A job well done...

So I mentioned in my August in the Garden post about the work we’d been planning on the old log store area. When we moved in it was part full of logs - but a lot of them were rotten due to the fact that water was easily getting in and soaking them - and we rapidly realised that if we wanted to use them, we’d do best to move them into the shed, where we've been keeping our supplies ever since. When we looked at it properly a lot of the issues were fairly apparent - the roof was made from rough chipboard which had long since pretty much rotted. The base was made from the same material - giving the dual issue of a roof that was allowing water to leak straight in, and a solid base refusing the let it drain out again! 

The "assorted rubbish" store - as it became for a while...

Since moving in we’ve been thinking through how best to deal with it, and also starting to salvage materials for the task where we’ve been able to. A storage cupboard being cleared out at my place of work yielded a number of lengths of sturdy timber, and some clearance out the back of the garden revealed a pair of wooden doors that looked suspiciously as though they may even at some stage in the past have been fitted to the log store! We had no plans to replace them, but we did realise quite fast that they might make a nice robust base for a new roof. We already had various wood screws kicking around - some purchased for previous projects, and others salvaged from dismantling things previously. The final part of the jigsaw was realising quite how well two leftover slatted timber decking tiles from when we did up the balcony at the old flat fitted to form a new base - there was going to be a gap between them but we figured we could easily enough work out a way of filling that. There were always going to be some things we’d need to buy - some form of roof covering and the means of fitting it, notably. The timber would always need treating too, but as you’ll recall from recent posts, we’ve been working on repainting the shed and office anyway, so the various bits for the log store were all given a few coats of the same “Cornflower” colour being liberally applied elsewhere. 

"Cornflower" blue paint - and a completed structure

The one thing we had no solid idea how to go about was dealing with the roofing - and we kicked various ideas around before eventually settling on what seemed like the simplest solution, roofing felt. The complication here was that neither of us had so much of an ounce of experience about dealing with it - however, we adopted a somewhat cavalier approach of "well, how hard can it be?" - perhaps not the best approach, however, in the absence of wanting to take the "pay the nice man" approach, it was the only option we had. 

MrEH fixing the roofing felt in place

The first step involved lots of measuring, and a fair bit of painting. We wanted to slightly enlarge the roof area, to create more of an overhang and so more cover from rain actually blowing in, and that also required an additional bit of timber being fixed to one side, too. To avoid the risk of it rotting from the base, that needed fixing in a way that left it sitting above the ground. Most of the existing frame was in pretty good condition, and the side panels too - but removal of the old chipboard roof really showed how much damage had been caused to the cladding on the side of the office by getting drenched every time it rained - we weren't going to be able to replace that cladding, so took the only option available to us - with it being (thankfully) bone dry currently, we slapped on as much wood preservative as we could persuade the remaining wood to absorb, and hoped for the best. A couple of additional supports for the new roof were required - the old ones having totally rotted away - and those were swiftly fashioned from some of the free-to-us timber. 

Some spending was inevitable, and after a bit of shopping around for best prices, off we trotted to a local DIY superstore, emerging a little later - and £90 lighter - with a roll of roofing felt, the correct nails to fix it in place, a roll of flashing tape, some fixing plates for the side panel, some mastic and a guttering set specifically designed for smaller roof areas - we'd intended looking at what guttering options might be open to us but weren't expecting to actually buy anything in that line, however a special offer of £25 for a set that would do everything we wanted seemed a good deal. We also opted to pay a little more for a roll of felt with a longer expected lifespan - 15 years rather than just 5 for the most basic option.

Beautiful old tools inherited from my Dad...

It then just (ha!) remained to put everything together. Handily, and in part thanks to my lovely Dad, who was never knowingly under-tooled, we had all the various bits of kit that we needed for the task - and I thoroughly enjoyed using some of his old equipment too - including a VERY old yardstick which I suspect originally belonged to one or other grandfather! The work bench in the photos was also his - I can remember this being in regular use during my childhood, along with the electric drill we also used (and which you can see in the picture) which is still going strong! We were glad of having replaced our old jigsaw recently too - this made the cutting down of the various items far quicker, particularly as one of the doors-turned-roof-panels had to be cut. While MrEH worked at getting various parts in place, drilled and fixed, I turned my hand to making a further cut to the bit of old door that was being discarded, and with the addition of get another free-to-us piece of timber drilled in place, that filled the gap in the base perfectly - once again fitting the brief of allowing airflow. With the structure finally complete, we faced our nemesis - the roof covering! As it happened, "how hard can it be" turned out to be "not very" - much to our surprise the felt was incredibly easy to work with, and beyond a few head-scratching moments over how exactly to fit the felt into and around the various corners, that was almost the easiest part of the task! the final steps were to add the flashing tape around the top (had we realised quite how much this would look like duct-tape we would have bought a different colour!) and then fix the guttering and downpipe in place. 

