Time appears to pass me by too quickly as here I am again catching up on the blog when I had planned to get it out a couple of weeks ago. We snuck away for a quick trip to take in some more of our beautiful British countryside and although we were only away for nine nights we managed to cover three different locations – two of which new to us – stopping at each for three nights of tranquility.

Our first stop was Broadway in Wiltshire, where we have been before, and although it is a little touristy due to its ‘picture perfect’ architecture and surroundings, it is a place we could keep going back to as it oozes beauty, especially at this time of year when the leaves are in colour and the grass is very green!

We previously stayed at the Caravan and Motorhome Club Site which is far bigger this time however, we had found a little CS to stay at (Northwick Farm £30 per night inc 10A elec), far more our kind of place as not only is it a beautiful, tranquil site with lovely views, we also had it to ourselves!

Despite the rain and muddy terrain it was a lovey few days combining a bit of walking, a little bit of mooching round the shops and a pub lunch with Liz, who came over to meet us with the dog for the day.

It was however, all too quickly time to leave Broadway behind us again and on the Friday we headed all of the 11 miles further West to Pershore where we had booked into Goodleigh CL. (£21.33 per night, electricity on a meter)

The CL was lovely with enormous, hard standing, serviced pitches all managed meticulously by a father and daughter team, providing huge amounts of information for walkers and cyclists both in the immediate vicinity and further afield.

Pershore was about a 10 minutes walk from the site with a good spread of cafes, pubs and restaurants in addition to possibly the smallest Abbey in the UK. The town is known for its Plums – yes, I did say Plums – with a ridiculous number of varieties being grown in the area dating back to 1827 and they even have a festival to celebrate them.

Needless to say, Pershore lacked Plums this time as we were too late for the season, but it did give lots of beauty – albeit in a very muddy form – as we explored a little further afield along the river and into the hills.

On the Sunday we had booked a table at the Swan Inn in Birlingham and set off on a 9/9.5 mile circular walk taking in the Malvern Hills and surrounding area. Despite being very grey and a little soggy under foot it was still beautiful, and although the muddiness meant it took us slightly longer than anticipated to get there, it was well worth it. The welcome, the food and the service – despite us being kitted out head to toe in wet gear and muddy wellies – were impeccable…. we will definately be back for more.

Moving on again on the Monday we set off after a wet and very windy morning run to Warwick. Warwick is a place that I had wanted to visit for a long time but we had just never really got round to it.

We had booked the Caravan and Motorhome Club Site (£26.80 per night inc.) which is in the middle of Warwick Racecourse and although the views were not quite as impressive as Cheltenham Race Course, it still wasn’t too bad. There was a lovely route around the racecourse which proved to be incredibly popular for many a dog walker and served well for my morning run, and the campsite itself was incredibly quiet which considering how close it was to the center of town and also the motorway was good.

After an initial reckie to check out Warwick we decided that apart from a pretty interesting looking coffee shop and a Castle that appears to be more of a theme park, it was a little lacking in substance – perhaps my fault for having great expectations. So, looking at the map we decided that we would venture over to Royal Lemington Spa the following day to see what it had to offer stretching our legs at the same time.

It was about an hours’ walk, all off road alongside the river, then the canal and finally through the park and in contrast to Warwick, Lemington Spa had a lovely feel to it. The park (Jephson Gardens) was beautiful and almost like an Arboreatum with its enormous variety of trees and the Aviary and it had a lovely town center made up of a mixture of boutique shops, restaurants and cafes – well worth the day trip…. and apart from a 30 minute burst of rain. We even managed to stay pretty dry and have a picnic in the park admiring the beautiful autumnal colours.

On our final day before we headed back to the farm we decided to explore a little further in the other direction. We walked along the canal and fell upon Hatton Locks – 21 locks rising 45 meters over a distance of roughly 2 miles – not too shabby considering they were built in 1799!

All in all the visit to Warwick was turning out to be quite an interesting one…. lots of beautiful places to explore, we just had to look for them, perhaps I should do a little more research into our surrounding areas in the future!

We have now finished our Mushroom Foraging Course for 2023 – I say for 2023 as it turns out to be quite addictive so we have put our names down again for next year. The whole process has been hugely educational and interesting and we have met some lovely people along the way. We reckon that we could possibly identify 4 or 5 edible mushrooms now, which although sounds pretty poor, is actually a really good number considering that there are so many similar looking fungi that could be poisonous…. maybe we will get into double figures by next year.

Believe it or not but the two photos below show the same species of funghi – The Trooping Funnel’ at different stages, all of which we growing within about 5 meters of one another. It just shows how they can change dramatically depending on how old they are … and we are talking about hours, rather than days difference in some cases.

The whole process of Mushroom foraging has opened up our eyes – as well as our whole families eyes – to incredible array of fungi out there in all different shapes and sizes and we now just have to get foraging and cooking!

We haven’t been cooking many new recipes in the last few weeks but we did return to an old favourite in a slightly different form… Falafels in sourdough tortillas…. absolutely delicious!

And I risked everything and cooked kipper kedgeree. A step outside my comfort zone as although I love fish, I am not a great fan of anything with lots of bones and with this recipe pretty much everything – skin and all – goes in albeit chopped up pretty small! It worked though and apart from a couple of the fin bones that I hadn’t filleted properly, I ate it all and it was pretty tasty. Whether I would cook this version again instead of our normal one I am not sure, but the spice level and flavour were good.

And finally, just a little map to show you the route we took…. we have already left on the next installment but I will do my best to update the blog a bit more quickly when we get back this time!