Goodbye to Rye Meads

 

View from the Gadwall Hide.

Sadly earlier in the year the RSPB announced their intention to withdraw from our wonderful local reserve - Rye Meads, at the end of the year, and last Sunday marked its final day of operation under the RSPB management. 

Carved sculpture outside the Kingfisher Hub

We're regularly spent time at the reserve for a lot of years - indeed, our original decision to become RSPB members was based on the fact that we were visiting a lot, and it felt right to give something back beyond our "quid in a bucket" donations!  It is a great place to spot Kingfishers - we’re fortunate that they are regularly seen around our area but they nest at Rye Meads so while not quite a certainty we definitely see them there more often than not. It’s my favourite sort of reserve too - with lots of water, reedbeds and plenty of wooded areas for a good mix of birds. 

Painting on the car park sign

We weren’t sure what to expect from our final visit on Sunday - feelings had been running high about the RSPB’s decision to pull out, and there is some uncertainty over what will happen next - although landowners Thames Water have committed to continuing to run it as a nature reserve after a short break to manage the transition to new management. We’d heard that volunteers had been asked if they would stay on, but at the moment nobody really knows when it will reopen and on what basis. A gloomy atmosphere wouldn’t have been unexpected, but instead it was distinctly party-ish - with pretty much all the volunteers in attendance and a really quite celebratory mood prevailing - look at what we have achieved rather than look at what we are losing. 

Sunset from the Gadwall hide on a previous visit

We were determined to wander around every last inch of the reserve - even making our way along the dog-leg path at the far end to the rarely visited Warbler hide - far from the time of year for any warblers of course, and indeed as largely expected we saw no birds from there at all! With time and daylight running short - the reserve closes at dusk at this time of year - we retraced our steps through the reserve opting for one final stop at the Draper hide - the first you come to on the main path from the visitor’s centre. There was just one volunteer in there when we got in, but he excitedly informed us that the Kingfisher had been seen just minutes before so we grabbed a seat on the bench and settled in - and sure enough a few moments later the bird in question flew in and landed just in front of the hide! We watched him for maybe five minutes until something startled him and off he flew. Some more folk came in, possibly it was their approach which had spooked the bird? Once told about the Kingfisher though they too settled in - and were joined by several more folk, visitors and volunteers, and after a few moments the telltale flash of vivid blue appeared once again. All thoughts of enforcing closing times had clearly been discarded, and we sat there, a small group of mostly strangers, all transfixed and united by not only the beautiful invention of nature in front of us, but also I suspect in most cases by what it represented - if RSPB Rye Meads had possessed a logo of its own, that would unquestionably have been the bird that would have been chosen for it. That it was the last bird watched on the final day of Rye Meads life under the RSPB mantle could not have been more perfect, it was as though the bird itself knew what was happening.

The entrance to the visitor’s centre

Now we wait and see what happens next. It seems implausible that Thames can do anything bar charge a hefty admission fee to justify running it - it certainly can’t cost them money to run - their financial challenges have been well documented. For those like us though who frequently pop in for an hour because it is so close, an admission fee will make us less likely to visit as it won’t be financially viable just for a short visit. Maybe they will do a reasonably priced “season ticket” - that could be worth it, or as close neighbours Lea Valley Park have done, make a charge for parking but sell a sensibly priced annual car park pass for regular visitors. We’ll see - and hope. 

Robyn

Frugal Friday..

The village, Lundy at dusk.

So how has week 1 of our little grocery challenge gone then? Reasonably I think - as I said the first task was always going to be a freezer audit, rapidly followed by a meal plan of sorts, and those things happened as planned. 

The final main shop of October happened at Lidl - in part because I had a coupon for a free bakery item from there, and on scrutiny that included their various loaves of bread, one of which would provide  toast for breakfast over the weekend, meaning we didn’t need to make a loaf. I also had a couple of other coupons that I decided to use - 15% off the Greek yogurt I often buy, and 15% off the packs of garlic and herb croutons - which definitely add an extra dimension to a soup or salad. Total spend there was just over £20, but all spending in October was counted in that month’s budget. I also visited our local international supermarket where we tend to buy our herbs and spices, and Farmfoods where we made use of their special offers on MrEH’s preferred brand of instant coffee at £1 a jar below the lowest price it is usually available for, and their tinned red kidney beans for 19p a tin. A small top up shop was done to cover a couple of items we had been unable to get elsewhere. We did spend a fraction over the remaining amount in the grocery account, but I topped that up from elsewhere as ultimately it would have been crazy not to have bought that coffee, and without that we would have had money left over. 

