Squelchy runs and walks. Where you can go. Local wildlife. Being a coffee snob.

At six o’ clock this morning it was raining cats and dogs! Hammering down on the roof as if it was preparing for another Noah’s flood. When I went out running at around eight thirty, on the other hand, it was fine and bright, washed clean, sun shining, sky blue! It was very soggy underfoot in places where the leaves had gathered and the approach to the Donkey Line bridle path was a positive quagmire. Throughout the summer local children have ridden their bikes up and down, constructing ramps and obstacle courses and this has contributed to making the surface very messy.

That bit of track goes past an old mill building which was badly damaged in a rather suspicious fire a few years ago - an insurance job? who knows? The owner of the land had already put up barriers across what many of us regarded as an established right of way, declaring it to be private land and denying public access to it. You could still get onto the Donkey Line path but you had to do a detour to circumvent the “private land”, somehow taking a bit of pleasure away from your walk. The barriers didn’t last long. Quietly they were pushed aside and everyone went past old mill building once again. 

I have sometimes wonder if the local horse riders had something to do with the removal of barriers. The alternative access to the Donkey Line, at least from our end, is up a series of wooden steps from the main road. I can’t imagine it would be easy to get your horse to go up those steps. It’s certainly not easy with a baby buggy and not impossible but rather difficult with a bicycle. 

After the fire, fencing of sorts went up around the now ruined mill building, which must be quite dangerous. Nothing more has been done with it. Before the fire it might still have been possible to convert it into flats or offices but now it is just a rather sad mess. Maybe it will be knocked down eventually and something else built there but for the moment it’s a bleak, fire-blackened ruin. And the path that goes past it is a churned up mess of muddy puddles with soggy grassland alongside it. And I doubt that the owner will resurface the path as he does not really want us to use it. A bedraggled “Private Land! No Access!” sign still lies on the ground.

The Donkey Line itself, although squelchy in places, was quite usable, although the puddles in and around the old train tunnels were quite spectacular. Returning home I decided to avoid the muddy quagmire in front if the old mill building and ran along the main road, something I prefer not to do. 

 

However, serendipity struck and I was rewarded with a view of our regular heron fishing in the river. All good!

Most days we have tea for breakfast. That sentence sounds like nonsense but I know what I mean. We used to have coffee but for some reason decided, a few months ago now, that we were perhaps drinking too much coffee and should start the day with a cup of tea instead. So there it is. Later in the day, end of the morning / start of the afternoon, we stop whatever we are doing and have a “pause-café”, occasionally with a little something, as Winnie the Pooh might say, a toasted tea cake or the like.

Having coffee got me thinking about our various coffee makers. For years and years we have used a moka pot to make our coffee. I have to confess that we are coffee snobs. It must be decades since instant coffee disappeared from our household. My Italian class has been watching clips from a film about Southern Italians going to work in Milan, Benvenuti al Nord, in which the Southerner orders a coffee and is overwhelmed by the range of possibilities offered to him by the Milan waiter. I know just how he feels. Give me a nice straightforward coffee - but well made! 

One year I bought Phil a fancy espresso maker, milk frother and everything, for his birthday but really it was too much fuss and bother. The moka is so easy. I looked up the inventor, an Italian engineer called Alfonso Biatelli in 1933, and  his company still makes the machines today. Our first was a present from my Spanish sister. I swear she got it free with some coffee at her local supermarket. Or maybe it was the other way around: she saw the coffee maker, thought of us, bought it and got some free coffee. Anyway, we now have a selection: teeny, tiny one which makes one tiny espresso, a smallish one, good for two small after dinner coffees, a medium sized one which does for two or three white coffees, four if your really stretch it, and a huge moka which we use when the family comes round - not used much at the moment!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone?