My oh my, what a long time it’s been. This is possibly the longest I’ve gone without posting on Stripy Tapir since setting up the blog in 2015. Thankfully it’s mainly due to happy reasons – back in May, we finally got to move into our very first house nine months after our offer was accepted. It’s a little cottage in the Norfolk countryside with a garden of dreams- I’ve been busy taking photos for a post, but the move has meant that most weekends have been spent painting, sanding, sorting, and seemingly ordering half of eBay, so they haven’t quite made it on here yet.
One weekend that wasn’t spent on these things happened during a recent jolly to the Tees Valley (here pictured), which was the furthest afield I’ve been since the start of all this last March. We stayed in an AirBnB with a garden backing onto a bubbling brook and a fell covered in gorse, moths, violently pink foxgloves, and erm, sheep would wake you up at 5am sounding like they were right next to your bed. At least it meant I was awake to see the sunrises, which came with a soundtrack of chiff chaffs and were 10/10 idyllic.
On the Saturday we headed to Hamsterley Forest, where I found my first ever wood sorrel and finally got to sample its apple-y taste (would thoroughly recommend following foraged.by.fern, who has taught me more than I ever thought I would know about wild culinary plants). I also would thoroughly recommend the walk to High Force, which we did on our last day, packing the leftovers from our overenthusiastic group Tesco order and eating them before going for a paddle in the water. Keep going upstream from the waterfall and you’ll soon have the place all to yourself, with no-one to look at you weirdly when you spend ages photographing the bog asphodel.
I’m still enamoured with our little corner of the Norfolk Broads, but travelling up north was such a breath of fresh air- it was a weekend full of food, gin, nature and good company, and a sense of being together that the pandemic did such a good job of banishing over a year ago. That’s all I wanted to share really, and to say that yes, I’m still here. Go to the Tees Valley, you won’t be disappointed.
Speak soon.
