Quiet Weekend

Looking for the red ones

What a beauty!

We had a quiet weekend in preparation for the Smyths arriving on Monday.  Saturday morning we headed to Over Kellet to the pyo farm.  We spent about 40 minutes picking some lovely looking strawberries ready for processing into jam.  When we first arrived, we thought that we would struggle to find enough, but once we got into the swing of things we found lots and lots of lovely huge red juicy berries.  I trained Tom to recognise the good ones and before we knew it we had 4 punnets crammed of them.  I took photos for Tom's Wow Wednesday - we need it finished before the Smyths arrive.

One punnet filled

Feeling quite pleased with ourselves we then headed to Archer's Cafe for lunch (one for the parents - next time you are up please ask us to take you here - really good quality farm fresh food) once we were satisfied, we decided to see how far it was to walk to Hest Bank.  It turned out not too far away so we walked there, had a drink, watched the trains and then came back.  I unfortunately got an attack of hay fever and felt pretty terrible all day (it really does seem bad this year).  I was glad to get back to the car and rest.

Sunday Tom requested a bike ride so we drove to Caton and cycled to Lancaster.  We found ourselves a new pub by the canal (The White Cross) which was very lovely, we sat outside in the sun, had a good feed before heading back.  A journey of 10 miles all together which was good going.  On our return I found the going really hard and seriously couldn't keep up with Tom??!  I know I have hay fever, but really????  I played with the gears, to no avail, so pumped away with my legs, really feeling it.  I came down a steep hill and still seemed to be going slowly.  Finally I got off the bike for a good look..the back break was jammed on.  PHEW!!!!  I was getting really worried for a while.  Matt sorted it out for me and I was a much happier (and faster) cyclist the rest of the way back.

Enjoying the sunshine

We thought Tom might fall asleep on the way home, but no.  We stopped off at Escape Bike Shop on the way home to get Tom's bike fixed (his chain was loose and scuffing along the guard).  Whilst we were there we asked about getting our bikes serviced, and left them behind to get sorted.  I certainly don't want to be cycling with a jammed back break again.  Lo and behold we bumped into Kate, Josh and Finn at the shop (not particularly surprising) Finn was fast asleep, so we had a natter and then returned home.

Tom was in bed early both nights - it's going to be an exciting week this week.

Oh and yes we made lots of strawberry jam and none of it set particularly well!  We used jam sugar and pectin and lemon and I even got the jam to wrinkle but it still didn't set very well.  Oh well it tastes good.  We will try again next year!