so_jaeye

The forecast for our last day of hiking was for thundershowers all day, so we said not today, Satan, and rode along with our luggage to our final stop on this part of our trip: Hay-on-Wye. We arrived a little after 10, walked around a bit (often in light rain), changed some euros we've had kicking around for six years, poked our noses into some of the many bookshops the town is famous for, and have now collapsed in our B&B; Geoff is snoring next to me, and even I, who virtually never nap, can hardly keep my eyes open. Taking the day off was a good call.

the_shoshanna

We have completed our day's hike with only a little bit of rain at the end, had lovely showers, and are ensconced in the pub; Geoff is just having coffee but I have a quarter-liter of red wine and -- for the very first time even though I've watched all of GBBO -- a Victoria Slice. The music is eighties hits, when we walked in it was Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

This is good.

the_shoshanna

Yesterday's hike wasn't supposed to be as hard, and the forecast was for sunny and cool, with a brief chance of rain around three.

Guess what happened. Just guess.

The morning was lovely, especially since I've now figured out how to combine the paper directions (which are sometimes quite confusing; I remember them being much better on the hikes we did years ago!) with the company's shiny new GPS phone app, which is great and shows the trail on a topographic map and a little dot showing where we are and even sounds an alarm if we stray more than fifty meters from the path, but of course checking it all the time burns battery. (We've never come close to running out, and I have a battery backup charger, but even so I prefer not to be constantly checking it. But sometimes I have to!

We met a lot more hikers that morning, coming the other way, than we had the day before, and exchanged cheerful words with them (and often their dogs). That was nice; I enjoy cheerful exchanges with strangers! It was one of the things I really missed during the most isolated COVID years.

Around 1:45 we were about to begin the hardest section of the day's hike, a long and extremely steep ascent up a narrow muddy/rocky trail. At the top, though, we were promised a beautiful, mostly level walk a couple of kilometers along the top of the line of hills, getting glorious views of the countryside. Before embarking on the climb we stopped for a snack, and the sky looked a bit forbidding, with the wind increasing and the temperature decreasing, so we decided to put on raingear (and I put back on the Merino wool midlayer I'd been too warm for an hour before) and cover our packs. I mean, for whatever good it might do me, but after yesterday's debacle I had packed pretty much everything in plastic bags inside the pack. As I got my rain pants on over my trousers, it did indeed start spitting a bit, nothing major.

Well, as we clambered laboriously upward, the rain got harder. And harder. Finally, halfway up the hillside, we started hearing a little thunder, so we stopped and took what shelter we could under a tree. After about maybe fifteen minutes Geoff looked upwind and said, "I think the worst of the storm has passed us by, though it will definitely keep raining; shall we start hiking again?" Whereupon it began thundering much nearer, the wind speed doubled, and it began vigorously hailing. Sideways.

But, I mean, our only choices were to continue the hike or to go all the way back down and backtrack along our trail to pound on the door of one of the few houses we'd passed and hope someone was home whom we could ask for shelter. And the thunder and lightning did finally move away, at least, and it's easier and safer going up a slope like that in bad weather than going down. So once the t&l had moved away, maybe another fifteen minutes? I have no sense of time, but anyway we struck out again, climbing slowly and with infinite care (and liberal use of our hiking poles) until we reached the top and could start along the high path.

Where, of course, we were completely unprotected from the wind and whatever it decided to throw at us: sometimes hail, sometimes rain. We weren't at too much risk of getting dangerously chilled because of our raingear and because we were able to move quickly and keep our warmth up that way (and before, the effort of struggling up the steep ascent had kept us warm enough), but it officially Was Not Fun. Or at least, it was type 3 fun! My rain pants eventually soaked through. Geoff had water in his boots again. The only view we had was of solid grey, no scenery distinguishable.

We struggled through that for...maybe half an hour? I sure wasn't pulling my phone out to check the time (or, with a few exceptions, to navigate; thankfully we were following a well-marked walking route at that point). It finally started clearing up around the time we finally started descending again, and by the time we were on the last gentle green walk into our next town, it was sunny and cheerful and blithely denying it would ever have done such a thing to us!

As we entered town we also crossed the official boundary, leaving England and entering into Wales. The town has set up a photo op station, and Geoff got a picture of me with one foot on each side of the Official Line.

And when we finally staggered into our next hotel room, we were desperately grateful to find that the en suite included a big bathtub; I don't think we've ever done this before, but we immediately ran a really hot bath and got in together, just soaking all the chill out of our bones. (We'd actually wanted to do it the day before, but that hotel only had a shower stall, and it wasn't a very good shower, either 😥) It was absolutely lovely and sweet, just how we wanted to relax for a while.

We have had really nice conversations with other walkers on the paths and in the hotels/pubs. The scenery, when visible, is beautiful. Despite everything, we are enjoying ourselves!

But we've booked a ride to shorten today's hike, and will do so for tomorrow's as well, because oh my aching feet. Even the short version of today's hike has a cumulative uphill of 600 meters -- yesterday's was 750, I think? The regular version of today's would have 800. Tomorrow's, our last hike day, would be 830, which, HELL NO, it will be shortened to 510.

the_shoshanna

Geoff, looking out from under our sheltering tree: "It'll keep raining, but I think the worst of the rainstorm has passed us by; shall we start hiking again?"

the rainstorm: *thunders, doubles its windspeed, begins hailing sideways*

the_shoshanna

Last night at dinner, Geoff and I ordered a pint of beer and a half-pint of cider. When a different waiter arrived with the glasses, he asked, "Who has the cider?" I do appreciate it when they don't assume.

I had a hard time getting to sleep. I think I hadn't been aware of how stressed I was about how badly the day could have gone, even though in fact everything ended up fine; and also about my first indoor restaurant meals in five and a half years. I ended up taking an antianxiety med, which did the trick, and I slept deeply and well until seven am. Meanwhile poor Geoff apparently had anxiety dreams! (Partly because his son is terribly anxious at all times, and especially about us doing this trip, and self-soothes by unloading his anxiety on Geoff. 🎶It's the circle of li-i-i-ife 🎶)

Today was forecast to have intermittent light rain. What it actually had, all morning, was heavy rain and strong winds, on one of the harder hikes of our trip. "Not a long day, but a hard one," said the company's description, with 750 meters of cumulative uphill. My feet are all tingly now...and some of my toes hurt. My rainwear protected me well, but the rain cover on my pack, well, epically failed. Nothing that would be hurt by getting wet was in it -- except my passport. It, and all the clothes we wore today, are now draped around tonight's hotel room, and will hopefully dry out by tomorrow! Which is supposed to be sunny again. That makes me happy, but Geoff, who can overheat scarily easily sometimes, remarked that if today had been blazing sun the way yesterday was, he'd have absolutely died on the steep uphills.

We were mostly following Offa's Dike (ancient miles-long earthwork dividing England and Wales) and the Shropshire Way path, and once we were out of the town we started in (which took ten minutes, these towns aren't big!) it was pretty much all through fields: mostly sheep, often cattle, once a couple of horses. To get from one field to another we were either climbing over stiles or going through what are delightfully called kissing gates; believe me, by late afternoon we were grateful for every time we could go through a kissing gate instead of hauling ourselves over a stile!

Around midday we met a family (?) coming the other way: looked like two brothers in their late twenties and their dad. We chatted for a few minutes about the weather; they had hiked through hail! One of them commented that there are three types of fun:

1. You enjoy it while you're doing it;
2. You don't enjoy it while you're doing it, but you enjoy looking back on it;
3. You don't enjoy it while you're doing it, and you don't enjoy looking back on it, but it makes a great story.

We loved that and are totally stealing it. Today was some of each. There were some fucking grueling uphill slogs...

