More North – June, 2008

Although we spent a night in so-so hotel near a village called Cranster, and had a good meal of fresh fish beside the North Sea, it was really only a stopover on our way to the Yorkshire Dales, another high point of our trip.  As we traveled into Yorkshire, the countryside became spare, sheep fields… Continue reading More North – June, 2008

FORAGING —

It isn’t the cost of vegetables and fruits which periodically sends me scampering to the fields and woods to scout for wild food.  It’s the self-sufficiency of it.  It’s about reaching back through generations to glimpse my ancestors, to experience an instinct going back to human beginnings, and to relate to the universal need to… Continue reading FORAGING —

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Categorized as Food

FAGGOTS

I had faggots for lunch yesterday.  Two round, dark brown balls appeared from the pub’s kitchen, nestled in a soft bed of mashed potatoes.  No, don’t be vile.  Not testes, and not made from bundles of wood or of anything else, except liver, ground and spiced.  I looked up the word in my Collins English… Continue reading FAGGOTS

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Categorized as Food

The Birds

The boat which will ferry us to Inner Farne Island and the bird sanctuary looks like a big rowboat with a little wooden cabin tacked onto the front, and the queue waiting to board  is very long.  Our hearts sink.  People pile on, one after the other, until the boat looks like a colorful octopus… Continue reading The Birds

York minster and Belford

The sun shone on the morning we went to see the Minster.  I wondered why York Minster is called a Minster instead of a Cathedral, so I looked it up on Wictionary and in the Dictionary, but there isn’t an answer in either place.  It’s just a Big Church, the same as for the cathedrals. … Continue reading York minster and Belford