Planting Spuds

With British Summer Time and lighter nights comes gardening. On the first day of daylight savings, we set about to plant potatos, onion sets and to relocate tayberries. With regards to the potatoes, we planted 8 x 18m long rows. Since the garden was larger than average, we used a 2-Row 1960's David Brown Potato Planter pulled behind a Ferguson 35, 3-cylinder diesel tractor. Two of us sat on the back feeding a potato down the shute everytime the bell tinged as the tractor moved slowly forward. Many moons ago, my father used one of these for planting fields of potatoes - he advised me that they would be able to do "20 acres in a day".

Homebuilding & Renovating Show

Entering a packed NEC at opening time, the show offered a large variety of information about home building and renovating. With over 500 exhibitors we gathered inspirational ideas on SIPs houses and timber frames; finance; renewable energy solutions (solar photovoltaic, heat pumps, rainwater harvesting, heat recovery, biomass); landscaping & garden (luxury bamboo gazebos, carbon capture turf, decking, garden rooms); architects and stuff for the house (TV fireplaces, showers, kichens and central vacuum systems). We enjoyed a couple of interesting seminars on sustainable self-build (building a low impact, low energy home) and budgeting (how to build a 4-bedroom detached house for under £150,000) and strolled round the "Cutting-Edge Home" by Border Oak and Oakwrights' "Low Energy Home" - partially built traditional-like oak frame houses within the hall, demonstrating energy efficient building materials, prefabrication and craftmanship! Such a busy day, we wandered out as they were closing!

Hobsons Brewery

Our trip began with a sample of the beer (choice included Twisted Spire, Mild, Bitter) before proceeding on the actual tour. Emphasis was placed on the renewable technologies the micro brewery is using to make the brewing process more efficient as well as ways where they are reusing or recycling products to reduce waste.

A wind turbine supplies some of the energy required by the plant, while ground source heat obtained from 4 boreholes with looped flow/return pipes running to 55m deep provides some of the heating requirements. Underfloor heating is used in the offices while the 2nd fermentation room for bottles is heated to 25'c.

Using a heat exchanger, chilled water used to cool boiled malting barley is recycled to be used itself in the boiling process. Yeast is reused where possible, cleaned with a mild acid bath to kill the weakest and keep the population healthy.

Waste products are recycled or reused, as much as possible, with cardboard being sent to the local school, hop waste being used for horticulture and waste barley used as feed for animals - the feed is of a high enough quality to be used by animals in their last 45 days of life. The brewery are also trialling use of a waste cardboard/hop mix to produce their own beer mats.

Erasmus Darwin House

Situated with the frontage on Beacon St and the rear with access to Cathedral Close in Lichfield, Erasmus Darwin House was the home of the said Mr Darwin from 1758 to 1781.
A distinguished physician by trade (he was invited to become the royal physician but declined), Erasmus had ideas well ahead of his time including evolutionary biology, feminism and the notion of modern cars and aeroplanes. Although they never met, his books hugely influenced his more famous grandson Charles, who published "On the Origin of the Species by means of Natural Selection" in 1859.
He came up with an improved design for steering carriages and, it seems, may have been the source of a number of ideas upon which fellow members of The Lunar Society progressed patents and inventions. A founder member of the Society that was described as "a dining club and informal learned society of prominent industrialists, natural philosophers and intellectuals", it also included Josiah Wedgwood (whose eldest daughter Suzannah married Erasmus's son Robert - their grandson through this marriage was Charles), Matthew Bolton, James Watt and Joseph Priestley to name a few.

Why did the toad cross the road?

To migrate to its ancestral breeding pond to mate.

I narrowly missed one as I saw it hop across the quiet country lane down which we were driving. Emerging from their winter hibernation sites, several were attempting to simultaneously cross the lane to reach, we assumed, a pond on the other side. It was like a "Krypton Factor" obstacle course avoiding them all. We decided to gently assist and encourage them to get quickly to the other side. In the end at least some were safe from the grisly end of being squished by cars. This is the first time I have ever witnessed a migratory toad crossing and indeed mating - one male was so keen, he was already hitched to the back of a female!

The charity Froglife are running a campaign called "Tuppence a Toad" to raise awareness and funds for their Toads on Roads project. Please go to their website to find out more: http://www.froglife.org/tuppence/index.htm

Bentley Bridge - Cosmos & cinema

Cosmos at Bentley Bridge is a gastronomic experience. Chinese, Indian, deep fried selection, steak & seafood grill and loads of desserts - all you can eat! The table has a restricted 2 hour window in which you indulge in whatever whets your appetite (literally) from the huge selection of food on offer. When you've finished your umpteenth plate of main courses you move onto the dessert selection which included a chocolate fountain, icecream, jelly, gateaux and a large selection of little cups with mousse and the like in it.
We followed with a visit to Cineworld where we enjoyed the very funny sci-fi spoof movie "Paul" about an alien that needs to meet with his rescue spaceship before he is captured and his brain is extracted. In this mission he is helped by 2 geeky sci-fi Brits. Hilarious! British humour at its best!

Destinations Holiday & Travel Show

Our annual visit to the Destinations Show at the NEC was a very informative day out. We met Prue from Explore! who inspired us about India and Hannah from Dragoman who got us excited about Africa. Sri Lanka is touting for a top position amongst our To Do list also. In addition, we met Dan & Jim, the editors for the Wanderlust and Outdoors Travel magazines respectively, who kindly gave us useful hints & tips for writing articles. A very enjoyable and fulfilling day.