Alice in Wonderland

Bye-bye October - it’s been a long month but it’s been a good one. This is one of my favourite displays from the Spectacle of Light at Welford Park. So clever, look closer and you’ll see that the sculpture throwing the shadows is all scrap metal; doesn’t really look like a ballet dancer at all!

The other displays were beautiful especially wandering through the lit-up trees with haunting music playing, just lovely.

We stopped for a drink and a pizza and by the time we moved on nearly everyone else had left! We ended up last so as we strolled through the final elements of the spectacle we were discreetly followed by a couple of security guards so they could lock up as soon as we were out of the gates 😀

Welford Park, you may know, is where The Great British Bake-off is filmed. Which is a spurious link to say I’ve done some more baking - I know, twice in one month 😳 I used the remainder of the glacé cherries to make these Cherry and Almond biscuits - yum yum - the dough stayed in the fridge and I cooked batches over the course of 3 days. The first were impossible to bite through 🤭 but after that batch the rest were a perfect snack with a coffee.

Last night we enjoyed Halloween night. Jamie worked on the Boo pumpkin, much trickier (especially post-stroke) than the traditional carving technique, but it’s a good effect.

And we left a little Jack-o-lantern up the allotment, as is our tradition.

All our pumpkins are small this year, all from one Jack-be-Little plant, but they have plenty of flesh and, obviously, played a key role in our Halloween celebratory meal.

We had pumpkin and red pepper soup as a starter - very tasty, Roughly based on this recipe. Unfortunately we had to buy the peppers as our last surviving three growing in the polytunnel had been eaten by rats ^{* go to end of post} 

The main was just sausages in rolls and then dessert was a pumpkin pie roughly based on this recipe, but I roasted the pumpkin and then forgot to add milk to the mixture, which didn’t seem to cause any issues. (So much cooking in this post!) It still tasted lovely with cream and a few lychees with food colouring to make them look spooky (or perhaps disgusting!).

Then we watched Attack of the Killer tomatoes <hmmm> and ate the treats as no Trick or Treaters visited us.

And the song title, well the Spectacle of light had an Alice in Wonderland theme and we kept hearing the voices of the characters. The Cheshire Cat was particularly good as it evaporated into the trees.

The Disney theme song has been stuck in my head ever since, so now I’ll pass it on to you ☺️ I don’t attempt those high notes out loud - make sure there are no glasses nearby if you choose to!

* how do we know it’s rats? Because we saw two in the polytunnel 😳 They panicked more than we did and ran off - so the remaining squashes went home and the polytunnel got a bit of a tidy. The jack-o-lantern will go into the compost bin rather than being left for wildlife this year. The HAHA committee have had a couple of pest controllers visit to check out the rat situation as some plotholders are worrying. But I’m pleased to say they confirmed it’s not an infestation and that it’s to be expected given our spot by the canal. Phew.

The Life of Riley

Robbie was keeping an eye on my digging technique last week as I dug the bean trench on Plot8.

It took me three separate visits to complete, as it was hard work. The soil was bone dry and like concrete at the bottom of the trench which is about 50cm deep.

There were a few weeds but it was mostly salsify roots, though I still wasn’t inclined to take any home for eating.

Phew, finished, I left the hollyhocks at the end. I added cardboard and emptied the builders bag of decomposed weeds - hoping the seed heads are rotted and deep enough to not re-emerge - along with some partially-composted vegetables before adding the sweetcorn stalks. All that organic matter should provide a good base for our climbing beans next year and helps with the plot clearance.

The trench has had a good drenching over the last couple of days so there may be room for a bit more green waste before I back-fill that soil heap.

Whilst working on that I uncovered this little field vole. It was trying to hide under dried grass where I was working so I caught it in a pot and released it in the hedge. So cute.

On the Saturday I knew when the steam train The Flying Scotsman was passing through Hungerford so I secured my spot to get a reasonable view - it’s not the best view from the allotments, but good enough.

There it goes! I took a small video but the camera lost focus at the vital point 🙄

Here’s a rather better record of it passing over Hungerford High Street, courtesy of Oxygen Aerial Images. Perfect.

