Pickled Baby Cucumbers

Last week I found some baby cucumbers reduced in Sainsbury's, so I bought them to do one more cucumber pickle. I found this tempting recipe from the blog Lavander & Lovage....

...so yesterday I used them to make this jar...

It was a bit of a cram but I got them all in (sliced in half) along with the coriander seeds sliced chilli and bayleaf. They are ready in just 24 hours so I had one with my lunch.. Delicious! They will only keep a few weeks in the fridge, but I don't think they will last that long!

Johnny Mercer: Songs and Stories

This was my entertainment on Friday evening, streamed live from the living room of Chris Ingham's new home....

Can you see his pet zebra?

A lovely selection of great songs from Johnny Mercer, including some favourites like "Lazy Bones", "Jeepers Creepers", "The Blues in the Night" and "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive". A great 2 hours of entertainment. Thanks Chris!

Crack!

Returning from my great walk with Ann at Shingle Street yesterday (see here), about 4 miles from home, overtaking a lorry and doing about 70mph, a stone flew up and hit my windscreen. What a bang! I was relieved the windscreen didn't shatter. But I have some big cracks, one over half way to the top.

I have arranged for a replacement windscreen, but it can't be fitted until Thursday next week. No more traveling to walks for me before it is repaired, so I will miss the resumption of Joyce's Weekly Walks 😢

Shingle Street Walk

Still restricted to walking with only 1 other person, last week I invited Ann to walk with me today and she happily agreed. I fancied doing some walking by the sea and thought I'd do a longer version of the Shingle Street walk I did in August 2019. I parked in Shingle Street where I did previously, but I had given Ann a bum steer on the address based on misreading the write-up of somebody else's walk and she parked in East Lane just out of Bawdsey. [Note to self - send a map marking the meeting point in future]. So we got a bit of a longer walk than planned as we first had to walk to each other to meet. We met up on the beach about half way between our cars and I started my route from there. Here is a map of it.

On the way there I had driven through quite thick fog, but that cleared just about 3 miles from the coast and it turned into a beautiful day, although it was a bit frosty to start. Our route followed the Suffolk Coast Path for the first six miles before we turned inland and headed back via Boyton and Hollesley.

Here are a few of my photos.

The night before it was a bit foggy. Would it be OK to drive to the coast in the morning?

Well it was foggy most of the way but not too thick to be able to drive safely. At Shingle Street the mist was disappearing but it was still a bit frosty.

I headed down the coast to meet Ann passing this Martello tower.

There she is!

We passed Shingle Street including (see photo at the top of the post) the enduring decorated trail of shells that goes from one of the coastguard cottages down to the sea (see here for the story) and set off along the coast path. Look at all these birds on the shoal emerging from the water as the tide ebbs! Are those black ones cormorants, we wondered?

At the end of Oxley marshes, the path follows this creek inland for a bit before crossing it.

We both loved these old bits of timber sticking out of the water as we walked back on the other side.

We saw and heard plenty of birds. Are these redshanks probing in the mud for sustenance with their sharp pointy beaks?

We saw a horserider coming the other way

"Don't forget to look back"... is useful to remember when walking. I loved the dramatic skies behind us looking towards the mouth of the River Ore.

Up ahead of us we could see Orford Castle and Church lit up by sunshine through the lingering mist.

The views are vast across flat landscape and the path was good. In fact we had hardly any mud along the whole length of the walk.

In the distance we could also make out the pagodas on the strange yet beautiful Orford Ness. But the iconic red and white striped lighthouse is no more, alas. The view reminded me of my fabulous walk there in 2019 (see here).

What's this? A stile? That was unexpected.

I had missed the turning I had intended to take, but no worries. It gave us a little longer along the coast. Now we turned inland towards Boyton. Are we on the right path? Here are a couple coming the other way. Well the path must go somewhere, we thought.

We stopped at Boyton Village Hall for our lunch break.

Here we found the village sign as we set off on the return leg.

We passed Hollesley Youth Detention Centre. Ann told me they have regular escapes. Not over this fence, I imagine.

Turning off the road onto a path by the Suffolk Punch Sanctuary, we came across a couple of pigs. This one was right on our path and took not the slightest notice as we walked past.

Approaching Hollesley we saw some animals rush past us on the other side of the fence. It was some deer!

All Saints, Hollesley Church is quite impressive....

...but we didn't have time to visit if we were going to finish our walk before dark. Now it was back towards Shingle Street, past Dumb Boy Cottage where, according to this leaflet, smugglers could leave messages without fear of betrayal.

We then followed the path alongside the creek back to the southern end of Shingle Street.

At the sea wall, I said goodbye to Ann as she turned south towards her car and I turned back through Shingle Street towards mine.

