Rutland birds

Surprisingly, as Rutland is in the centre of England, we have a rich avian tradition, led by Rutland Water which hosts the annual UK Bird Fair. As well as the VIP birds such as egrets and ruffs that tend to keep to the Water, other exciting species, such as red kites, buzzards and oyster catchers are now spreading out into the countryside http://www.rutlandwater.org.uk/recentsightings.html.

The most exciting sighting for me was last friday. I took Annie for our usual walk around the fishing pond, and as we crossed the meadow toward it I watched what I first assumed to be a kite (now quite common around here) drifting lethargically ten feet above the field. I soon realised it was the wrong shape to be a kite or a buzzard, and when I got really close saw that it was white underneath. An Osprey! Still doubting my own eyes that our poxy little pond next to the RAF Cottesmore runway would be honoured by such a visitor I stood next to the water and watched as the bird flew back and forth above. Then emitting a cry, it plunged down to the surface of the pond, scooped up a fish and flapped slowly off. WOW! When we continued our walk around the pond I came across a fishing platform with a fish skeleton on it - presumably "my" osprey had fed there earlier. [I didn't take the picture sadly]

Of more exotic species, a parrot recently escaped from a house in Cottesmore, there is at least one peacock in the village (isn't there in very village?) and I have just spotted on our back fence what, after an extensive web search, most resembles a female mynah bird (see pic below). As they are indiginous to the Himalayas this seems unlikely, but the only other plausible explanation is a female green woodpecker carrying a piece of carrot. Any ideas?

Rutland hots up and some hairy moments

Currently Rutland is basking in 30 degree sunshine, which would be lovely if it weren't accompanied by 90% humidity. Fortunately the three feet thick walls of our stone cottage do a pretty good job of keeping the air bearable indoors, although the fluffies, already frequently only discernably alive at mealtimes, decorate the floor like bizarre canine shooting trophies. Walking for Welland has ground to a halt; the last time we attempted a long walk in the heat Phil got sunburnt, Annie got heatstroke and had to be given a cold shower and I got cross. And that was only 20 degrees. We will be starting again as soon as it cools down a bit, as now http://www.ridewelland.co.uk/ is live more rides are needed to populate the site, especially holiday rides (of which there is just one so far).

The wine job is still keeping me busy; two shows on consecutive weeks (BBC Good Food at the NEC and Taste of London in Regent's Park) were exhausting but great fun and quite lucrative. I also got my first temp job last week - a day and a half doing some mindlessly dull admin for the people that make Tesco's ready meals. My main aim is to make enough before September and my TA job to keep me off the dole; that's £240 per month so not that difficult! I still have some saddles to sell too (I ALWAYS have some saddles to sell - at one point I had seven for two horses. Now I have three for, erm, no horses) although I don't know if I can bear to part with all my saddles, they are such beautiful things. Not the synthetic Thorowgood, but the soft, smooth Free n Easy dressage saddle (£1600 new) and the intricately tooled Australian stock saddle will be sorely missed. Especially the FNE which fits any horse. Hmm. Maybe we're not quite that desperate yet.

Now for the hair. One of my money saving initiatives has been to get my hair cut without a blow dry and dye it myself. So far this has been reasonably successful as I have stuck to a one tone colour (dark blonde). So instead of about £80 my hairdos have been about £30 a time. Rather bored by he monotony of my haircolour I recently purchased a home highlighting kit promising "vanilla ice" and with a picture of a girl with subtle sunkissed highlights on the front. The procedure was pretty fiddly, and after an hour and a half of covering myself and the bathroom with dye then bleach I washed off in excited anticipation. Quelle horreur. Not vanilla ice but agent orange. It was 2pm by this time, and I have an interview at the school starting at 8.30am tomorrow morning - I simply couldn't turn up looking as though, well, I'd tried to bleach my own hair and it had gone wrong. After a quick ring round I secured a place at Creme in Oakham for a colour (but no cut or blow dry) and two hours later emerged with wet hair determined to find somewhere who would cut me too. Around the corner Tonerre obliged and I inadvertently discovered a great cost cutting tip. A bit complicated this, but here goes. In the past I have had a colour, cut and blow dry at Creme and it has cost about £80. Today I had a colour only and it cost £36. Because they couldn't fit me in for a cut I went to Tonerre who charge £25 for a wet cut (no blow dry). However because my hair was already wet, they cut and blow dried it for £17.50. So I got a colour, cut and blow dry for £53.50 instead of £80. It's kind of brown with highlights by the way.