The finished project.

To say we're impressed with the result we've achieved would in honesty be an understatement. We're accustomed of thinking of ourselves as not really being people who are good at DIY, but we've surprised ourselves here. I'd be lying if I didn't say that at one stage we were indeed considering paying someone else to do it for us, but when we thought it through, it seemed to be a false economy - we wanted the ability to store more logs as that would mean bulk-buying = moneysaving. If we paid out more than we had to to sort the storage though, it was going to take a long while to recoup that spend. In the event, we've ended up with a solid and (hopefully!) watertight structure for well under £100 plus the cost of a couple of days of work. We're almost hoping for a bit of rain now so we can see if the guttering works OK - and if we need a bigger bucket! 

Robyn

August in the garden…

 Another month with a little more unintentional neglect than would have been ideal - with the Great British Beer Festival taking up the first 10 days of the month for us. Once again Mum stepped into the breach as hose-wielder, and as a result combined with some unseasonably heavy rain showers relatively little damage was done this time. 

The main harvest for most of the month has continued to be beans - both the runners and the yellow bush beans have cropped marvellously this year - after a slow start in the case of the runners - and most meals through the month seem to have come with some form of beany element, with the freezer being plentifully loaded with lots more to see us into the winter months too. That's one of the best things about having the ability to grow or forage stuff to feed ourselves - the knowledge that spring's effort and summer's bounty will be turned into delicious food to eat through the rest of the year - whether essentially "fresh" (frozen), or as chutneys, jams or whatever other form we're able to preserve things in.

Project patchwork shed continues - with the main focus this month being the area above the log store as once that was all done it would enable us to start work on the extended roof and side to the store - and that in turn would enable us to get the logs we bought in ready for the winter out of the shed, creating more room in there to actually get things stored away. Paper brick making has recommenced too now that the greenhouse is no longer full of seedlings - another example of work now meaning we're better set up for the winter months. There will be another blog post shortly about the log store, too… 

On the subject of seedlings though, some sowing is continuing - with troughs of salad and additional herbs being sown this month and already poking their heads up. I touched on my herbs last month - but truly, those are really one of my main joys from the garden this year, all the more so after the essentially complete lack of success with soft herbs last year. I have been regularly making small batches of pesto - albeit not a "classic" version as mine uses sunflower seeds and Padano cheese - and those too are stored away in the freezer ready to provide joyful little bursts of flavour in pasta dishes. I do still keep a keen eye out for herb plants for "rescue" as well - with the supermarkets and DIY centres garden clearance areas being good for those. Generally speaking there is little wrong with them that a re-pot and a proper watering can't fix!  The cabbages we sowed last month all got eaten - almost certainly by slugs and snails, so I am stealing a bit of greenhouse shelf space from the drying fire bricks to use for new sowings of those - I'm determined that home grown cabbages will be in our future! Hopefully being able to keep them off the ground will help ensure that they stay intact long enough to get to a size they can be planted out! 

We're now enjoying a decent supply of courgettes - albeit a lot of the plants are a long way behind where we might have expected. The chillies meanwhile are clearly loving life - the picture above shows the “Bishop’s Crown” variety with vast numbers of fruit swelling. Those peppers I photographed last month are still going well, too - we've got several at a size where we're just waiting for them to ripen, now!

We ate our first sweetcorn over the bank holiday weekend and it didn’t disappoint - we’d both almost forgotten the delicious sweetness of ears of corn picked and cooked within minutes! 

The tomatoes too are lagging behind and disappointingly don't seem to be fruiting as well as they might either - this could be related to the exceptionally hot temperatures we had earlier in the year which may have affected the flowering and subsequent fruit setting. That said, my little “Minibel” bush tomatoes are cropping prolifically- and it was one of those that gave us our first ripe toms, with plenty more still to ripen.