I was soon back at my car and the houses on the edge of nowhere.

That was a fabulous walk. We were so lucky with the weather too. I think I would do it again.

You can see more detail of our route here on MapMyWalk and plenty more of my photos here on Flickr.

Apple Brandy #5

I still needed some Apple Brandy for Christmas presents as my previous batch was rather over-oaked. When I set out to make my Cider, my plan was always to use some of it to make more Apple Brandy. It turned out to be a bit of a long day as I did 3 stripping runs, each with about 1.7l of my cider during the day and then a spirit run this evening. And I even have the label ready!

Unlike previous times, my setup today used the column so as to get more refluxing. Here it is ready to start the spirit run.

I combined the output of my 3 stripping runs and added the remaining 550ml of my over-oaked brandy. Here is some my distillate getting measured for ABV. 

...bottle 6 of 9 coming in at 68%. I discarded Bottle 9 (66 ml @ 22%) as it was now the 'tails', leaving me with 675ml @ 66% ABV. Tasting each bottle along the way and then the blend at the end with a little sample each time using a pipette, it is sweet and apple-tasting.

Now to get the Oak level right. Here is my bag of medium-toasted French oak chips.

As you can see from the label, the recommendation for oaking wine is to use between 5g and 30g per 10l. As I was going to end up with a little over 1.1l at 40% when I dilute it, I added just over 3g to my bottle. We'll see how it is after a few days... I can always add more if necessary.

Well that's enough distilling for a while, I think!

Tassel Gin #8

I spoke too soon when I wrote up Gin#7. The next day I found the fennel and cassia taste was little more pronounced than I thought. I still like it, though. This time I thought I'd try experimenting with the blending. The recipe was fairly similar, but I upped the cardamom, ginger, grains of paradise and restored the fennel to the previous level

Botanical	Last Time	This Time
Juniper	30g	30g
Coriander	12g	12g
Angelica	2g	2g
Cardamom	2g	3g
Lemon Peel	5g	5g
Orange Peel	5g	5g
Fennel	3.5g	4g
Peppercorns	2g	2g
Cassia	1g	1g
Ginger	1g	1.5g
Grains of Paradise	1g	1.5g

I started distilling mid afternoon, using a heat of 3 out of 6 on my hotplate to start with so as to give the aromatics a chance to infuse further during the heating and getting a slow drip of distillate. The first few jars were of 81% ABV.

The change in blending was to omit Jar 9 - 95ml @57% ABV which had a strong cassia taste. The plan is to save it and add to the still charge for the next gin distilling. I was left with 685ml @76.5%, to which I added 534 ml of filtered water to dilute it to 43% (export strength) as before. It tastes good....

[Update: Smooth and citrussy with a hint of cardamom and fennel, but only faint traces of cassia. Very tasty. Dawn prefers it to the Opihr I use as my baseline. I can see I may need to make some more before Christmas!]

Knettishall Heath Walk

It was a bit of a dreary morning, but I wanted to go for a walk. I realised it was almost 2 years since I first led a group walk, for the Ramblers at Knettishall Heath (see here). It's a good place to walk in the late autumn/winter as it doesn't get too muddy, so I thought I'd re-visit it, with a few tweaks.

This was my route today...

I took the path past Nick's Hill I had done on my recce for that walk and missed out the road section. On the Nature reserve I took a detour before the end along the road to where I had seen the ponies as I arrived before returning via the blue walk.

Here are a few of my photos.

The river was running quite high.

I found that part of the path was blocked off...

...but I decided to follow it anyway. Lots of trees had been felled and I could see the soil is very dark.

There were plenty of little birds flitting about and twittering in the remaining trees. I think this is a chaffinch.

There were lots of leaves to rustle by walking through.

Crossing the road on the Icknield Way I came to this post. It looks like the dog-poo fairy has been and taken away any bags that were there.

The green walk enters the heathland part of the reserve here, but I carried straight on as before....

...along the Icknield Way.

My route past Nick's Hill took me over an old landfill site.

These little chimneys are presumably to release any gases generated.

Back on the nature reserve I followed some of the red and green paths.

After finding the main group of ponies at the eastern end (see photo at the top) I returned via the blue path and found the rest of them here.

Then it was just a short stretch back along the river to the start.

A gentle 4.7 miles walk.

On my way home I thought I'd visit the former Knettishall church. It is now a private dwelling (with a fierce guard dog).

I also passed the memorial to the USAAF fliers who were based at Knettishall Airfield.

That was a nice tie in to my related walk proposed for the Suffolk Walking Festival done with just Dawn and Ann this May (see here) which I hope to do for real in 2021.

You can see more of my photos here on Flickr and more details of my route here on MapMyWalk.