Now onto today's picture - this was taken on one of our walks a month or so back in Southwick Wood (East Northants). Not very seasonal, but the dappled shade and cool bluebells have made me feel a whole lot fresher.

Working in Rutland

As I mentioned in my last post, I have recently started a job as a Wine Merchant. In other parts of the world this may imply a level of effort and pressure. In Rutland things are a little more relaxed:
12.45 Turn up for monthly sales meeting. As I'm new, there is another sales person I haven't met before - turns out she's an ex grand prix dressage rider so we talk horses.
1pm Champagne poured and lunch served - smoked salmon blinis, Camembert, salad, cold meats, strawberries and clotted cream. Sales Director says stuff about work (wasn't really listening to that bit) and pours various whites and reds (tasting don't you know) while we eat.
2pm Some calls to some very friendly people and chats about the weather, enlivened by a superb NZ Reisling
4pm To pub as no-one in 4-6pm. Two hours and three glasses of Sauvignon Blanc later....
6.15pm Another couple of hours calls to lovely chatty people, washed down with plenty of SA Pinotage
8pm Lift home from a colleague (retired MD of a national catering company) as a little over the limit...
Another tough day at work.
And I thought getting paid for walking was a dream.

Another job, another birthday and more walking

As my teaching assistant job doesn't start until September, I needed something else to supplement my Ride Welland income and get me out of the house. By some fluke of fate the perfect job appeared, and I'm now a "Private Wine Merchant" selling small estate wines imported by Catchpole & Frogitt from a lovely office in Oakham.



A couple of weeks ago it was my father's 85th birthday, and Phil and I spent a wonderful day in Bournemouth. As well as lunch with my parents at their hotel on a balcony overlooking the sea, we managed to get a couple of hours alone which we filled with walking barefoot in the sand, paddling in the sea, picking up shells and drinking rose at a beachside pub. An American at the next table asked if we were on our honeymoon, because we looked so happy! His wife wasn't with him. The day was a glorious, four hour micro - holiday.



Walking carries on apace, and now we are researching holiday rides. Saturday was a bit of a disaster; Phil wanted to do all of a ten miler in one, very hot day, so we managed eight miles by which time all the pubs had shut so we couldn't get any lunch and I turned into a post-midnight gremlin. By the time we got home Phil had sunburn to top off the bashed ears. We had to put Annie into a cool bath as she was panting non-stop; she doesn't really understand the concept of pacing herself in the heat.



A new twist to my exercise regime began yesterday evening when I cycled to Catchpole & Frogitt; about 8 miles. Fortunately it is downhill most of the way to Oakham, and Phil came and picked me and my bike up after work so I didn't have to try and cycle back up again. Unfortunately all my walking and cycling are not leading to the desired weight loss, mainly due to Phil's shopping. Phil is adept at man shopping. When I spend £35 in Tesco I manage to buy enough healthy food for both of us for at least a week. When Phil spends £35 in Tesco he buys rubbish. Yesterday is a prime example (I found the receipt):

• An 8 pack of Carlsberg
• Two large bottles of fat cola
• A pack of BBQ chicken thighs (yuk)
• A pack of sausages
• A pack of beef burgers
• Loads of white bread rolls
• Some vile looking yellow BBQ relish that looks like someone has puked up a load of lumpy pus with blood in it
• A pork pie (yuk)
• A sandwich
• Three packs of chocolate biscuits
• A bar of chocolate
• Snacksize chocolate (whatever that is)
• Two of the biggest baking potatoes you have ever seen
• A massive pepperoni pizza

He did buy a light bulb and some bin bags, so managed two useful things. I do try and ban him from shopping every now and then, and he's good for a while but gradually starts sneaking things in until he has a big blow out like the above. Time to bash his ears again methinks.

