Bacon Butty Day

Two days off have just zoomed past. Although I am sometimes fed up of lockdown, at least I am not bored! Yesterday morning we decided to repeat the woodland walk we did a week ago with our friends. The first track was very much muddier, which we soon realised was due to trucks driving up and down. A lot of trees had been cut down in a week. This part of the country park is a commercial pine plantation, with trees planted after the Second World War. The conservation trust which runs the area has decided to take down the spruce trees, leaving just native trees and some of the better fir specimens, hoping that once the land is more open it will revert to heather-covered heathland. Apparently heathland is quite rare as it depends on a particular type of soil, and the native heath was destroyed when commercial woodland was first planted in the 19th century. Walking past it smelled very strongly of pine resin! 

Further on in our walk we passed the ancient woodland, which is believed to have been there for many thousands of years. You can really see the difference between the native woodland and the plantation in these two photographs. The woodland has been "farmed" for centuries, with trees pollarded and coppiced to supply sustainable timber, while keeping the wood from becoming overgrown and overshadowed. The conservation trust now carries out this sort of work again in order to keep the wood healthy. The National Trust has a good explanation of coppicing and woodland management here. 

As usual there were a lot of water birds on the lake. I think this duck may be an accidental crossbreed involving some sort of crested duck. We timed our walk so that we could stop for a takeaway lunch again - bacon roll and coffee for me. I try to avoid eating meat when I don't know that it is ethically sourced, but I'm afraid my principles just evaporate when faced with the prospect of a hot bacon roll outdoors on a cold day. I justified it on the grounds that exceptions can be made under the pressure of a pandemic, and it is better to try and fail sometimes than not to try at all. I suspect Fridays could become bacon butty day as a lockdown treat.

Although it was a lovely morning, you can see just how wet it has been, from this path masquerading as a puddle and stream. There was also mud. After we got home I spent quite a lot of the afternoon trying to disentangle genealogical mysteries, with a certain amount of success. I cooked a slightly experimental dinner with some sea bass that came in last week's fish box, which came with a recipe for teriyaki sea bass with noodles. I suspected it would not be as easy as it looked, or as tasty - I am delighted to report that I was wrong! I will definitely cook fish this way again. 

This morning I cut M's hair for the first time as H has got bored of the job after nearly a year! It took me a while to fathom out how to use the clippers, but the end result was surprisingly good. Put it this way, he looks normal! I also did a few more necessary tasks - packaged up some jeans to return (I ordered three pairs to try, and needed to return the two I didn't want to keep), updated the supermarket order for next week, and so on. M went out and dropped off the parcel at a collection point and bought a few bits at M & S Food. He is now the designated shopper - as he has had his vaccine (1st dose, at least), there doesn't seem any point in putting myself at unnecessary risk while virus levels are still high. This afternoon we walked round one of our standard three mile circuits,  through the local woods and along the canal. 

No cooking today as it was our takeaway evening. I had an Uber Eats discount code so ordered in from a local fish and chip shop and we ate while watching the Masked Singer. M and I have also watched a couple more episodes of The English Game on Netflix, a historical drama about a football team from Blackburn which was the first professional team to win the FA Cup. It was this series which started me on my genealogy kick, as my adopted "aunt" and "uncle" (who were my grandparents in all but name) both came from Blackburn, and I remember being told that Auntie's father won an FA Cup medal - I haven't found any evidence this was true, though.