At one point we came to a gate into the next field, and a herd of cows were right there on the other side of the gate: maybe twenty or so, including several nursing calves and a bull. We were not going to walk into the midst of that crowd! So we hung out on the other side of the gate for a while, occasionally saying things like "come on, guys, go over there," "yes, you're moving away! Be a trendsetter!" or just, because it was obvious, "Moooooove!" While they eyed us grimly and largely refused to do anything except relieve themselves torrentially on the path we'd be walking. Geoff got a couple pictures of the nursing calves. Eventually they did slowly saunter away a bit, and once they were all a couple dozen meters away -- most especially the nursing calves, their mothers, and the bull, we for sure know not to come too close to, or between, them -- we slipped through the gate and walked gently past them to continue on our way.

We also met a couple of horses in another field, who hoped very very much that we would have treats for them. Which we did not, but that didn't stop them from following us for a while. In that field we met a local man (from Clun, the town we were heading for), out on a four-mile circuit hillwalk with his dog (and he must have been seventy, a great inspiration to us), and when we stopped to chat with him I was startled to find one of the horses had come up behind me and was nosing hopefully at my backpack!

Anyway, the rain mostly stopped around midday, though it did spit again a few times, and there was some glorious mist over the fields and hillsides. After seven hours we finally staggered into Clun and tonight's hotel. Our room's en suite bathroom is up three stairs, we have to go uphill yet again just to pee! Oh, the humanity.

Tomorrow's hike is not so bad, and the forecast is for sunny and cool. The day after's, though, is harder than today's; today had 750 meters of cumulative uphill, and Tuesday's has 800. Tomorrow morning we'll phone the cab company that moves our main luggage from place to place and hopefully arrange to get a lift with the luggage for part of the way that day. Because NO.

(The shortened option only cuts the cumulative uphill to 600m. Yikes.)

the_shoshanna

Geoff, after we've hiked uphill for two hours through heavy rain and driving wind: You know, this pastime has a bit of masochism involved in it.

me: YOU THINK.

(but since I'm posting this this evening from our second hotel, you know we made it! The company said 4½ hours of walking, allow six; it took us seven. Geoff is exhausted and I have a blister.)

the_shoshanna

It's a fucking learning experience!

We started out to do our first walk today: taking a bus to just outside the town and walking a long (loooong) loop back to our hotel. The company estimates it at five hours of walking, and says to allow seven when you add rest stops and lunch breaks and so on.

First the bus let us off at the wrong place. Then -- epic fail #1 -- we thought it had let us off too soon rather than too late, and walked way too far along the road looking for where we wanted to be, before realizing and backtracking alllll the way again. Having now walked two hours already, we decided to just do an out and back partway along the loop, to a conveniently placed visitors' centre and back, and then catch the reverse bus back home, but -- epic fail #2 -- forgot to check the return bus schedule. (I thought I had it downloaded, so I didn't think to check the bus stop sign; but I did not have it downloaded.)

Then we had to cast about a bit at the start of the walk, because the directions were a bit confusing; we'll be sending a note to the company about a few infelicities. Starting with, they said there was a red phone box at the bus stop we wanted to get off at, and since we'd been watching and hadn't seen one, that's why we thought we'd been let off too soon; but the phone box is not (is no longer?) red, so we'd missed it. (We still should have realized where we were from other clues, but that threw us off at the start. For the rest of it, I blame catastrophic jetlag.)

Anyway, we finally got ourselves oriented and hiked crosscountry to the visitors' centre. It was a lovely walk! Gorgeous scenery of hills and farms, sunny and windy and cool. It amazes and delights me that we can just blithely walk into and across farmers' fields, past (and sometimes carefully through) their cattle and sheep herds.

Thankfully the visitors' centre was open and had (a bathroom and) free wifi -- cellphone signal was bad to nonexistent all day, and never strong enough for a data connection. So we were able to get online and check the return bus schedule, which turned out to be: one passing in an hour, and we could not have backtracked fast enough to catch it, and one passing in four hours, which would mean idling by the side of the road for two and a half hours. And that was it for the day. If we'd remembered to check the schedule before heading out, we could have made sure to turn around and head back in time to catch the first one. Epic fail.

Plus, by the time we got to the centre, Geoff's feet were very tired and he didn't think he was up to backtracking across country the way we had come. Going back along roads would have been easier walking, but significantly longer, plus the roads are quite narrow and have virtually no verge, so walking along them, as we had done in the morning, meant constantly jumping up onto the few steep inches of grass and bramble between the roadway and the hedge whenever a car came by.

So we punked out and phoned the taxi guy who had picked us up at the rail station the day before and taken us to our hotel (as I've remarked to a couple people, yesterday we took a car to a train to a bus to a plane to a train to a train to a train to a taxi to our hotel), and he was willing to come pick us up and take us back to our hotel. (For a lot of money, but our only alternative was to hitchhike, which is our absolute last resort.) He's a friendly guy, very loquacious with details and anecdotes about the area, but his accent is so unfamiliar to us that I think we miss a quarter to a third of what he says! When Geoff phoned him, he wasn't familiar with the visitors' centre we were at and asked for our what3words location, and I was worried that the words would get mistranscribed because his accent and Geoff's are so different. But Geoff spelled each word out, and he did manage to find us, though it took him forty-five minutes to get there: "that's the middle of nowhere!" he'd exclaimed to Geoff when he'd pulled up our location. We had a pleasant wait sitting outside at one of the centre's picnic tables, and after a while struck up a conversation with a local man who was bicycling around the area. He confirmed that it's very isolated; once the volunteer staff of the visitors' centre go home, there's very few people around.

Anyway, now we're back at the hotel, rather earlier than we'd expected to end the day! In the end, though, it wasn't a bad day. Now Geoff is napping and I'm blogging, after which there will be a lot of showering before dinner. And we have learned many mistakes not to make on tomorrow's hike!

An irony here is that I was a little worried that I wasn't in good enough shape for this week, and would be holding Geoff back, and instead it was Geoff who flagged today! In fairness, his pack is heavier than mine; he carries more things. (Even when he was already starting to flag, he offered to take my half-full water bottle in trade for an empty one, to lighten my load at his expense; I declined the offer.)

Tomorrow's hike is listed as "not a long day, but a hard one": four and a half hours of walking, they say to allow six hours in all, and a cumulative ascent of 750 meters. Here's hoping we can make it!

the_shoshanna

Our flight was delayed by almost an hour and I had serious doubts that we'd make our train out of London, which would have set off a cascade failure of prebooked transit. But by dint of rushing as fast as possible through the infinite hallways from our arrival terminal, through baggage claim and border control (THANK GOD for the e-gates), to the Heathrow Express platform, we actually made out train with time to breathe! That was not how the smart money had been betting, so I'm very relieved.

(Also, as you can tell by the fact that I'm posting this, my UK SIM is working perfectly. £10 for all the service we could possibly need, I'm very pleased.

Now we're relaxing on our first train (of two, followed by a prebooked taxi). Well, I say "relaxing," but we're apparently on the Lad Local; we're sitting directly behind a group of eight young men all talking and laughing uproariously, and consuming vast quantities of sandwiches, crisps, and canned drinks that look like beer but I'm not sure. I can't really follow their conversations but they don't seem unpleasant in any way, just loud. I like hearing people having fun!

ETA: One of the lads just tried a friend's drink and announced that it was some kind of tequila lime grapefruit something something, I didn't catch it all; and he said, "Do you ever feel like they're putting too many flavors into a drink these days? Like, that's a lot of flavors! I like it when I just drink a beer, you know, it's a nice simple refreshing one flavor--"

"In other news," interrupted one of his friends, "old man yells at cloud."

ETA2: Our first train was delayed en route and we had only four minutes to catch our second one, but thankfully it was 1) on the adjacent platform, and 2) also slightly delayed! Everything has fallen into place despite the stresses. On this train, the announcements are made first in Welsh and only afterward in English. I've never actually heard Welsh spoken before; it's so pretty!

runpunkrun

Photograph of steel spoons and spices in a dramatic setting with added text that gives it the look of a gourmet magazine cover: September 2025. Food & Cooking, at Fancake. Steel teaspoons are arranged in an elogated oval to suggest a fish, with the bowls acting as scales and some of the handles left visible to create the fins and tail, giving the creature a spiky appearance. The concave bowls are dusted with a powdery orange spice for color and one spoon at the front of the fish is filled with a coarse black spice to create an eye. The fish is on a black surface with a rough texture and around it are three skinny green peppers, a mound of salt, a mound of orange spice, and a dipping bowl filled with a clear amber liquid.

It's farm to table—and every stop in between—at

fancake this month! Bring on over your recs for fanworks featuring hunting, farming, ranching, fishing, foraging, grocery shopping, farmer's markets, kitchens, restaurants, cafes, coffee shops, food carts, bars, wineries, breweries, waiters, bartenders, baristas, and, of course, cooking and eating.

If you have any questions about this theme, or the comm, come talk to me!

the_shoshanna

Back in the Before Times, Geoff and I tried to take a trip every year. Then COVID hit, and we haven’t done any significant travel in six years. (I mean, that was New Zealand, so if anything was going to have to last us six years, that would be it.) But it’s six years later, we’ve had ten vax shots each, and tomorrow we are leaving for Wales!

travel blather herein

I am, of course, still paranoid about getting ill.

But I have a strategy, because I perseverate a bit on these things

We plan to mask as much as possible in public indoor space, just as we do at home; on my last trip to visit friends I perfected the eating-indoors-in-public method of

1. inhale
2. hold breath
3. unmask
4. take bite
5. replace mask
6. exhale
7. chew and swallow

and while it’s troublesome, on the other hand it seems to have worked. So that’s the plan for the plane flight and long UK train rides. Plus I have a mask with a SIP valve, so I can drink with it on. We’re hoping that we’ll be able to eat many meals outside, but we’ve reached the point of being okay with it if we can’t sometimes on this trip. (I mean, I say that now. I warned Geoff that he’ll have to expect that I’ll freak out a couple of times, that’s just part of the process. I have spent six years deliberately inculcating a phobia in myself! It took me a long time to get over the phobia of semen I deliberately inculcated in myself in the mid-1980s, too, but hey, I have never had either HIV or COVID, so I’m okay with harnessing neurosis, it works for me.)

Also I keep reminding myself of this post that I made long before COVID was a thing; it’s not like it’s the only risk involved in travel!

We’re doing a weeklong hiking trip with a company we’ve traveled with several times before, the kind where they move your luggage from B&B to B&B and you walk all day with a daypack and a lunch. (And hiking poles and raingear and their awesome GPS navigation app.) We love them; in fact, in March 2020 we’d already paid a deposit for a trip that summer, which we never got to take! (They refunded us, of course.) Their system is efficient and clear, we love the places they offer to stay and the routes they have us take, which are sometimes delightfully off the beaten track and are described wonderfully. “Watch out for the muddy bit”; “turn right just past the house with a chicken mural”; “there’s a great spot for a picnic lunch just over the rise”; and so on. Also I have no idea what kind of customer-management software they’ve got on the back end, but in arranging the trip we’ve corresponded with a number of different people, and every single one has been fully up to speed with what we’re doing, what our few special requests are, exactly when and how we’re arriving at the start and departing from the end, and so on. Nobody who has ever navigated customer service hell will take that for granted. And it doesn’t hurt that they’re the most reasonably priced such company I’ve ever found, in the admittedly limited comparison shopping I’ve done.

This walk is quite challenging, and we’re a bit uncertain we can actually do it! They tell you the cumulative uphill distance for each day’s walk, which is sometimes a lot (the worst day has an 820-meter total rise), and some of the days’ hikes are expected to take as much as eight hours, counting rest breaks. If we punk out, though, we can generally arrange to ride with our luggage to the next stop instead of walking to it, and they always make clear when there’s a local bus available, or a way to cut off a loop, or some other shortening option. Geoff and I have both been exercising pretty hard to get in shape for this, but I do think I could have done more.

