This is the final post from the UK tour, things will be back to normal from here, less of the random traveling waffle and a return to recipes and rants. Colonsay was the last island stop on our tour, we had intended to go further, but the WWOOFing season finishes earlier than we expected, we couldn't find anywhere to take us on the whole western side of Scotland except for one week at the very end of September meaning we'd have a two week gap to fill. Unexpected stays at B+Bs, and a lack of wwoofing opportunities meant we were flying well over our budget, the weather just seemed to get worse and worse, we kept getting attacked by ticks, both picked up a nasty cough and decided something was trying to tell us to go home. Only a little earlier than planned and it means hopefully Andy should be able to get his thesis written before the new year, so it's all good. Plus it's been sunny down here. Hurrah! Although all I want it to do now is rain so the mushrooms will come, a woods we'd visited a while ago which was full of them was completely ...

Jura is great. Not sure what it is, it just has a tense yet calm atmosphere about it. Perhaps it was anticipation of knowing we were going to visit the place Orwell chose to write 1984 and also the site of Bill Drummond and the KLF's burning of £1 million that led to me feeling pretty inspired by the place. We'd been staring longingly over from Islay for the last 4 days at the "Paps", the aptly named breast shaped mountains that dominate the landscape and ended up leaving a day early to get to them. They must have called us over. Sneaky things really as they disappeared the day we got there into the descended clouds that didn't clear again til we left. Very cheeky. It's described as one of the last great wildernesses. It's a fair size, yet only has 200 inhabitants who are outnumbered 25:1 by deer. There's just the one road, running across the bottom and up the east of the island and nowhere else. If you wanted to go anywhere else you'd have to walk over rough ground. It's not like the peak district, there's no paths or styles, you just make your own way and ...

We're back from the wild! For various reasons we've come home a bit earlier than intended and are now on our 3 month European city break, in Liverpool, staying at our lovely 5 star self catering apartment on the Wirral (AKA Andy's Mum and Dad's). Here's the first of a three part round up of the last leg of the British tour, Islay. Jura and Colonsay coming soon. Just across from Kintyre, Islay is probably the biggest island we went to. We spent a fair amount of our time there in a B+B as Andy was ill and it rained everyday. It was strange being in a B+B when we'd been used to either tent or random hospitality from strangers. I realise this is how some people make a living, but the concept of having to pay someone £165 just to sleep in a bed for three nights and eat beans and scrambled eggs once a day seemed crazy. It must actually cost them all of about £5 per day. I don't think they were really doing it to make ends meet as some places clearly do either, the house was well posh. AND they charged us £5 to do ...

A while ago I signed up for a food parcel swapping thing organised by The Happy Sorceress at Dispensing Happiness. The idea is you put a small parcel of goodies together and are given an address somewhere in the world to sent it to and in return you get something sent from someone else from somewhere around the world. How exciting! Some kind of mix-up meant it took some time to arrive but a few days ago I finally got the slip saying I had a parcel to collect from the post office. Yipeeee. I think my original parcel had got lost in the post (booo) and it seems in the end the person who had actually organised the while thing ended up sending me something herself, which was really good of her. This is what I received: [caption id="attachment_21" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="Blogging by Mail Food Parcel"][/caption] Having sampled most of the contents (quite an enjoyable process) I can now give you a run down of what was in the box. The first thing I went for was the Clark Bar. It was some kind of peanutty thing coated in chocolate. Originally made in Pennsylvania. Very nice indeed. Anyone who fancies ...

BBQs seem to be featuring heavily in our summer tour. My friend Karen bought me a great little fire bucket BBQ for my birthday, it only needs a few coals, gets to cooking heat pretty quick and lasts more than long enough to cook everything we've wanted to so far.  We've been really lucky with the weather too, even when it appears to be chucking it down in the rest of the country we've been sat out in sunshine, so it's had quite a few outings. A good thing I've found to do it just to get everything you intend to put on, mushroom, peppers, onions etc and just stick em in a big bowl and stir them round with marinade, then you can just keep putting them on as you want more. We did these ones with a bit of sour cream, paprika, crushed garlic, cayenne pepper, olive oil, salt and pepper. Yum. We then eat them in pittas with loads of guacomale, soured cream with salald and nachos. And drank cider. Lots of cider. The place we were staying on these picture was pretty cool too. It's a place just outside of Cirencester called Abbey home farm. It has an ...