Rutland v Mcdonalds

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Rutland is the only county in England not to have a Mcdonalds. On further thought, here is a list of high street retail brands Rutland has not yet accommodated:

• Any fast food or restaurant chain
• Wetherspoons pubs (in fact any branded pub chain)
• Any branded clothes shops (Top Shop, Next etc)
• Any branded DIY store (B&Q, Homebase etc) Although there is a small TRavis Perkins hidden down a back street in Oakham
• M&S

In fact the only brands we do have, apart from petrol stations, are:

• One Tesco
• One Somerfield
• Possibly Britain's only Co-op in a marquee
• A Stead and Stimpson shoe shop
• Boots
• Co-op funeral services (is that classed as a retail brand? Not really FMCG)

And as of last year:

• A Costa Coffee
• A Wilkinsons

I believe there may be Travel Lodge on the A1, but the A1 doesn't count as Rutland, it is its own kingdom sweeping over the Eastern edge of Rutland like one of those suspended railway things they have in Japan.

The last two mark a worrying trend. Are we going to become invaded by global corporations? Is the last bastion of boutique individuality destined to submit to "consumer demand" and fall prey to a bland botox facelift of ubiquitous high street shop fronts? Hopefully the credit crunch will deter developers for at least a couple of years. It's possible that, like most other people who don't actually live here, the brand managers and market researchers don't even know Rutland exists. Let's keep it that way. Let's campaign for Unbranded Rutland, county of boutique interior design stores selling chintz and repro for eye-watering sums, home to clothes shops displaying astronomically priced garments by designers no-one has ever heard of, site of a garage selling cars that cost more than our house.

After all, if we want cheap and cheerless, we can always go to Grantham.

A birthday, a new career, bouncing bulls and a steep hill

Last week I was 43. Not really a landmark brithday, but it does mark a turning point in my life, as two days before my birthday I was offered a job as Teaching Assistant at Vale of Catmose College, a secondary school in Oakham. This is the first step in my career change to become an ICT teacher, which will involve up to three years of study and a significant mental shift away from marketing.

Anyway, enough of boring work stuff, last week I tackled a rather challenging walk. On paper the walk looked easy enough - day one being eight miles of gentle Leicestershire countryside culminating in a reputable village pub where Phil would meet me and take me home.

Annie and I abandoned the car in the middle of nowhere as usual and set out up a bridleway (part of the Mid Shires Way) which passed a farm. Right next to the path was a small paddock, flimsily fenced with electric tape, containing two very large bulls. The bulls seemed inordinately happy to see us, and encouraged by Annie's frantic barks bucked, plunged and charged at the fence, which they fortunately appeared to respect, stopping a few feet from Annie and I who hugged the far fence with trepidation. The bridleway then entered a field inhabited by a gang of feisty bullocks, the hoodies of the cattle world. The bullocks came galloping towards us, but fortunately like most hoodies they stopped dead when I turned round and waved my arms at them growling "git 'way wi' ya, yer buggers" in my best farmer accent. This was somewhat embarrassing as the real farmer and his son were the other side of the fence, no doubt wondering why some mad woman was walking through their field waving her arms about and swearing in a gruff voice. Perhaps they thought I was possessed like a character from the Excorcist. Whatever, rather suffer humiliation than goring.

Once past the bullocks we found ourselves on top of one of the highest hills in the area, looking at marvellous views across Leicestershire and beyond. This was when the thunder and rain started. I had two choices - turn round and go back to my car or continue for the last six or seven miles. The thought of running the gauntlet with the bulls again and humiliation of facing the farmers and perhaps having to explain what I'd been doing decided me and we carried on. The rain worsened, the thunder rolled and I speeded up very time I reached a hilltop, wondering what it felt like to be struck by lightening and not wanting to find out.

