It must be Tuesday

The sun is going down on another autumn day, the fire is roaring and I think Molly and Charlie are in the same positions as my last post. As mentioned I visited the beautiful Claremont Homestead, and met the current leasees who are quite delightful. Dorothy is 71, and has a bad leg/hip but she is amazing. Not only lovely but extremely well organised and constantly busy, I think I have a big home to run, crikey she has a huge place, obviously with some help, but they are certainly not idle.... the website is.. www.claremont-estate.com Anyway as I mentioned Dorothy had phoned me and asked me to help with dinner last Friday night, so I went up from 2 - 5pm and did the prep, made an upside down poached quince cake (quinces from the estate) and preared the veggies, and hor duvres. A lovely 3 hours, although a bit out of practice, I managed to pull it off. Well it must have been OK as I am doing the same this Friday. For my trouble I received two lovely bottles of pinot and managed to forage a bag of pears off the ground, now currently settling as my pear, ginger and lemon jam.

Once you have checked out the link you will see the beauty of the surround, and again the limestone area I have already talked about. Apparently there is an amazing walk to be done down in the quarry, and also an adventure tour which the Homestead run for their guests and have offered me a trip, so that will be fabulous. The drive home from Claremont quite lovely and as you can see, not without its own traffic holdups!

My weekend brought an unexpected invitation to visit another farm about 10 minutes north to meet some of the olive tree growers. They are looking to form a co-op and sell their oil as one from the region. Unfortunately this wont be for some time, so no employment there, but good to talk and meet more locals. Sunday was off with aunts to the annual Alpaca open day, where they talked yarns, and spinning, apparently alpaca is 30% warmer than wool, bring it on, I now have a beanie and socks.

....and clearly more new best friends, albeit furry! Well my jam is ready and time sort out the evening meal, so will sign off for now... The Duchess of Amberley