Saturday’s lunch was a great example of my tendency to use that meal to use up leftovers - MrEH was at rugby, so I turned my attention to the fridge.  There was a small amount of salsa left from fajitas the night before, and two eggs that needed using - now this might be a leap but to me that immediately suggested a variant on shakshuka! I cooked off a bit of diced chorizo with small sliced red onion and red peppers, a handful of leftover tomatoes, the salsa and plenty of seasoning. Cracked in the two eggs and popped a lid on while I toasted a couple of slices of that free bread. Topped with a grating of cheese it was absolutely delicious, and a great budget lunch from ingredients that needing finishing up. 

I had two hours of free electricity from Octopus's "Happy Hours" scheme on Sunday, so we made good use of those with some cooking - MrEH made a batch of rolls for weekday lunches, I baked a big dish of cauliflower cheese & bacon pasta bake, and another of layered veg bake. The pasta doesn't freeze quite so well, so that has fed us for a couple of meals during the week and the layered bake is tucked away in the freezer. While the oven was on we also took the chance to cook a pack of sausages - 4 of which then went into a toad in the hole for our lunch - that was eaten with the leftover cauliflower and potato from the other cooking, chopped into small pieces and roasted with some garam masala. The other two sausages were eaten with couscous and veg on Tuesday. The additional cooking helps us get ahead of ourselves for later in the month - meals that otherwise would have come from the freezer for this week will now stay in there to feed us at a later date, and that bake will probably do the carb "bulk" element of a Sunday lunch. 

Spends: the only spend this week from the grocery budget was 62p on a Y/S’d (“yellow stickered” = reduced) loaf of bread - this gave us bread to eat with our soup last night, dealt with sandwiches for MrEH’s lunch today, and will also feed us for breakfasts over the weekend.

Vouchers: I won a free sweet bakery item from Lidl on the Octopus weekly scratch card, and noticed that the Co-Op app had vouchers for 20p off milk and for £1 off my shop - so I have activated those this week and MrEH will benefit from some nice cheap milk! My main weekly shop this week will be tomorrow, in Lidl, and I may well use the points that have accumulated on the app to get £5 off my shop there. 

Plans: we will need a meal plan and a shopping list ahead of tomorrow - this means that we buy what we need and aren’t tempted down the line of buying deals that look good but won’t really fit in with what we will be eating. 

Next week will definitely look spendier as it will include two “main shops” - although I am still hoping to keep both as low as possible! 

Robyn

Planning adventures...

 

St Helen’s church, Lundy at dusk. 

As you know, we do enjoy an adventure, and even though the focus is still very much on getting rid of that pesky mortgage, we're also very determined to do that without compromising on fun, on spending time with each other, and with friends, and generally getting out there and exploring a bit! 

Shadow selfie on North Uist

As much as we adore our time spent in the Hebrides - I for one can't quite imagine a year without visiting at all - there are also other places we want to visit, right now these are mostly in the UK, but we do also have some places abroad which we want to take a look at one day too. Right now though, the adventures we're planning are UK based. We've got some trips already planned for next year - a return to the Isle of Wight, a return to Lundy - with both of us this time and a group of pals too - and also what we are calling "Not the North Coast 500" - a trip around Scotland visiting places that MrEH in particular hasn't seen at all, and which I've not spent any amount of time in. 

St Helena again - this time by moonlight

You may be aware of the North Coast 500 - a trip taking in the extreme east, north and westerly coasts of the very top of Scotland. It's gained huge popularity over the last few years - to the extent that in high summer it is causing some problems for those who have to live and work there. We have no particular wish to do the actual NC500, but did want to visit some of the places that lie on it, so we will be following the stretch of the route from Inverness north, across the top, then down the west as far as Ullapool, before scratching our "Island itch" by hopping on a ferry to Stornoway, and then travelling down to Uist for a few days before heading back across to the mainland, then to Mull. 