On the chilly Sunday morning I joined a little group of Britain in Bloom volunteers in returning to the roundabout to plant Spring bulbs (I think there were 400) and sow some drought-tolerant wild flower seeds. The perennials that we planted in May have grown pretty well, considering the weather.

Since May other volunteers have been watering and borage-pulling, it’s always threatening to take over. Such a lot of work and dedicated volunteers involved. Hungerford won the Silver Gilt award in the Small Towns category of the 2026 RHS Britain in Bloom competition - I’m not sure that the roundabout played any part in that, but it has looked good and should look even better next year.

Yesterday I was at the hairdressers as we watched Storm Austen stripping leaves and blowing horizontal rain up the road. Jamie and I were meant to be going to see lit up trees at Welford Park’s Spectacle of Light — we aren’t sorry that the visit has been postponed for a few days, we got a drenching when we went last year. We popped over to Oxfordshire last week and saw quite a different spectacle at Millets Farm.

Dahlia Beach

Pick your own dahlias and pumpkins! It was a very grey and rainy day but both fields were very impressive. I was sneaking up a muddy side track to get a peek of Dahlia Beach before I realised it was closed so could wander about a bit more, but couldn’t get in amongst the blooms. The buckets in the foreground are for collecting bunches of the flowers and they also sell the tubers. And I’ve never see so many pumpkins! They planted/planned for 100,000 fruits 😳

Pumpkins galore

And another cool thing. Jamie’s been having one-to-one swimming sessions with Next Stroke Swim School since finding that he could no longer swim post-stroke. Well, last Sunday he swam unaided for the first time - on his back and his front. “Drowning slowly” he calls it, but I call it a breakthrough 👏 Mike (and others) have been really great. I’m so glad we spotted their advert.

Jamie’s tutor, Mike, urging him on

This morning there’s a blue sky with pink clouds as the Sun’s just rising. We’d better go to the allotment later to see what damage the wind and rain has caused - hoping our polytunnel is still in one piece.

So to the title song, by the brilliant Lightning Seeds for this mishmash of a post. Well, since I retired, 8 months ago, I determined to achieve at least one thing each day rather than lounging. Last week on a rainy day I made a cherry and almond flapjack which counted as ‘an achievement’. I really do think some people could say I’m living the life of Riley!

Digging Your Scene

I’ve pickled a jar of  tomatoes. We’ve not tried them before but I found the recipe on the British Tomato Growers Association website while searching for inspiration. It’s mainly the tiny redcurrant tomatoes and a few cherry toms from the polytunnel plants which have all been removed now and sent off to the Council green recycling. 

As you can see it has garlic and a few herbs added to the white wine vinegar. Each tiny fruit was stabbed to let the pickling flavours in. We ate one of the small jars of tomato chutney that I made in August, it was very tasty so I hope these same tomatoes are just as flavoursome pickled.

This trug contains the last two courgettes of the year as well as the last tomatoes. I haven’t cooked the pumpkin yet, but the other veggies went into this colourful rice dish - the veg were fried in oak-smoked oil and just soy sauce as an additional flavouring. Yum.

Before going to Slimbridge and since returning I’ve had some tiring but satisfying digging sessions. Although we’ve had some meagre rain the ground is still very dry, but I was pleased to find some worms.

I was hoping to harvest some beetroot but the beets had grown too woody and they looked to have had two growing seasons so they went into our compost bin. I’ve left the chard growing, it didn’t grow very well in the Summer but the leaves and stems can provide a bit of Winter colour, even if it doesn’t get eaten. 

And I couldn’t bring myself to pull the last of the antirrhinum which are still flowering along with bindweed’s prettier cousin Convolvulus which has come to life late in the season and self-seeded so is scrambling on the ground.

The Apsleys mulch was left on top for a few days before the final dig in with chicken manure pellets.

Yesterday I planted 22 cloves of Sultop garlic, from 2 bulbs, and 42 onion sets - a mixture of white, brown and red onions. I’ve netted the onions in an attempt to protect them from birds and mammals. The garlic are planted deeper so don’t usually attract their attention.