We leave tomorrow: a friend will give us a ride to the train station, we take a train to Montreal, and then hopefully a free shuttle bus to the airport, but I’ve heard stories that the shuttle is often late or overfull. We can always take a cab, but if the weather is good -- the forecast has been iffy, but right now it looks okay -- we might just walk it. It’s only about half an hour, and it will be the only exercise we get for a couple of days, so the prospect has some appeal! But man, I miss living a twelve-minute drive from a major airport so much.

After we finish that week of heavy hiking, we spend two full days (three nights) in a pair of small coastal towns called Fishguard and Goodwick, where the plan is to spend one day rambling along the coastline, which is supposed to be gorgeous, and the other sea kayaking! There we’re staying on a smallholding that rents out one (1) bedroom as a B&B, and the couple who run it have been incredibly friendly and helpful with recommending activities and restaurants, offering rides (rural public transit is pretty thin on the ground), and so on; also their breakfasts sound amazing, and that’s a thing we always look for when choosing B&Bs! I’m bringing them a half-liter of local maple syrup as a thank-you gift; I don’t generally do that, since it is a business relationship, we exchange currency for goods and services, but they’ve really gone above and beyond, and I mean, they’re only barely a business.

Then we have another three nights in Aberystwyth, and I have very little idea what exactly we’ll do there ~~other than collapse~~, except that the National Library of Wales is there and I want to see what exhibits they have on, and there’s a scenic railway that might be worth checking out. Then one day on the outskirts of London, in a place chosen only because we can catch a coach from there direct to Heathrow the next morning. We’ll land in Montreal in the evening and spend the night in an airport hotel, before catching a train home the next day.

I am the main planner of our trips; Geoff calls me Logistics Girl. Which is fine with me, because I enjoy it, I’m good at it, and when I leave bits for him to do I always want to micromanage anyway, which is stressful for everyone. (But, I mean. I asked him to manage our getting to and from Montreal, while I took primary responsibility for everything on the actual trip; managing the domestic side included deciding whether and how to see his family there and/or ask them for airport rides and/or an overnight stay, and I didn’t want to be the person making those decisions. And he said sure, and absolutely understood that that should be his job. And then he sent me essentially a Google search link for airport hotels and asked which one I’d prefer. And I was like, which part of “I want you to do the work of researching options, weighing them, and choosing the best” did you not understand? I can do a damn Google search myself! I mean, I understand that he wants to be sure that I’m happy with the final choice, and I appreciate that, but then he can do what I do, which is narrow options down and present my top two or three choices, with a quick overview of the pros and cons of each, for him to consider.)

ANYWAY. He did do that after I cranked at him. And in fairness, I've found that I’m quite out of practice at logisticking, myself! Trying to track everything and figure out infinite options and piece together itineraries was unexpectedly stressful: where do we want to go, how will we get there, which railcard is our best option and how do we get it, is the layover time we have a reasonable amount of time in which to navigate this specific station, and on and on. Also so much has changed in the last six years; I never used to have to download umpteen transit apps, but on the other hand it's way easier and cheaper to get a foreign SIM than it used to be. And there has been a ridiculous pile-up of last-minute craziness:

I got a new orthotic this summer, and that meant that my hiking boots didn’t fit, so I needed new boots. Also, usually when you have a prescription orthotic you take the original insole out of the shoe or boot to fit the new one in, but I didn’t want to do that, because that’s where a lot of the padding is, and with the amount of walking I’m going to be doing I did not want to be doing it only on the unpadded sole and the fairly hard orthotic. So I was looking for boots that could fit both. I ended up buying three pairs in a week! First I went shopping and found a good enough pair; not great, but they were there and the store had a generous return policy, so I bought them as a stopgap and kept looking. Then in another store I found a fabulous pair that fit beautifully, but the pair in the store was damaged and they couldn’t get me another one, because the style was discontinued and remaindered. So I searched for it online and found what seemed to be the only pair of women’s 10s left in Canada, at massive discount because discontinued and remaindered, and ordered them with rush shipping -- and when they arrived they didn’t fit, because it turned out the salesman had given me a pair of men’s 10s to try on, instead of the women’s 10s I’d asked for. No wonder there was room for both insoles! And there wasn’t another men’s 10 of that brand and style to be found. But with that info I went back and tried on some other men’s 10s and found a really good pair of Merrell’s, a brand I’ve always had good luck with. The first pair of new boots got returned; the second pair, being discontinued and remaindered, were final sale, but they turned out to fit a friend who also needed new boots; and my old pair, which are still in decent shape, went into the thrift-shop-donation pile.

So that was one bit of craziness. Our long-delayed front porch project is finally going to begin construction while we’re away, which means we had to find somewhere to leave the car because our driveway will have a dumpster in it for construction waste and we’re not allowed to leave the car on the street; but fortunately a house across the way is empty and for sale, and the owner said we can park in his driveway. I started developing a stye like the one I had in the spring that got so bad I needed antibiotic ointment; but happily I still had half a tube of ointment left so I prescribed myself another round of it plus all the hot compresses I could manage, because I did not want to be dealing with an eye infection in rural Wales! I discovered by the merest fluke of luck that a bus service we're relying on was canceled as of Sept. 1, but I managed to find the replacement service, run by a different company, that is mentioned on the new company's Facebook page and nowhere else including not on their website or on any of the travel planning sites, and confirm that we can still make the train we're taking it to. The new bus leaves fifteen minutes earlier than the old bus, so if I hadn't stumbled across that notice we'd probably have been screwed. And then a few days ago I somehow managed to wrench my knee rolling over in bed, I don't even know. But although it hurt like fuck for a few minutes, by the next day it was just a vague ache, and the day after that it was fine. Thank god. I mean, a week before we leave? Argh.

Anyway, my do-before-leaving list has seventy items on it and just over sixty of them are now crossed off; and my packing list has sixty items on it and fifty of them are crossed off -- and many of the rest are things I plan to wear on the plane rather than pack.

All that said, though -- and it’s a lot to say! -- I’m really looking forward to this. Traveling together used to be one of Geoff’s and my great pleasures, and not being able to do it has been one of the great losses of COVID. I want to see amazing sights and eat amazing food and encounter new people. I want to hear Welsh! I want to exhaust myself and feel accomplished about having done so! I want to share all of the above with Geoff!

I also hope to blog the trip here, as much as I can. Stay tuned. But now I gotta go polish off a couple more of those to-dos...

the_shoshanna

This past Saturday was the day that four thousand university students arrived in town, making it an excellent day to not be in town! Happily, there's an annual garlic festival on that day, about half an hour north of here, so just as we did last year, Geoff and I headed on up.

it's basically a small farmer's market, only focusing on garlic. I hadn't realized, before we went the first time, that there were that many varieties of garlic! I mean, I suppose it shouldn't be surprising, I'd just never really thought about it. In any case, my palate is not refined enough to bother about the subtle differences in taste among them: slightly sharper, slightly sweeter, slightly earthier, and so on. Also some are better keepers, but I don't try to store garlic for months, I just buy less of it more often, because I'm not farming it. But it's very fun to look around!

Although it's focused on garlic, there's other things on sale as well. Many of the garlic farmers bring a few punnets of veggies as well, and there's a lot of canned and pickled veg for sale. A beekeeper comes with a hive in a glass frame, so it's fun to watch the bees and look for the queen (she's always smaller than I expect her to be). We bought some honey from him last year, which was very good. There's also a soapmaker, and a couple of woodworkers; the friend we went with this year bought a beautiful turned elm bowl from one of them, and also a bud vase of . . . chestnut, I think? a darker wood, anyway, and then he gave her a second bud vase for free! One or two people were selling various knitted things, and for some reason there's also somebody selling bamboo sheet sets.

