The epic journey.

Had a lovely walk along the beach. I was
born in a seaside town and it is good to smell
the sea sometimes again.

So who else was amused by my "edible field guide to mushrooms" last week? My dearest husband pointed out it should be a field guide to edible mushrooms and not a book you can snack on while looking for mushrooms. Well at least we found a field guide to mushrooms that does tell us which ones are edible but believe it or not the book is not edible at all!

We had a long journey across Europe, as you can imagine, from Latvia to France. We set off from Latvia at six in the morning and it was a lovely drive to Poland in the rich autumn sunshine on day one of the journey, Lithuania was flat but the north east of Poland is very pretty, lots of lovely rolling hills and shimmering lakes. I spotted one hotel near a lake and thought it would make the ideal spot for a holiday one day or maybe somewhere to stop for the night on the way back, hope we can find it again. We managed to journey at a steady pace making it a very relaxing drive despite our worries of driving through countries we had never visited before. We finally arrived in a place where we were relieved that we didn't have to stop and ask directions too as there was no way that we could have pronounced the name of the town, it began with a B and had lots of z's in it. After 13 hours of driving it was exciting to be able to spot the hotel easily from the main road and so good to be able to get in and head for bed and a good long sleep, so Hotel Focus in Bydgoszcz (any clues as to its pronunciation gratefully received) gets a massive thumbs up for service, nice rooms and good breakfast, just what you need after a long drive.

Gentle decay

Day two started off well and by lunchtime we made it to Germany but oh boy what a nightmare that was. We were either driving rather fast to go with the flow, watching our fuel economy plummet or driving slowly through road works and there was plenty of those. How many road works can a country have? They also seemed to be digging up roads that the Latvians would love to have. We were still in Germany at around 7pm with three countries yet to drive through and looking increasingly unlikely that we would make it to our French hotel for the 9pm check in deadline. Sat in yet more road works though is not the place to find out that you haven't got the right number for the hotel, it is just not fun. Two phone calls to a French number only resulted in a message in French which I did not understand and so I ended up texting our son to put more credit on my phone while I phoned customer services for Eurobookings to see why I couldn't contact the hotel. Customer services quickly established the number given by them was wrong and I was given the right number, which joy of joys actually got me through to the right hotel and a very helpful guy who assured me it wasn't a problem that we were going to be late. Bleary eyed we rolled into Dunkerque at just turned midnight and not 8pm we had anticipated. The Dunkerque hotel was a cheap and cheerful, although in reality it wasn't as cheap as the Polish hotel of a much higher standard by the time breakfast was added in. The room was what I call bijou, with a pod for the shower, toilet and sink and would have been noisy if it was busy, but the staff were nice enough and it was a bed and after travelling that far that was all I was bothered about.

I love pebble pictures

We had a leisurely start to our day as the ferry terminal was only 10 minutes away and such a contrast to an airport. It was so relaxing getting through security and passport control with no huge queues, no rushing about here there and everywhere. Perfect after the exhausting drive of the day before.

One thing we did find along our journey was how important the journey is to the enjoyment of the drive. While we could drive at a steady pace and take-in the scenery the journey was a joy and part of the experience but when our focus was on the end as it was in Germany, the journey ceased to be a joy. We didn't have time to take in the richness of the country or appreciate the cultural diversity, our goal became our focus. Too often in life we hurtle towards the goal and in so doing we fail to take in the aspects of life that adds richness to our journey. It also occurred to me that the journey was quite symbolic for us as we were travelling a new way, a way we have never travelled before and it resonated with the recurring theme of mine over the last couple of years, "what got me here, won't get me there". There are going to be new ways of journeying for us but the end is not to be our focus, our "there" is important but how we get there is also important as our cross European journey shows. To hurtle towards "there" is to miss out on so much.

Small local airport

Well here I am sat on the south coast of England with Ian out at his son's stag do - a curry, and me typing away while wedding order of services are being folded. Think I had better finish and help out.

By the way, sorry there are no pictures from the journey I was too busy navigating and making sure we stayed on track to handle a camera as well. Maybe on the way back, but don't bank on it.

Would have been a little quicker in one of these

A good old-fashioned workout

Fly Agaric. Not a mushroom for the pot obviously but they
are so beautiful. We have quite a few of these in
our forest.

After a week of reading books and papers I was ready to be out of the house. I spent all summer on the move and being inside isn't so great, well not while the weather is so nice. With a lovely weekend in store we decided to pick apples, we haven't many per tree but certainly enough for us to get by on. Never ceases to amaze me though when Latvians look at apples and say what sort they are and when they will be ready as one of our neighbours did when I showed him our haul. I am lucky if I can identify a variety in a supermarket, never mind on the tree. I guess I have a lot to learn. Also spent some time shifting yet more grass, is there an end to it? Something will change next year, I am positive about that, we haven't decided what to do as an alternative for definite and keep throwing ideas about but doing the same next year will not be an option, it just takes far too long. The sheer physical aspect of the work sure helps to work off some energy but my elbow is beginning to hurt, a sure sign that it is not a good idea to keep going.