The hovercraft - an epic mode of travel!

A trip of this sort requires a lot of planning these days - oddly enough more so than it used to years back when we first started heading to random bits of Scotland. Back then - in the late 90s/early 2000s. we were relatively happy to set off with rucksack and guide book, and then make calls to B&B's for accommodation as we went - usually booking a couple of nights ahead and only any further than that in any places where we knew accommodation might be trickier to find. We found some lovely places like that - the B&B in Harris where the lady greeted us with an enormous slice of chocolate cake each is a stand-out although we had a similar experience to that relatively recently too with some glorious home baking. Also some rather less lovely ones though - with the place we ended up in Tobermory being a great example. (If you ever want to see MrEH roll his eyes, ask him about "The Cedars"!) Now though, leaving things until the last minute is a recipe for either very cold or very expensive nights, hence our booking now for next year. The main aim for the accommodation for this one was that it came in below the “per night” cost that our usual cottage would be - and pleasingly we have well and truly managed that, with only three nights costing us more, and the rest being quite substantially below.

A favourite Uist view

The Isle of Wight trip will be much the same as this year with accommodation at the budget hotel where we can get free breakfast. I’d anticipate that the transport over and back will be much the same too as we very much enjoyed the Hovercraft in particular! We’ll be setting aside money for that from our personal spends budgets through the year. Our trip to Lundy meanwhile will mostly be funded via the money we budget monthly for general fun stuff - we like to make sure that when the opportunity to do something like a trip away with pals comes up, we can say yes! 

Ryde pier(s!) Isle of Wight

All in all my budget book will be getting a bashing from the planning of these - but we’ll have some great fun trips without the enjoyment being tempered by worrying about a credit card bill at the end of it. We’ll obviously know accommodation costs well in advance, but will also be budgeting for the diesel and the ferries we will be using for Scotland - no small consideration these days - trying to book the cheapest travel options we can for the Isle of Wight, and planning a rough budget for our daily spending on each trip too.  That won’t be a rigid figure, but a rough expectation, and will help us establish exactly how much we need to set aside. A bit of planning ahead of time leads to a far more relaxing trip! 

Robyn

October in the garden...

 

Harvesting slows and then mostly stops during October, but at the beginning of the month there was still plenty to pick, with the highlight being our one and only red pepper plant with fruit on it! These lovely pointy "Corno di Torro" peppers are a joy - with a beautiful flavour and delicious raw or cooked. We sowed the last of the seeds this year so I have those on my list to re buy! 

Courgettes were still coming too - although the increased dampness in the air tends to lead to them beginning to rot before getting to a sensible size. We still picked one or two more though. As for the tomatoes, well, we've been over-run with those all month still with the last of the fruits removed from the plants to ripen indoors. We always start them off on a bright windowsill, then any that are still reluctant at that stage get popped in a brown paper bag with a banana for a day or two and that usually gets them going. I do generally find that toms ripened off the plants are best just cooked though - the flavour isn't as good for eating fresh. 

The main job for this month was clearing things back for winter. Stripping the tomato plants of all the viable fruit is one of the first jobs, particularly as we had started getting frosts by mid-month. The final Tromboncino squashes as well - those have been a huge success and we have already planned where they’ll be going next year! 

It always feels like a daunting job to get things ready for winter - you can see above what the right-hand side looked like before we started, and the left is below…

…although I only remembered to take the pictures after I’d made a start! The compost bag is there ready to  take the tomato plants - those don’t go on the compost heap this late in the season, although we’ve had absolutely no sign of blight we still don’t risk it. Instead the plants are chopped into pieces and bagged up, they’ll head to the tip next time we go. Other plants get chopped into the compost bin of course - ready to have a second life nourishing their successors in years to come! The tomato pots will be emptied on to areas of the garden which won’t have tomatoes or potatoes grown in it in the future as the spent compost makes a good mulch. 

There is the left after most of the clearing was done - just some tidying still to do. It was a further week before we were able to turn our attention to the right hand side, which was a good thing as the compost bin was full to bursting after week one! In spite of chilly temperatures it had dropped down quite a lot in just those few days though, and we were able to get most of the remaining cleared vegetation into it. The trick here is to chop it up really well - a little more time consuming, but speeds up the actual composting process quite dramatically, and means you can pack more in! 

