Yak & Natter

On Tuesday evening Richard and I headed off to the Hotel du Vin for our first Geek Wine thing in quite some time. This one was the second of the new format Geek Wine Things, now being organised and orchestrated by Fergus De Wit and James Reina from Majestic Wine.

There were 8 wines for tasting, 4 white and 4 red, made up of 4 classics and 4 bright young things.

It was a great evening, and as when in the Hunter Valley recently, I made a series of notes. These are made up of “wine facts” and tasting notes. Some of the more useful are:

• The Spanish wine system is really focussed on the aging process – so Reserva and Gran Reserva have clearly defined meanings on a bottle of Spanish wine. This isn’t the case when these words are applied to many other nations wines
• Good vintages for Rioja are 2001 and 2004
• The younger a red wine, is the more breathing time it is likely to need
• When thinking about wine and food matching, a good hint is to choose the kind of food that is served where the wine is made
• If you buy a Spanish Reserva or Gran Reserva, then you’re probably on to a winner

Out of the white wines, my favourite was the first we tasted. This was Albariño Martin Codax 2008 Rias Baixas. Albarino wasn’t a wine that I’d knowingly tasted before, and is indigenous to that particular area of Spain. It was described as being a good halfway house between Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.

Out of the red wines, there were 2 that I really liked. These were Emilio Moro 2006 Ribera del Duero and Muriel Gran Reserva 1996. The Ribera del Duero is an up and coming wine area, and the Emilio was a lovely drink. The recommendation was to buy two bottles, drink one now and bury one in the bottom of your garden for 3 to 5 years to age further. Apparently Robert Parker gave it a score of 92 – which marks it out as being a good buy. The Muriel is ready for drinking now and was a lovely smooth wine. As Richard said, if either of these were served to us we’d be delighted.

Apparently, Majestic are running a promotion on Spanish wines next month, so I’m sure we’ll be heading down there to pick up some of these for our drinking pleasure.

As our blog was broken from around the time we got back from our holiday last July, I never got around to writing about it. So here’s a few quick thoughts about it.

This was our first holiday with Skitters. In recent years we’ve often spent our summer holidays in the UK, preferring to head further afield for snowboarding holidays. This year we would do no different. But, we did need to consider some new things. We needed it to be dog friendly (obviously), we needed it to have a garden of some description, and ideally we needed it to be somewhere we could walk the dog.

As a child I spent summer holidays on the East Coast, mostly in Bridlington but often with day trips further afield to Whitby, Robin Hood’s Bay and Filey. I remember these trips with fondness, and have always had a particular soft spot for Robin Hood’s Bay. Richard had visited a few of these places with me and my family years ago, but neither of us had really explored under our own steam. Filey has a very long, sandy beach which is mostly dog friendly (only the bit closest to Filey itself isn’t) and stretches from Filey down to Hunmanby.

We found ourselves a lovely house in The Bay estate (on the grounds of the old Butlins camp) which was so dog friendly it even had dog bowls. They had a no dogs upstairs restriction which was fine as they’d provided a child gate to put on the stairs – without this we might have struggled somewhat

The Bay estate is still being worked on, and looks to have quite a lot of space still available to it. The pub was open, and a couple of shops but there are still quite a few opportunities for development which I believe to be underway. The walk from the house to the beach was about 1km and this delivered us at a good dog-friendly stretch of beach (as long as the tide was out – at high tide there is no beach at all).

Our adventures took us all around the area including a visit to Dane’s Dyke beach (listed on the Times list of Top 10 dog-friendly beaches) , a walk into Dalby Forest (I remember a school trip there as a child), visits to Staithes, Robin Hood’s Bay, Runswick Bay and even along a bit of the Coast to Coast walk. It was a great trip and an excellent first holiday with a dog in tow.

More photos of our adventures can be found here

Whilst I was walking along the South Downs with Richard and Skitters early today, I was struck by how much I love living in Sussex, and how much more I’ve seen of it in the past year.

We first moved here in 2001, and at that time our priorities were being close to a train station, and being in the centre of town – both because, at that time, I was commuting into Farringdon on a daily basis. Over the first year we made excursions out and about, especially when we had visitors.

Over the next few years, we did quite a bit of mountain biking, and discovered lots of lovely trails which could be accessed either directly from the centre of town, or by getting on a train.

These days we load the dog and ourselves into the car (mostly) and head off in search of views. Over the past 9 months, we’ve visited many areas of Sussex, from Camber, to Friston Forest and the Seven Sisters, to the River Adur. This weekend has seen us walk around Devil’s Dyke and around Stanmer – both accessible by public transport. This afternoon I lost myself in the hills, and dales, the valleys, the trees, and was happy.

Last weekend we visited my parents in Hull.  Rather than breaking the journey up at Motorway Services we planned in stops at places which had dog-walking potential. So, armed with a road atlas, and an idea that we wanted to stop between Cambridge and Peterborough, we identified and tried a couple of spots which were only just off the route we travel.

Graftham Water

We stopped at Graftham Water on our way up to Hull on Friday afternoon.  From wikipedia:

Grafham Water (TL 150 680) is a reservoir with a circumference of about 10 miles (16 km). It is located between the villages of Grafham and Perry in the English county of Cambridgeshire (Huntingdonshire District).

We parked in the car park near Perry, paid our £2, made use of the amenities (toilets, cafe etc) and managed a reasonable walk

Monks Wood

On the return trip we stopped at Monks Wood. From Natural England:

Monks Wood NNR is one of the best examples of ancient ash-oak woodland in the East Midlands.

There is no car park as such, but there is parking in a layby off the B1090. There are also no amenities. But, there are a couple of marked walks – we followed Butterfly amongst all the trees, stopping for a spot of dog distraction training (lots of interesting smells that a certain young dog was fixated by).

So, 2 very different walks, both much better places to stop than at a Service station. The amenities at Graftham Water were really good but cost us £2 for parking whilst the walk was better at Monks Wood, we got free parking but had to stop at a Little Chef for toilets and cafe.

It is 8 weeks since we brought Skitters home and she has settled in well. In that time, we’ve become really interested in low tide times (because sand appears near the West Pier and Skitters can have a great run), we’ve tried out lots of treats and come up with a short list (dried liver, sausages and schmackos), Richard has taught her to fetch, and a combination of me and Richard’s Dad have taught her to shake hands.

Skitters has visited Hull, and met my Dad, and she’s been to Margate and met Richard’s family. She travels well, and settles down and sleeps in the back of the car.

We have both increased our exerise, I’ve decided not to run the 10K I was planning to in July because I just don’t have the spare energy at the moment. I’ve tracked a lot of walks on my Garmin Forerunner watch and know that I’m averaging about 20 miles per week. Some of the favourite spots are Stanmer Park and the woods beyond (1, 2, 3, 4), the River Adur (1, 2), and any beach (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

We’re on to leads number 3 and 4 after she chewed her way through 2 retracting leads. She now has a shortish lead, that matches her collar, for when she’s the dog-around-town, and a 10m long line for when we’re out and about and there are too many interesting smells around to let her off the lead. Yesterday we lost her for a while as she’d gone sniffing in amongst some brambles, she seemed to have got stuck and we were trying to work out how to get her out, when Richard spotted her running off. Somehow she’d managed to get out of her harness, without undoing it (the straps have been tightened up now!). She ran off and ended up in a field of horses before trying to find her way back to us – which she did, covered in mud and looking absolutely exhausted. But this goes to show that she’s not ready to be off the lead all the time yet – she still prioritises rabbits, squirrels and birds above us.

So, in 8 weeks I’ve spent less time at the keyboard, spent a lot of time learning how to take photos of a small dog, and have had a lot more exercise and seen the beach in a morning a lot more. It has been great fun.

Richard and I have long talked about getting a dog, but it never felt like the time was right due to work commitments, the size of our garden, our work patterns etc. This year we decided to give it some proper thought and in January decided to go to our nearest Dogs Trust centre in Shoreham to find out more. When we talked to one of the staff they told us that there are dogs which can suit all manner of house sizes and that we should fill in the form and take it from there. We decided to do this, but to wait till after our snowboarding holiday in Morzine (on which probably more in another blog post).

Last Sunday we headed off with our completed form in our hands and handed it in. The next stage was to go and look at the dogs in the centre and see if we there any we liked the sound and look of (each dog has an information sheet telling you whether it can live with children, and if so what age, whether it gets on well with other dogs etc). Although we didn’t need a dog that can live with children, we have family and friends with children ranging from 2 to 13 and so the children rating was important to us. We spotted a couple of dogs we liked the look of, one beagle cross and another one, and then headed back to the front desk where Emma, one of the assistants, was waiting for us. She told us more about the dogs, and neither of them were suitable, but she did have “one in the back” that we could find out more about. This dog, Skitters, had been brought back that day as the chief exerciser in her new family had been taken ill and they couldn’t look after her any more. She had been handed in to Shoreham as a stray in February, had then been adopted by her new family and handed back 3 or so weeks later. We took her out for a walk, and got on well with her. She matched our questionnaire well and we decided to adopt her. She is a Jack Russell Terrier crossed with something a bit larger judging by her size. Having made our decision the next stages for us were to take her out for a second walk, have a house visit from animal welfare who provided all sorts of helpful information including a helpful map of Brighton places which are and are not dog friendly, and attend a rehoming talk.

Having done everything necessary we went yesterday and collected her and brought her home to Brighton. We had a lovely long walk along the beach (does anyone know if sea sponges are toxic for small dogs? because she loves them…) and no sooner had we got home than she fell asleep on my lap. After lots more exploring and sniffing around the house she seems to have settled down well and is currently snuggled up on Richard’s knees looking completely at home.

I was just about to write a blog post about our week in Les Arcs last week, when I realised we’d never blogged about last years Big Trip. So here it is, better late than never. I’ve created 5 blog posts, one for each of the 5 different states we visited as this blog post was getting way too long, so follow the links in the list below to find out more about each state.

Last February Richard and I headed off on an adventure, a month in the US/Canada, mainly based at or near snowboarding/ski resorts. We decided to fly as far West as we needed to, and head back inland over the course of a month. We’d started planning by buying a map of the US, and attaching post-it notes to the cities with airports, and working out where we could get to by plane. We sat down and consulted the internet, and copies of the World Snowboard Guide and Ski Snowboard America to find a shortlist of resorts to aim for and then started plugging together a month’s worth of flights, car hire and accommodation.

The states we visited over that month were:

• Oregon
• British Columbia
• Idaho
• Montana
• Wyoming

There are a whole heap of GPS traces from our various snow days, and by my reckoning (with a bit of help from my Nokia 6110 Navigator and Sportstracker) we covered 506.09 miles on lifts and boards over 21 days on the slopes at 11 different resorts. We also ended up with a lot of photos and a couple of videos.

A great, great time, and something I’d love to repeat when I’ve saved up some more pennies.

This was the fifth and final place we stayed on our BigTrip.

The drive from Big Sky to Jackson took us past the incredible Yellowstone National Park – if our drive had been shorter, and it hadn’t been snowing, we’d have popped in to the park to take a look – maybe next time! Our accommodation in Jackson was at the Elk Country Inn, a reasonably well equipped log cabin within an easy, if cold (-20 deg C) walk of the many restaurants and shops.

Our first stop was Jackson Hole, a resort we’ve heard a lot about, but which we found somewhat disappointing. Yes, it was steep, but that was about it. No tree runs like we’d found at Moonlight, it was busy – even when it snowed it got tracked out really quickly, and I think we’d been totally spoilt by Montana. But we still had fun on our 2 days, and celebrated Richard’s 40th birthday there.

The next day we headed off to Grand Targhee, in deep, fresh, powder, with really limited visibility. I wasn’t feeling great, and so we only managed a half day, but we had some great fun playing amongst the trees with almost no idea what runs we were on, and where we were heading for. After a day off for me to attempt a recovery, we returned to Grand Targhee, on a day when we could see and managed a couple of runs before I had to retire ill. It was a very different experience the second day, and we realised that Grand Targhee isn’t a very big hill, but it gets a huge amount of snow.

Wyoming was a bit of a disappointment – we’d expected Jackson to be amazing – it was the last stop on our trip because we wanted to improve so we were good enough to appreciate it based on it’s reputation. Maybe we didn’t reach a high enough level, or maybe we peaked at Montana and learnt more about what makes the perfect snowboard resort for us, but Wyoming wasn’t the amazing final stop we’d planned.

From my sportstracker log in Wyoming we did:

• 2nd Mar – Jackson Hole – 23.64
• 3rd Mar – Jackson Hole – 23.61
• 4th Mar – Grand Targhee – 11.43
• 6th Mar – Grand Targhee – 5.55 – a token gesture as I wasn’t well, but couldn’t leave without a return to Targhee

A total for Wyoming of 64.23 miles.