The other task that inevitably begins at this time of year is starting to make plans for next year's plot. We've decided that a shift of position for the "cucumber trellis" is a good idea, and following our successful growing of sweetcorn this year we've earmarked a suitable spot for that, too. The main bean obelisk may well move to the opposite end of the main bed - with the additional plants being grown up and over the arches/metal frames. I intend definitely getting some of the Tromboncino squashes that I know will climb over those too - I had planned that for this year but just ended up with different varieties.  We've been potting up the sturdiest strawberry runners as we have seem them - so should be able to increase our quantity of strawberry plants for next year while keeping our current mix of "Sonata", "Cambridge Favourite" and "Elsanta" - and we may try to fashion some sort of stand for those too, whether by buying or building is yet to be established! 

Robyn.

Frugal Friday…

Homemade Scotch Eggs! 

It’s getting tougher to be frugal isn’t it? While we are still doing many of the same things we did when tackling the original mortgage, it feels rather a lot tougher this time round, and particularly on the food front. Back in those days our monthly food budget was around £150 - and we used to save a reasonable chunk of that most months in order to enable big purchases like a whole lamb from time to time - now, £250 a month gets transferred to our groceries account and it’s frequently a struggle to stay within that! 

Of course, in reality, 10 years has passed since those £150 a month days, and while a lot has changed, a lot has also stayed the same in terms of our approach. We still mostly cook from scratch - although always with an eye out for a yellow stickered bargain that we can incorporate into our meals. We make most of our own bread and rolls for weekday lunches - although very much appreciate the odd artisan-type loaf as well, and of course if there are reduced price goodies in the bakery section that beat the price we could make bread for, then we are all over that! Areas where we are still very happy to spend a bit more are still much the same - eggs (always free range),  meat (chickens are always free range, and most of our other meat comes from the stall at our local farmers market, or at least the supermarkets “posh” ranges where we can be more confident of its welfare standards) and cheese - because life without decent cheese is barely life, surely?! We’re also not quite of the same mindset we were then - these days we are more inclined to go for slightly more luxury variations of things where there is a food or a flavour we particularly appreciate - I’ll pay a bit more for British tomatoes for example, or for a variety of apple that we really enjoy eating - we are probably far more inclined to buy based on “likes and wants” now rather than being quite so price-focused as we once were. That’s fine too - and while it does impact a little on our future plans, sometimes a good life now has to be prioritised over future planning. we definitely still aim to  make savings where we can though - and my recent discovery that air-fryer scotch eggs are an absolute winner means that this Scotch-egg fan can enjoy really good, tasty ones at a far lower cost than the better shop-bought options! 

Of course there are still areas where sometimes a saving comes along and surprises us - this year it was insurances. We always follow the golden rule of doing the comparisons for renewals roughly 23 days out from the renewal date, and never simply accepting an autorenewal. in spite of that the past few years have seen prices increasing, and the insurance claim I was forced to make when an idiot in a van rolled backwards in the region of 8' to smack into my vehicle on the way to work one day didn't help! Thankfully common sense eventually prevailed there, and that claim was changed to "No fault" on my part earlier this year after the idiot's insurance company finally paid for the damage. That combined with a general drop in pricing across the market to ensure that both MrEH and I saw a fall in our premiums this year. Breakdown insurance prices stayed much the same, and in fact I opted for an autorenewal there having looked at options elsewhere, and MrEH switched to the same company that I have been with. The home insurance surprised us both when the renewal quote came through with an immediate saving on last year's premium. As this was for cover we were happy with, and a quick look at the comparison site suggested we weren't going to make much - if any - saving by switching, we've left this one where it was too. 

As for the scotch eggs, if you want to have a go at making them, the recipe can be found by searching "Air-Fryer Scotch Eggs" on the good old BBC Good Food website. On this occasion I opted to use a budget supermarket's delicious chorizo style sausages, and some bacon that was bought yellow stickered a few weeks back, and popped in the freezer. The breadcrumbs are, as always the ends of loaves that have been blitzed up then frozen, herbs from the garden and the eggs were from one of those "15 mixed weight" boxes - often the most economical way of buying them. I reckon they cost me around £1.10 per Scotch egg, but it would probably be possible to cut that back a bit by using a more basic sausage and upping the seasoning a little. You could also omit the bacon, in reality, although it does add to the succulence and flavour. In any event they fed both of us for a couple of meals, and tasted delicious! On this occasion they were also cooked at a time when our electricity cost was super-low - thanks to our Octopus "Agile" tariff. As much as getting frugal is getting tougher - there are still ways of making a sneaky saving!