Ian has been ploughing again. This was
another area covered with the dreaded
ground elder. We shall let the frost do its
work on the roots over the winter ready
 for planting something in the spring.

One thing that one of  the Latvian political parties seem to have missed is that the old traditional methods of farming take too long and too much manpower to sustain today, judging by some of the literature arriving in our post box. Latvia is heading for the polls on Saturday and of course we have had the usual political leaflets through the post. One of the leaflets has a typical old-fashioned Latvian country scene on it, the Latvian haystacks, storks, forests in the distance and lots of open fields. It is of course an illusion, yes you can still see the old hay ricks but they are becoming rarer because they take a lot of manpower to build them, the forests are not so distant as the trees grow up in abandoned farms and even the open fields that are left are at risk because of the explosion in wild boar digging big holes in them. If Latvians wish to retain their traditional looking countryside there is going to have to be a shift to buying more home produced food, dealing with the wild boar or accepting fences and hedges as a natural way to go (or roast boar anyone?), and maybe they need to spend some time helping farmers stack grass so they can keep the old ways going. Any volunteers?

Yes we have wood. At last!

And this is the base in all its glory! Well its a start.

The news that Latvian wood exports have increased by 53% in 7 months reminded me of something I forgot about last week , we have wood finally! In fact we even have a base for our barn. That is it mind, just a base but it is a start. We just seem to get to the stage where our patience seems to have run a bit thin and then there is a movement in a project, it has happened time and time again and we are kind of used to it, but sometimes it is just a tad irritating. Good job folks seem to have a sense of when we might be running out of patience and get motivated or organised to get on with something. 

A cute little fellow

Another project we have had ongoing all year is our other apartment. Part of the problem is that our Swedish friend who is helping us out has a lot of back problems and so from time to time he can't do anything, then he has been busy with projects on his farm over the summer and sometimes life just gets in the way. It hasn't helped that the work has been rather more complicated than we anticipated as the false floor that was put in for a walk in shower previously had warped slightly and let water through to the wood base, the result was that the whole floor had to be taken up but not before work had been done thinking it was going to stay. It would have been far quicker to rip it out at the beginning and start afresh. Still we did manage to find matching tiles to the original ones for the floor and the wall and so it could have been worse. 

A rather vain pond frog as he posed to have his photo taken
for quite a while

We are off to England soon and thought I had better check out if my old English SIM card still works. I had a few surprises, the first is that I found the SIM card, the second that the phone where it was residing picked up a signal when it was switched on. This of course is not normally such a surprising event but this was my American phone and it had never worked outside the city of Riga and so had been consigned to the draw despite being only two years old at the time. I was so pleased that it was working though as my old Danish phone is showing many signs of it's 7 year old lifespan and has taken to occasionally turning off at random times. Not helpful! So one night I spent switching the SIM cards around and entering all the new phone numbers I have for life here in Latvia, which took rather longer than I expected. It made me realise how many new people we have got to know over the past two years.

Not as pretty as the Fly Argaric but some amazing structures.
Not sure if these are edible or not but going to investigate

In a previous post I mentioned the title of a book "What got you here, won't get you there" by Marshall Goldsmith, a management book that encourages business leaders to look at new strategies rather than rely on the old systems that had got them to the places they are in now. Something businesses are in dire need of now but that is not what captured me, it was the title. I knew that God was taking me on a different journey not one I had travelled on, and a few years down the line it sure seems that way. Now I am studying rural development, something I would never have thought of doing before and certainly not something that was particularly uppermost in my mind as I sat on a plane flying to Brazil from America where I was living, and rubber necking to see what the lady next to me was doing. The phrase encouraged me to step out and to try new things knowing that what had taken me on an extraordinary journey to the States via Denmark was not going to define my journey from that point either. I had learnt many lessons along the way, valuable lessons that still help today, such as adjusting to different cultures where needed but the trajectory is different. I still am not quite sure where it is all heading but I was reminded of it when I have twice come across the phrase "an action plan for getting from here to there" in my readings for my course. It all sounds very sensible to have an action plan to get to there from here, but where is there? How do you get there, if you have never been that way before? How much planning can you do? I think I would rather view what I know now as a toolkit that prepares me for the adventures ahead, rather than trying to plan too far ahead and get stuck along the way and mired down because I wasn't too sure of which direction I was heading. Travel light, travel easily, but travel I will. I shall plan for what I can foresee and trust for what I cannot.

Our first chili pepper. It is not a particularly hot one but
hot enough for us. 

On a completely different note I discovered this week that I am the right height for something at last! To be a hobbit at 4ft 11 and 3/4 inches I am a quarter of an inch off the cut off height for a part. Shall I apply do you think?