lazyotter

Determined to have a full day’s skiing today and make up for my day off yesterday, I was up the mountain a little earlier than usual. Tightening my boots up and putting my ski’s on at the top of Schlossalm I was dismayed to find my left ankle still hurt like cr*p. Then I made a startling discovery… While fiddling with my ski boots trying to make them less uncomfortable by losening them I found a sort of screw-in plug located in each boot’s heel area. A few twists on this and… no pain in the ankle. WTF!!

It appeared that the heel screw made the internal heel area (supporting the ankle) wider. What had been happening was that my ankle had been squashed in the over tight heel and caused a lot of bruising and painful rubbing. I losened this off rather a lot (and did the same for my other boot while I was at it) then continued down a nice wide red run.

It was amazing - no more ankle pain (apart from the damage already done). I couldn’t believe that I’d been so naive as to not examine the boots more closely on day 1, instead of day 6…

There then followed my best day’s skiing of the week. Stayed out until the very last lift, at which point my brain was sending out control signals to my legs to turn, but my poor little legs had by this time given up and only cared for going in straight lines. I completely wiped out about 30m from the bottom of the run and ended up going sideways/backwards/spinning on a huge patch of lethal ice which offered no purchase for tired legs. Luckily I wasn’t injured (gosh that would have been a great way to finish up the week!) and made it to the bar to savour a well deserved last pint of Stiegl as I watched the sun setting over the mountains.

Decided not to ski today. This was partly due to me having a painful ankle, and partly due to me having a horrible stuffy relapse of my cold, which in turn could have been due to drowning my sorrows with several glasses of Stiegl last night. After all, there wasn’t much point in torture and I figured that having a day off today might allow my legs to heal enough to enjoy the last day of skiing tomorrow.

Today I made excellent progress with my current book - Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials, so much in fact that I got through over half of it in one sitting (which at 1016 pages is quite a lot of reading!). Also found time to fully explore Bad Hofgastein on foot and grab a pizza for lunch in a nice little cafe in the centre of town.

Due to it being quite windy today many of the ski lifts were closed for safety. As I could see on the handy ski information board (near my ski hire place) that this also affected Bad Gastein I chose not to get the bus there today. Instead I used what lifts were open and threw myself down the reds around Bad Hofgastein. Later during the afternoon the winds eased off and all the lifts opened anyway, so I couldn’t complain.

I think after yesterday I was quite worried at how difficult skiing seemed again, but today going down lots of red runs has boosted my confidence. I kept on skiing until the last lift, and until my poor little legs wouldn’t do what my brain was telling them.

Ate another five course meal in the restaurant (well, hell I’ve already paid for it!) and like yesterday the food was superb. The courses weren’t huge, and quite easily consumed by a hungry person that had just had a rather active day.

And so with all recent excitement of booking my ski holiday and countless late nights of insomnia, I am feeling exceptionally tired, but tireless, if that makes sense? Today everything seemed rather surreal, and in the shops this evening I thought I may even possibly have been asleep. I was wondering that if I ever was to have children and be kept up late tending to them for weeks/months on end, would it feel like this perhaps?…Well, I may be running myself down with lack of sleep, but I certainly won’t be accused of eating (too) badly. I managed to come home via the supermarket this evening with a trolley full of mostly fresh fruit and have just invented a delicious smoothie containing the following:

• small handful of fresh blueberries
• small handful of fresh blackberries
• small handful of fresh raspberries
• two kiwi fruit
• two small pots of Actimel yoghurt (mixed fruit flavour)
• one clementine

This makes approx. 1 pint of smoothie.

All the fresh berries were rather expensive but the difference to frozen fruit in taste…..WOW! The frozen variety is handy though and has its place.

Continuing with the cooking theme… I’ve just finished making a chicken and root vegetable soup which has also turned out rather nicely if I may say so.Have just tested my blender’s “puree” function to finish it off :).

On a lighter note… This evening I created a rather peculiar smoothie from banana, strawberries and melon, which after mixing manifested the unpleasant aroma of sheep urine. Of course, I drank it anyway (what with the 5-a-day and all that).

Did my “Factory Run” today, which is thus named due to the perimeter tour of some nearby Runcorn refineries. Miles run = 4.6.

