by the time my next birthday rolls around I'll be a Dr! Viva timing dependent obviously, but here's hoping!

Christmas 2014

Merry Christmas! We've been enjoying a week of basically hibernating over Christmas - the temperatures have really dropped and we've heartily embraced all the best British traditions of this time of year including staying inside for most of the day, eating chocolates and leftovers till we're stuffed, and children's movies online (especially enjoying all the Wallace and Gromit the BBC is putting online!).

But, thankfully, to ensure that we did actually change out of our pyjamas on Christmas Day itself, our friend Megan came over, bringing some very fancy Christmas crackers with her, and helping us to make a dent in our feast. For no other reason than why not, we had lobster mac'n'cheese, with roasted veges, garlic aioli, soy lime Brussels sprouts and garlic bread, then for dessert, flummery, pavlova and ice-cream. It was delicious! (And with the amount of cheese that went into the mac'n'cheese, so it should be...)

The flummery was something that I hadn't made before, but while flicking through the Edmonds cookbook to find the pavlova recipe I saw it and thought it would be fun to make. I remember Granny making it so it definitely brought back some memories! Mine had a jelly-like layer on the bottom (as opposed to the top bit which was all fluffy) - maybe next time I'll chill the evaporated milk for a bit longer... But still delicious all the same!

We polished off several bottles of bubbles, played some competitive games of cranium and blokus, and made some clementine candles - totally recommend you give the last thing a go, they were really good! Just make sure you make the top hole big enough as they burn quite easily.





Who knows where we'll be next Christmas, but Iran is looking like a possibility so we'll have to save some pennies for that... Here's to a productive 2015 in the interim!

Get lucky!

Picking all those pennies up off the ground must have had an influence on my luck, because I am on a massive run!

First, I won an absolutely beautiful print of the sea at Golden Bay from Mike Hill Photography:

And then today, my name was picked out of the hat from a competition that I entered via Oxford Today and I've won a £65 'flare' saucepan!

I had read about these pans in a magazine somewhere and was really impressed - they take about 40% less energy to cook compared to a normal saucepan due to the heat being channelled up the sides of the pan by the 'flares' in the side. However, given their price and the unlikely possibility that we would have gas cooking back in New Zealand (possible, but not as ubiquitious as it is here in the UK) I dismissed the thought of getting some. But clearly the universe was listening and my I came up trumps!

So, while this is a horribly boasting post, I'm writing it so that hopefully my accumulation of luck gets shared with you all and lots of lovely things start happening to you. And don't forget, see a penny, pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck!

Gratefulness part II

Rounding off the final part of my gratefulness challenge, here are the last two days:

Day six (3rd November):
1. A free workout as a result of doing a favour for a friend
2. After many, many bad kiwifruit this year, finally a perfect one today
3. A beautiful sunset from the office stairwell

Day seven (4th November):
1. My new shampoo bar that arrived in the mail – can’t wait to try it!
2. Looking forward to a (hopefully interesting) talk tonight on the role of language in society as part of the ESRC festival of social science
3. And finally, the best part of each and every day, this guy.

So there you have it, seven days of gratefulness. It was actually pretty good to stop and think about the little (and big) things that make you happy. Some days there were lots of things (like today I found two pennies on the ground within a minute of each other - lots of luck for me!) and while other days were a bit simpler, there was no shortage of good things. I firmly believe that happiness is a state of mind and being optimistic and looking forward to the future plays a big part in that. So here's to lots more exciting things happening in the coming years!