At one point I found myself completely lost in a field which I wandered around for a while before spotting a footpath out. A gamekeeper came buzzing up on what looked like a golf buggy and asked if I was OK - he had spotted me walking aimlessly around the field in the thunderstorm and presumably thought I was a client of care in the community who had shaken off her carer. I suspect there was a gamekeeper and a couple of farmers having a good laugh over their pints that evening.

The rest of the walk was relatively uneventful, despite the thunder and rain which persisted for the whole 2.5 hours of the walk. Annie I squelched into the pub, the Carrington Arms in Ashby Folville, for a much needed glass of wine, completely sodden. Fortunately there was a football match on a large screen at one end of the bar, so no-one noticed me dripping all over the floor apart from a group of four well dressed people on the next table who left very quickly. We must have looked rather an odd couple: Me in jeans, walking boots and a grubby jacket completely soaked through, hair dripping and holding a filthy wet dog on a horse's lead rein, and Phil just come from work in a suit and tie and with his laptop.

The next day Phil and I decided to complete the walk together. The mix of eight miles after a week break and being thoroughly soaked meant that my muscles were more tired than usual, but we only needed to walk about five more miles so I gritted my teeth. What I hadn't bargained for was quite how steep the hill leading to Burrough Hill Fort actually is. And we had to climb it not once, but twice. Finally, exhausted, we repaired to the Fox and Hounds in Knossington for a delicious birthday meal and the usual admiration and adoration of Annie by customers and staff alike.

Since then the weather has been decidedly iffy, so our next big walk is waiting for the sun to shine.

Spring has sprung in Rutland

At last Spring has arrived and there have been a number of nature signs to herald the event. Annie has discovered new flying things to chase - butterflies aren't quite as good as birds but better than jump jets. The body count has seen a sharp increase, with a mouse a night average. We had a strange bisected rabbit incident a few days ago; when we woke up there was a baby rabbit foot in the bedroom doorway, so I got up and disposed of it. Phil then got up about half an hour later and found a whole leg in exactly the same place which he took away. Then I got up again a little while after that to find another foot and lump of fur in exactly the same place. We have no idea who the culprit was, or even if there was a culprit (Phil suspects a hole in the space time continuum just above the bedroom door, allowing bits of rabbit to fall through from a different dimension) but I suspect Pebble, if only because she is number one hunter and was hanging about near the door whan I found the last piece. Last Friday I saw my first swallow, and have seen a few more since, and this week I managed to catch my first summer cold.

Having a cold has put the brakes on Walking for Welland this week, but I have been busy exploring the region prior to my infliction. I have now clocked up two more rides around South Kesteven (that's what South Lincolnshire calls itself for some reason; maybe it doesn't want to be associated with the rest of Lincolnshire which is, admittedly, rather fenny) which is a beautiful area abutting and very similar to Rutland. The walks have taken in two Forestry Commission woods, Morkery Wood and Temple Wood, which are both open for riders to explore at will. They also necessitated visiting a couple of charming pubs, the most notable being the Griffin at Irnham run by Chris and Liz, a beatiful old stone inn with large garden and grass area at the back in the picture box stone village of Irnham. Phil and I both had gammon, which arrived as thick slabs of juicy meat - absolutely delicious- followed by divine homemade puddings from the bread and butter/treacle tart school rather than the baked coffee bean with vanilla froth genre. For some reason a baby bunny decided to take up residence under my car; I think it left before I did though I didn't check and it wouldn't have made much of a bump.

As for the walking, although mostly uneventful I did come across one potentially interesting challenge for riders; a quarry. This seems fairly innocuous until you realise it's very much a working quarry and the bridleway crosses right through the middle, past the signs in the picture. I called the lady from the quarry company who was very friendly and helpful, and she assured me that the blasting was done under ground, wasn't all that loud and "was just like a small earthquake". Hmmm. So a bombproof horse recommended for that ride then.