Robyn

July in the garden…

 July started HOT - just keeping up with keeping everything watered was a challenge! I got my second salvaged wine box planted up with herbs though - it’s in the background there planted with a golden marjoram, a variegated sage, a blue hyssop and an upright thyme - plus a sprinkling of chive seeds which may or may not germinate. Best thing was that the four herbs used there were all bought for a bargain reduced price from a garden centre we’d not visited before. The sage is struggling a bit but the rest look happy enough,

In that picture you can also see another little project I’ve had in mind for a while - namely re-using old peanut butter tins to plant herbs. 1 has a mint- just a classic garden mint - and 2 others have “rescued”  supermarket basil and coriander - each bought for pennies because they were apparently pretty much dead… 

The beginning of the month saw the runner beans really take off - and start flowering. We’re growing two varieties this year - Scarlet Emperor and Polestar. Strangely enough we had little success with the Polestar seed last year, this year they’ve done OK, particularly those we sowed direct into the ground. 

The biggest thing we’re noticing about the garden is the contrast between when we moved in and now - I mean obviously we use the garden very differently to how our sellers did - to them it was a place to sit in the summer I think, and not a huge amount more than that. The pictures above show one side after and before the veg bed was dug out though and give at least a taste of how the feel of it has changed. The other side has the arches now, we’ve let next door’s honeysuckle and winter Jasmine continue to romp over the fence, and of course both sides of the path now being planted up has given that a very different feel.

Harvesting has now started well and truly - we’ve been enjoying wonderfully crisp, fresh beans with most meals, and although we’ve only had a couple of courgettes so far, there are an awful lot of flowers and I suspect very shortly we might be over run with them! The cucumbers too are flowering really well - and we seem to be getting a decent sized cuke every few days. The tomatoes are still a bit behind where we’d really like, but there are fruit forming now on most of the plants, so hopefully not long now before I can take them off my weekly shopping list! 

One thing I am really pleased with this year is that I’ve managed to get a decent crop of Basil. Last year every time I showed a pot of it, the squirrels came along and dug it up - the best I managed all year was a few handfuls of leaves for throwing into pasta dishes. This year is a different story - I’ve been doing successional sowings and it’s doing really well, I’ve managed to make a couple of batches of pesto as well as doing plenty of cooking with what is definitely one of my favourite herbs! 

Finally - and a first for us - is successfully growing peppers.We did chillies last year, and have a few plants of those again this year too, but we’d always assumed that peppers would be a bit optimistic allowing that we have no indoor growing space. So far though they seem to be doing well - they’re in tall pots tucked in front of the compost bin to provide a bit of shelter, and we’ve got some decent sized fruit forming! Very exciting! 

Robyn 

June in the garden…

Finally a month that we weren’t away for a great chunk of, and a chance to really get stuck in to the garden! In spite of our “neglect” over the past few months though, it’s already doing well - with the notable of our first peas harvested…

As expected they are absolutely delicious- in fact early on we were  pretty much just eating them raw - thrown into salads, couscous etc. The later end of the crop have been lightly cooked. Perfect little flavour bombs - and definitely a crop we will grow again allowing for how relatively low effort they have been. In future years we’d probably sow successionally to keep them coming for longer, too. The final few pods that dried on the plants as they were missed on picking have been set aside to dry for saved seed.  The strawberries too were producing well right through the month - we don’t have many plants so we’re never going to be looking at suitable amounts for jam or similar, but we’ve been thoroughly enjoying a few each here and there, often just eaten freshly picked from the plants as a treat! Those too will be multiplying by themselves as we’ve caught some runners and potted them up which should double our plant numbers for next year. 

Once again our trusty bargain mini greenhouse is proving it’s worth - less so the cold frame purchased earlier this year from one of the discounter supermarkets - that has turned out to be flimsy and with a tendency to pull itself apart in all but the lightest winds - so we wouldn’t recommend. It has shown us the value of a cold frame though so it is safe to say we might look into a rather more sturdy one at some stage.  It did serve a purpose, and we might see if it can be put back together in a slightly more structurally stable way! 

As for the general look of the garden - the front is really starting to come together into the sort of look we were aiming for now - sort of cottage garden on a very small scale. 

The Nicotiana in the middle there is a complete win - it sprang up from nowhere in the veg patch in the spring, we weren’t sure what it was but as it looked interesting MrEH dug it up and popped it into a pot…a month or so later it burst into the most beautiful flowers, and as it had just the amount of height we wanted, off to the front garden it went! The rose at the back was one of those we bought from a clearance section (either a local garden centre or the big orange DIY place, can’t recall which) last year and it’s one of the best things we have out in as it just flowers constantly and beautifully. The bright pink Salvia was purchased from the lovely plant chap at the local Farmers Market - £4! What a bargain! 