I tried black garlic, which I would think would be very much the sort of thing I like, and yet I did not like it. One dealer sells honey-garlic tarts, which Geoff tried last year and rather liked, and got another one this year to munch on, but I think they're vile. (And there's not a lot of food I think that about!) On the other hand, someone was selling jars of candied jalapeno slices, which have nothing in particular to do with garlic except I imagine they would go well with garlic; they're not candied in the sense of being entirely sugar-coated and sticky, they're more a very sweet (and spicy) pickle? We tasted them (all the dealers give out samples, because they're not dumb) and they were delicious. I asked the seller what he does with them, and he said they were great on nachos and grilled cheese sandwiches, and I said, "I guess I'm making nachos this week!" and bought a jar. I did indeed make nachos the next night, and they were indeed fantastic. Next I'll try them on on barbecue chicken pizza...and they look pretty easy to make as a refrigerator pickle, so I'll be looking up some recipes!

the_shoshanna

Yesterday a friend and I went to see Pride, the 2014 movie about the queer support of the 1984 miners' strike in Britain. I'd heard wonderful things about it but never seen it, and the local film society had organized a showing for Labor Day, so off we went!

It was indeed excellent, really powerful and moving. I started getting chills at the opening music, and my friend and I both wept through parts of it. I hadn't thought about the juxtaposition of the AIDS crisis and the miners' crisis, but omg, I was flashing back to what it was like in the late 80s (even for me, and I'm not claiming to have been heavily involved in queer activism or at the heart of the catastrophe or anything. But I was queer, and I did live through that period, and I had friends who didn't...) I thought the movie did a great job of integrating the two ongoing concerns, especially with Mark's encounter with his friend at the club; that was a heartbreaking moment. The acting was spectacular, as was some of the scenery.

Thinking about the film the next day, I'm a little dissatisfied with how much of the story was simplified for the movie: we see so little of what LGSM actually did that the arrival of 5–10(?) busloads of miners at the 1985 Pride march seems wildly disproportionate. They're coming from places and union locals that we never saw LGSM interacting with or supporting. I wanted to see more about the lesbian-only group. Also, I disliked how Joe apparently teleported from London to Wales on his own just for the sake of a confrontation between him and Mark; I found that implausible even while watching it.

But the movie has prompted me to go look up some of the actual history, so I call that a win! And I really enjoyed it. Also I've watched a bunch of Bronski Beat videos today...

siria

( Borstal Boy )

( Ludwig, S1 )

runpunkrun

My Smallville fics have been doing modest numbers over at AO3 for weeks now, due to, I can only assume, the new Superman movie. I've never had my old fics gain such sudden and sustained popularity because of a new installment to canon; in fact, this didn't happen with the previous Superman movies. Not that I was paying attention, but didn't Zach Snyder release like three of them? Or the same one three times? IDK you hear things.

Anyway, it's delightful that people are finding and enjoying my Smallville fics even if I have no idea how they're doing it. It's not like they're going to end up at the top of any filter sorted by engagement....or date.

runpunkrun

Last night I finished watching What We Do In The Shadows, and this morning I was sweeping up the kitty litter from the floor, just like I do every morning, and the kitten was there helping me by grabbing the broom, just like he does every morning, and as I raised the broom above his head, explaining that I was trying to sweep, I could hear Guillermo and that tired, flat voice he gets whenever he's trying to explain literally anything to the vampires.

Cats and vampires: Neither of them understands, or cares, what you're saying. And they hiss when they're angry.

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so_jaeye

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Reading

No hike today

This is GOOD

(no subject)

a snapshot from today

Today involved much more walking, but many fewer epic failures!

conversation this morning

It's not an epic fail, it's a shakedown cruise!

made it!

Fancake's Theme for September: Food & Cooking

We're going to Wales!

the stinking flower

Pride!

2539 / Borstal Boy; Ludwig, S1

Suddenly, in Smallville...

What We Do In The Shadows (2019-2024)

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September 2025

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