There - just the rhubarb still to die back, although as leaves start to naturally break off the plant we’re using them to layer into the compost to help keep the moisture in and the worms happy! The clematis had to given a haircut to let us properly access the compost bin - for a cheap Lidl plant that Clematis has been  astonishingly happy! 

So with the garden all put to bed for winter, that will be it for those posts until the spring. We will of course be planning next year’s planting, listing our seeds and deciding what we might need to buy. There will be more spring flowering bulbs to buy and plant, and the front garden needs some attention too, so we won’t be entirely idle!

Robyn.

October Reading...

 

The month began as September ended with Bella Mackie and How to kill your family - and I confess I am a little nervous about what this says about me because I absolutely loved this! Very dark, very twisted, but also very funny. The twist at the end was completely hilarious and totally unexpected, and that is all I’ll say about it! This got popped into a book exchange local to where I work. 

Time for an Ian Rankin Rebus story then. Saints of the Shadow Bible is set in the time period where Rebus returns to the Edinburgh force after a brief period of retirement - rejoining as a Detective Sergeant. Initially this sees hiring as junior officer to now D.I. Siobhan Clarke - and interesting turning of the tables! Probably not the most gripping Rankin I’ve read, but still a good enough storyline to keep me hooked. This one got finished on the Isle of Eight, but usually for books read while travelling it headed home with us to join the others on the shelf.

The month’s Reacher fix followed - Lee Child’s 61 Hours. This was one of the books we grabbed from a book exchange either in the Hebrides or en-route - I had read it before but it wasn't one we had on the shelf as far as I could remember. Standard Reacher stuff, as usual, although the countdown running right from the beginning is a clever twist to build suspense. Thoroughly enjoyable, now on the shelf with the rest of the collection.

A book I had for some reason been putting off reading for ages next - Peter May’s Chinese Whispers has been on the to-be-read shelf for a ridiculous amount of time, but following May's recent death I felt it was only fitting to read it. As is so often the case with his books, I was immediately grabbed by it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was interesting to read a book set in such a different culture - although I appreciate that this was softened by one of the main characters being an American woman. It's reminded me how good May was as an author - I must re read some of his others, and this one is now on the shelf alongside them. 

A non fiction offering was next off the shelf - Barbie Probert-Wright with Little Girl Lost - her account of her time as a young girl in wartime and immediate post-war Europe travelling with her sister Eva to attempt to be reunited with their family. This is another book that has been on my shelf for ages, and I  confess that I wasn’t sure how I would get on with it, however I was only a chapter or so in before I was thoroughly engrossed. A fascinating read and astonishing story. Not one to keep, this will return to the charity shop. 

Finally for the month - David Baldacci with Deliver us from Evil. Baldacci does write a good gripping thriller, and this is no exception. I particularly enjoyed the way he built to a climax mid-book, but still managed to maintain the pace to the finale! That said, I actually think he could have left things hanging a little more with the finale - it felt like unfinished business to me, with a set of “non ending” on one of the storylines. There were also some minor irritations that often come from an American writing a book with British characters and/or set in Britain. Sorry Mr Baldacci, but nobody in Britain was calling the Channel Tunnel the “Chunnel” by the time you wrote that! This one has gone on the shelf for now, but I’m reconsidering keeping this author’s books as I’m not convinced I enjoy them sufficiently to justify keeping them.

Robyn. 

Have you seen a ghost?

 

Nooo....not a spooky character wearing a bedsheet, but a ghost sign? I love these, and find them fascinating, so I decided to take a wander one lunchtime near work to see if I could see, and photograph - a few. 

The one at the top is a long time favourite of mine - whether you needed furniture or household removals, C Hawkes were clearly your go-to in Leytonstone! This one is reckoned to date from the 1950’s, and it’s impressive how well it has survived. Another which is apparently from the 50's  is the shop front above with the old sign for "Greys" just about visible. This was a sports shop for a long while, and was completely covered - when the sports shop ceased trading they took their sign down and this one was sitting underneath. 