The back too is starting to look good - we’re intending to train the squashes over the arches, and with the Campanula, lavender and Rose Campion flowering we’re quite the haven for the local pollinators now.  We’ve started keeping a list of the various more interesting insects we’re seeing in the garden too - with the highlight being a couple of visits from a Hummingbird Hawk Moth the other weekend - the first time either of us had seen one! 

Robyn

May in the Garden...

 Another sketchy month that we were only around for part of, however also a very productive one indeed once we had finally returned from all our galivanting!

Inevitably we did lose a fair amount of stuff while we were away - my lovely Mum came round and watered things every few days but of course our travels did coincide with some almost unseasonably warm weather down here, and as a result some things struggled a bit. In the few days between trips we ran round like mad things potting on chillies and peppers, and as a result we have been able to plant a few of each on into their final containers. We also re-sowed sunflowers as although we planted about 7 of them out before we headed off the first time, the pesky slugs and snails got in on the act and we only have a few surviving now - even if one of those is a monster that appears to have ambitions to see over the fence to next door sooner rather than later! Although the additional seeds didn't seem to have done much while we were away - and had indeed dried out quite a lot - a good soaking saw them immediately spring into life and there are at least a couple more we'll be able to get into the garden shortly!

Potatoes growing in old compost sacks

Our kale plants also suffered thanks to molluscy appetites - and so a quick re-sow of these in the "between trips" gap was squeezed in - with luck we will have at least a few more plants now! Meanwhile the turnips and beetroot had fallen prey to the four-legged fiends known as next door's kittens using that bed as a toilet/digging spot - so MrEH sowed more in there and then we constructed yet another complicated network of canes which - so far - seems to be working as a deterrent!

The return from our second trip away was when the real activity started - as we got stuck in to sowing our tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, winter squash, assorted salads and herbs and various other things that it had been necessary to delay until then - later than we would ideally have sown, but we can only hope that the warmer temperatures mean that things will catch up, otherwise we are going to have a disappointing harvest! 

The strawberries are showing plenty of fruit forming, and the peas are flowering and starting to produce pods...meanwhile the rhubarb had apparently turned into a triffid with takeover ambitions...and another small harvest has been taken from that, plus a few stalks for Mum too. As it is only the plant's second year, we're not able to go too mad picking the stalks, but it certainly looks like we will be able to take a few more small harvests from it without causing it too much of a problem! (And frankly I'm getting a little nervous about how much of the garden it might want to commandeer next year!) Beans are now starting to reach up to the obelisk they are planted round - and I will need to think about building a frame for a few more of them too!

Rhubarb!

The little Clematis we bought from the supermarket last year is showing plenty of enthusiasm and is currently covered in flowers and making good progress in covering the first fence panel - the rather posher one bought from our favourite nursery is doing well and has given us a few flowers albeit rather oddly in two entirely different colours - so we're not sure what the story is there. Both colours are extremely pretty, so we have no complaints, and it could yet end up being "two for the price of one"! In the front garden it's one of the roses that is the star - absolutely covered with blooms! 

Clematis “Duchess of Cornwall”

In other garden jobs we have also started the task of rubbing down and re-painting the shed and office - this will be ongoing for quite some time we suspect, and it will be a while before we move from a patchwork of the previous dark grey to fully covered in the new shade - called "Cornflower" and a sort of dusty blue. 

Early tasks for June are going to be identifying where we have gaps and need to try for new sowings of various things, getting the courgettes in the ground, and successional sowings of basil and other herbs. 

Robyn

New island alert! 🚨

Regular readers (are there any left?!) will recall that we do like an island or two, and we particularly enjoy the chance to explore new ones, so being able to add two previously unvisited ones to our list recently was a bit excellent!

Appreciating the sunset from the top of the fort…

When our pal Laura mentioned a few years back that she had plans to book the rather incredible Fort Clonque on Alderney for a week for her 50th birthday celebrations, it took us precisely zero minutes to assure her that we were very much in for this plan - even before we looked at the photos of the place it sounded fabulous. Logistically for us it needed to work around our Hebrides trip, but planning that in was fine, and lead us to a 5 week period where I actually only had 6 working days too which was marvellous! The financial planning took some working in - but we were determined and in the end we diverted our usual “joint fun” budget for the last year, plus some extra diverted from monthly surpluses for the last few months to cover spending money as well, and we were all set. Having a good long run-in to the trip was helpful in this regard as it gave us time to ensure that the costs were covered - no nasty post-holiday credit card surprises for this household, thank you very much! 

