Living the Dream: Adventures away from Long Meadow

As part of the delight sampling, both Wendy and I had celeriac soup, which was delicious, but within hours of leaving Harrogate, guess who had not only purchased the necessary ingredients, but had also made the very same dish. No, not me, it was in fact Wendy once again and boy can she make a good soup. I’m far too spoiled I am!

We were able to do a little discovering this week and after a little bit of research, we travelled over to Huggate and parked up. Then, with the aid of our route map, so lovingly provided by East Riding Council, we meandered around a beautiful ten-miler, most of which we hadn’t walked previously.

We’d been on part of the walk, which touches for a time on the Wolds Way, but this route also takes in part of the Chalkland Way and the Minster Way too. It was a fantastic mix which incorporated woodland walking with the spectacle which is autumn all around us, after which finding ourselves up on the wold tops, where we could see literally for miles around us in many directions.

Then, before we could get all comfy, soon enough we were winding our way through the valley bottoms, with only the passing flocks of geese and the local buzzards out hunting, keeping us company.

I was also dragged out to a Christmas craft fair this week, to see if we could pick up some of our ever growing list of Christmas presents. If we didn’t manage to get any presents, we could maybe get some ideas at least.

Unfortunately, all we came a way with was a laugh. Whilst walking around the fair, we needed to walk outside moving from building to building and it was on one of these occasions, that we came across one of Santa’s elves.

She was standing beside what was signposted as ‘Santa’s phone’, with the idea being that children could speak to Santa and put in their requests for Christmas.

Now as it was Friday and most children were at school, it appeared that this elf wasn’t getting much business at all. She was dressed up to the nines in an outfit which had clearly seen better days and I’m not sure if she had borrowed the ears from Mr Spock, but they certainly didn’t fit like they should. It was a freezing cold day and it seemed all she could do to keep herself warm and pass the time was light up another ciggy. I didn’t know Santa allowed his elves to smoke, but, hey, you learn something new every day.

Well, if nothing else, in going to that Christmas fair we must have caught the Christmas bug, and so on Saturday evening, whilst we had some of our grandchildren over, we pulled out one of our family favourite films to watch, The Polar Express. I know it’s far too early to be watching it, but I’m sorry, I don’t need much persuading for this one and no doubt we’ll be watching it again before Christmas too.