This was the fourth place we stayed on our BigTrip and my favourite.

After leaving Lookout Pass, we drove into Missoula for the weekend, staying at the lovely Gibson Mansion bed and breakfast – the only place I’ve stayed which has a pre-breakfast tray delivered to the room, followed by a freshly cooked breakfast in the dining room. We’d decided that by this stage in our trip we were bound to want a break from the snow. The first thing we did on Saturday morning, however, was to get kitted up and head over to Montana Snowbowl to take a look. We did, and decided that the conditions didn’t look that great, and that we would, afterall, have that day off. So we spent the day wandering around Missoula, stocking up on gifts and postcards and the like, trying beers at the Big Sky Brewery before eating at the lovely, but hard to find, Red Bird restaurant.

After another incredible breakfast we headed from Missoula to Big Sky resort and our room at the Lodge at Big Sky. First impressions weren’t good, the room was big but soulless, there was no crockery or cutlery in our room despite the “basic kitchen facilities” (microwave and sink) and it was all beige – it looked a bit like a travelodge. Breakfast was a communal buffet style effort, served on paper plates with plastic cutlery. Again, not great.

But, we weren’t there for the accommodation (fortunately), we were there for the snowboarding and our first day was spent in fresh snow at Big Sky in conditions that are hard to beat. Our second day was clear and bright and so we made the hour long trip to Bridger Bowl for another fun day on the slopes, still finding patches of fresh snow to play in. Day three and a visit to Moonlight Basin, a resort which shares terrain and lift passes with Big Sky and which was my favourite resort of our entire trip – a resort with some amazing gladed tree black runs, and very few people. More fresh snow fell, and we re-visited both Moonlight Basin and Big Sky – having more great days at both.

Montana had great snow conditions, and some really good resorts – both Moonlight Basin and Big Sky are worth a return to, and even Bridger Bowl would amuse for another day. I’d probably base myself at Moonlight as it seemed to have a wider variety of self-catering accommodation than Big Sky.

From my sportstracker log in Montana we did:

• 25th Feb – Big Sky – 35.5 miles
• 26th Feb – Bridger Bowl – 25.75
• 27th Feb – Moonlight Basin – 31
• 28th Feb – Big Sky – 37.58
• 29th Feb – Moonlight Basin – 31.19

A total for Montana of 161.02 miles.

This was the third place we stayed on our BigTrip.

When we were planning for the trip, we wanted to visit a lot of lesser known resorts, and places that were hard to get to from the UK without changing planes etc. We knew we wanted to go to Oregon, and to Montana, and so Idaho seemed like a good place to visit that was between the two.

The Red Express dropped us back at Spokane airport, and we collected our car for the next 17 days.

We’d decided to visit Silver Mountain – I’m not sure why Silver won out over Schweitzer but it did. We found ourselves some lovely, lovely lodging at the Morning Star lodge and had treated ourselves to a larger room so that we could have some domestic extras – like a washing machine and a fully equipped kitchen.

Silver Mountain isn’t really a destination resort – but it kept us busy for a couple of days. The snow could have been better, but it would have been hard to have had much more of the mountain to ourselves, the biggest lift queue saw us waiting for 10 people to load ahead of us – some of the lifts are a bit old but with the level of traffic it wasn’t a problem. There is a 20 minute or so gondola ride to get from Kellogg to Silver mountain but this was quick and new and caused us no issues.

Whilst we were in Idaho, it was a total lunar eclipse, so we stood outside in the freezing cold to watch some of it, before heading off to nearby Noah’s canteen to warm up again.

Would I visit again? Well I’d pop in for a couple of days on the way to somewhere else again.

As we left Idaho to head to Montana we decided, thanks to an OnTheSnow review I’d read, to pop into Lookout Pass – a small mountain on the border between Idaho and Montana. We spent a few hours exploring and playing in amongst trees before leaving Idaho behind us and moving on to Montana.

From my sportstracker log in Idaho we did:

• 20th Feb – Silver Mountain – 15 miles
• 21st Feb – Silver Mountain – 26.49 miles
• 22nd Feb – Lookout Pass – 19.26 miles

A total for Idaho of 60.75 miles.

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