Finally from that wander was the other one I knew about at the time - a window with signwriting for a firm of general builders still just about visible as you can see. I'm amazed that this still lingers, although it does look like the window has been a stranger to a damp cloth for quite some time, doesn't it! 

Having found those I was inspired to research whether there were any others in the area - the excellent Londonist site provided a link to the rather fantastic London Ghost Signs map so the following day - albeit in rather less pleasant weather, I headed out to find some more! 

I can’t quite make out which “Stores” this one might be promoting - that one word is still pretty clear though in spite of being open to the elements for however many years, isn’t it. Better by far than this one..

…where just the echo of the word “Hardy” plus an ampersand is visible - meaning that the suggestion online that this was an advert for shoe sellers Freeman Hardy & Willis seems likely. There was apparently a store nearby, so this at least seems to be one ghost sign with solid provenance. 

Finally for Leytonstone then is the really quite remarkably well preserved offering above - which is apparently relating to a chemist’s shop which used to be nearby. The shelter from the adjacent wall has clearly done this one a favour!

I did rapidly discover that once you are more attuned to looking for things like this, they are far easier to spot as a trip to Queens Park in North West London at the end of the week saw the one above absolutely jump out at me as I was walking back towards the station. Not often we see the word “Depository” in everyday use these days is it, this really did feel like a sign of it’s time! 

Robyn

Frugal Friday - Time for a challenge?

How do we feel about a late-in-the-year grocery challenge? With Christmas around the corner, we can all expect a higher than usual cost month to come, and "every little helps" (yes, I know, sorry) in the run up after all. I've also spent much of October building stocks and resilience and as a result have full cupboards, 2 full freezers, and a slightly more depleted than ideal grocery account, so November could be the right time to challenge ourselves to spend less. 

Some rules for this one then:

- I will be buying odds and ends towards Christmas as I see things at a good price, and will not count those for the challenge.

- Household goods aren't being included - I will be buying another pack of loo rolls for example, and probably washing liquid. 

- We will be going to the farmer's market and shopping there as normal. This will include a loaf of delicious sourdough bread. I will not be taking questions on this... ;-) 

- Storecupboard items will be replenished as they are used but further stocking up will not take place.

- There will be a focus on using up things that have been lingering in the freezer for longer than ideal too - 2025's green bean harvest, I'm looking at you! 

- As and when I have accumulated any coupons or vouchers that may be useful, we can take account of those to reduce the money spent if we wish. 

The first thing we'll need to do to help with this will be a freezer audit I think because as always knowing what we have in will be the key to success on this sort of challenge. The other reason for wanting to do this challenge now is in order to get some freezer space created ahead of Christmas - when I will be wanting to buy a couple of hams to glaze and roast to provide meals into the beginning of next year, and of course there will be the turkey leftovers to make the most of, too! 

Second step will be equally as dull I'm afraid - yes, the good old meal plan! I'm inclined to attack this slightly differently to the standard though by making a list of meals that we will cheerfully eat, and that we have the makings of, and then allocating them as we feel like it through the month. I'm also intending to stick to a rough - although not set in stone - pattern of types of meals - on a Monday I rarely feel much like cooking anything complicated, so something batch cooked that will come straight from the freezer to the microwave to our plates works well. Tuesdays are traditionally some sort of grain/couscous based bowl, often with halloumi. The rest of the week is going to be a variation on pasta or stir fry, or soup and bread, an omelette or perhaps a curry. I am very open to the idea of a low-effort mid-week tea. At weekends our main meal is often at lunchtime on a Sunday, and MrEH is frequently out at lunchtime on a Saturday so I often use that as an opportunity to see what needs using and finish things up - "stuff in a bowl" if you like, maybe a toastie (what the Americans would call a "grilled cheese" sandwich) or even just that classic stand-by of a tin of soup! 

I don't forsee this being as low-spend as the good old days of grocery challenges when we had loads of vouchers to use against any spending, and prices were far lower anyway, and I'm also not setting any sort of goal spend on this one either - I really don't know how it will end up - but if we finish up with some extra slack in the grocery account ahead of Christmas, I'll be quite happy! 

Anyone fancy coming along for the ride? 

Robyn