The fort from the end of the causeway

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and the long awaited trip was finally upon us - so MrEH and I headed for London City Airport for our first flight - the 1 hour-ish hop down to Guernsey on Aurigny Airline’s ATR 72 aircraft. Being able to fly from City did add to the cost a bit but having never flown from there before we were both keen, and it reduced the travel at the “home” end a lot over the alternative drive down to Southampton too. We were fortunate with having gloriously clear days for the flights at both ends of the trip too - always a bonus and a good chance to play the game of trying to work out where precisely you are as places look very different indeed from the air! I did spot that we flew out over the coast over Beachy Head though - I have spent too much time in Eastbourne for airshow purposes not to recognise its distinctive pier and Martello tower!  A short break between flights on Guernsey so not too much time to explore but we did manage a short walk out to the coast before heading back to meet some of the rest of the gang in departures ahead of the short hop across to Alderney. This was a novelty on several levels - first another new-to-me aircraft type in the shape of the Dornier 228. Broadly similar to my favourite De Havilland Twin Otter in shape and style, this has a cabin head height of just 5’ - and while I could navigate this with barely a need to duck, our 6’7” friend Marc wasn’t quite as comfortable while boarding! This was also the shortest flight I had ever taken at about 12 minutes - and to add to that we departed early so actually taxied up to the terminal at Alderney Airport before we should technically have departed Guernsey! 

Alderney is a superb little island - at around 3.5 miles long and 1.5 across it’s just a great size for exploring on foot, which is a good thing as there isn’t actually any public transport available for the most part - and although you can hire a car, we opted not to. There IS an extremely helpful taxi driver - we made a lot of use of his services during the week, both as transport for those less comfortable with walking long distances and as a way of getting shopping to the Fort as well. There is also - 1 day a week and running just two return journeys - a railway, which of course we had to visit! An added bonus here was the fact that the two passenger carriages are 1959 London Underground Northern Line stock - complete with their maps etc in place! Rather wonderful and amusing to tick off a bit of “Hidden London” style tube geekery! 

Underground overground….and on an island! 

Probably the most notable part of Alderney’s history is that it was occupied by the Germans during WW2 and as a result the vast majority of the island’s residents were evacuated in 1940 for their own safety. The had just a few hours notice of this, and were ordered to arrive at the pier for the boats carrying just a single suitcase each, and pets were to be killed and livestock set free before they left, which must have been an incredible wrench for people already terrified of what was to come. Those evacuees did not get to return until over 5 years later - in December 1945, and when they did return it was to discover that their homes had been ransacked and in some cases destroyed completely. The German occupation has left huge amounts of history all over the island too which includes many of the Victorian forts which are to be found right round the coast bearing more recent (relatively speaking) German additions. There were 4 labour camps on the island too one of which - Lager Sylt - later became a concentration camp. All that remains now are the gateposts, but it was indescribably haunting to stand and look at those gateposts now, all these years later. 

S.S. Lager Sylt

While unquestionably WW2 buffs will love the island, it definitely has something for everyone - the wildlife is amazing - with flowers, birds and other creatures a-plenty. We saw huge numbers of Gannets from the Fort, and Gannets and Puffins from a boat trip round the island. If general history is your thing then the Victorian forts (there are forts EVERYWHERE!) will float your boat, and if you just like exploring then there is so much to see in spite of the small footprint Alderney has. 

If all else fails, fellow 70’s kids will enjoy the Womble connection - Elisabeth Beresford lived on Alderney, and so there are references everywhere which is rather fun. There is a Womble trail, a Womble display in the museum - and even rather fabulously a Womble covered ice cream van, and yes, you’d best believe that Laura, Tony and I did indeed agree that if one sees a Womble ice cream van it is the law that one must have ice cream! 

All in all we had an amazing week - we walked, we cycled (shout out to the fabulous Cycle and Surf Alderney crew who sorted us out with e-bikes for a brilliant day exploring!) we ate and drank, we enjoyed sunsets and relatively little rain (yes, what did fall did it as we were heading back to the fort one day and we got soaked, no I do not have photos of this!) and frankly we are all already planning when we are returning! 

Robyn