The area where the onions were last year, on Plot8, plus some of the salsify forest(!) has been cleared of bindweed (ugh, I know it’ll be back), dug over and covered in a thick layer of Apsleys mulch plus potato fertiliser as that’s where they’ll be planted next year.

At this time of year it’s good to see clear areas with plans for 2027. There’s still a lot more to do and I’m trying to progress before the weather turns hateful and we’ll want to hibernate.

The weather is rather grey today but it has been nice and warm recently. We walked up to town and sat by the canal. The swans have 5 large cygnets now. The female slowly waddled from under the bridge directly towards us. 

She stared at us for a bit then walked off disgruntled as we didn’t have any food (must remember to put some in my handbag). As you can see in the second photo, she has a broken beak but Swan Lifeline have apparently checked her over last year and she’s ok living with it.

The Sun is just appearing and although windy it’s quite warm out there - I think I feel some digging coming on… blasting us back to the 1980s (oh, so 80s) with the Blow Monkeys.

Fine Time

We’ve just got home after a lovely 3-night break at the Slimbridge Wetland Centre, we managed to book ‘Chiffchaff’, the same shepherd’s hut where we stayed mid-heatwave in July. It’s such a cosy retreat. 

There’s Jamie in one of 13 hides available across the site. It was rather fun and because it was a rainy day we had a lot of the hides to ourselves. We like watching and listening to birds but aren’t very good at recognising them so tend to refer to most of them as ‘gull’, ‘goose’ or ‘duck’ - often just ‘bird’ which isn’t very helpful really! Here are a few photos ( I’ve added names mostly based on Google Lens so feel free to correct.)

Spoonbills

Northern Lapwing

I’d recognise a lapwing as my junior school’s playing field used to be covered in them - sad to think they’re now on the ‘red list’.

Pied Avocets

Tufted Duck

There wasn’t a lot of colour on show because it’s not mating season - I expect that’s why the tufted duck looks so grumpy 🤭

Here’s a bit of colour to cheer the page up. Flamingoes are odd-looking things but the colours are fabulous.

There are 6 different species at Slimbridge and can live to be 60 years old. This Lesser Flamingo is the smallest at less than 1metre tall and I really like the pale pink colouring.

Flamingo

But the cutest resident award goes to little Tilly, the otter. So sweet. She was quickly on the scene when her keeper arrived though initially had to be tempted into the water with food. Later we saw her happily playing on her own flipping a pebble around in her paws. Look at her lovely thick coat. I hope we see Hungerford’s wild otters one day.

We were very glad we took our Winter coats which we hadn’t needed on the first day. This is me in one of the hides. I opened the window and that’s the wind blasting in pushing my hair back. Brrr. 

We went up the Estuary Tower Hide which was really cold and the wet weather didn’t provide for great views over the Severn, but I like this view from one of the lower level hides.

We saw so many birds and heard even more. The Common Cranes were especially loud to wake up to each morning - they’re a success story for re-colonising in Britain. At 1.2m tall they’d be impressive to see in flight. I love the rhythmic sound of swans flying overhead and there were many, but this photo is Canada Geese, I think.

The early mornings and evenings sitting outside our shepherd’s hut were great for watching birds (note the generic term) fly overhead and using the Merlin app to try to identify some of the crazy pips, squawks, tweets and whistles coming from all directions! I miss those unusual sounds now we’re back home.

It was a cold and clear night after the wet day so we had an evening of star-gazing and yesterday morning there was the thinnest sliver of moon before sunrise. Beautiful.

We had a little trip out to the Sharpness Dockyard, Severn View Point to eat a pizza one evening. We went for the Sunset but enjoyed seeing two big ships manoeuvring to their moorings. This one (Misje Kandy) was ~90metres long. I was interested to see it’s a hybrid vessel built this year, you can look up all kinds of ship details through this link.

It was such a lovely break. I look forward to Hungerford’s Wetland scheme progressing over the next year. I want to suggest they follow the Slimbridge example for benches - aren’t these great?

The song title is courtesy of Cast, because we did have a mighty fine time ☺️