After a leisurely start to the day, and after taking care of some of those essential cleaning chores, I did a short walk in the late afternoon around Moel Arthur. Here is the route map on gmap-pedometer. It’s a short walk but ideal for a few hours out on the hills. It was nice and warm for January although there was a huge amount of mud. I cannot recall when I last saw so much mud - possibly at Glastonbury 1998… Anyway, sadly I forgot my proper boots and so the standard footwear suffered.

This evening I had a nice open fire and thought I’d post a picture of it as I don’t know how long I’ll be staying in this house. And to round off a rather healthy and constructive weekend, for dinner I had a delicious nutricious…Pizza!

Went for a good walk today around the Mold hills near where I currently live. Have done this particular route before but who cares?!

Starting at about 11 am, the walk heads north west out of Maeshafn and follows a wooded trail for the most of the way to the main road near Cadole/Loggerheads. After crossing the road the path goes north through the Loggerheads park eventually arriving on the road to Cilcain. Here it turns west, crossing several muddy fields before meeting another road for short distance. Then the ascent up Moel Famau (from east side) begins. This is quite steep and always guaranteed to warm things up

At the summit today the wind from the south west was horrendous. So much in fact that I couldn’t descend the south facing steps from the Jubilee Tower due to being blown backwards! I guess I need to eat more lard to make me less susceptible to strong winds, or possibly carry a few bricks in my pack for ballast. Had some lunch at the summit in the shelter of the tower.

After taking the steep and most direct path down through the forest to the car park the walk continues west on the roads for a while before turning back onto some fields. The path then descends steadily, past a farm and eventually meeting the road down into Llanferres. There is a pretty good pub here - “The Druid”, which is handy for a food/drink top up, but today I just kept going straight across the road and down into the valley. The path follows the river (which was very high today) and soon begins to climb up again to the Maeshafn forest. The forest makes a nice end to the walk, which soon arrives in Maeshafn.

I treated myself to a pint of Theakstons in the Miners Arms, before getting back home for about 3.30pm. It had been rather a wet and windy Sunday but I still very much enjoyed being out there…the way it should be.

This evening I really couldn’t be bothered cooking and enjoyed the second treat of the day. Drove up to the “Druid Inn” in Pontblyddyn (not the same one as Llanferris) and enjoyed a starter of olives, a main course of delicious Conwy mussels (mmmmmmm!) then ice cream for desert. All washed down with the local Druid ale… Oh yes.

Over the holiday period (which I refuse to call festive) my employer showed it’s generosity and gave everybody vouchers that could be spent in a variety of high street shops. In an positive attempt to make sure I’m getting enough fresh fruit and veg in my diet I recently went out and bought this blender with the intention of making smoothies. This one is supposed to be “intelligent” and boasts some very convenient buttons on the front for making different things.

It was pointed out to me by a friend of mine that people who buy these kind of kitchen appliances either:

1. use them a few times but then lose interest and shove them in a cupboard for several years, or
2. use them frequently or even every day

At present I seem to be sticking to the second option, but we’ll see if it continues over the coming weeks

Since I’ve owned the blender I’ve had fruit smoothies (of some description) nearly every other day and have even had a stab at making vegetable soup. This I over peppered significantly but it still turned out to be surprisingly tasty. The biggest gripe I have is getting ingredients of decent variety. Most fruit seems to be quite expensive this time of year, and I’m loathe to buy a tiny box of strawberries air-freighted from Israel for £2.50 a go! However, today I found a good range of smoothie-ready frozen fruit in ASDA, which are ideal for quickly throwing into the blender. Ingredients-wise I’ve tried mixing the following in different combinations and quantities (in no particular order) - orange, clementine, banana, melon, apple, red & green grapes, forest fruits, blueberries, strawberries, yogurt, milk, celery, tomato, peppers… The list is still growing after today’s trip to the supermarket. Through experimentation I’ve learned some important lessons:

• banana is extremely dominant taste wise - use it and it makes the whole drink taste of banana!
• when using vegetables (as opposed to fruit) there tends to be a lot more pulp which is not particularly easy to drink - need to add lots more liquid. Veggies also need sweetening up with some fruit.
• frozen fruits straight from the ice box need some liquid adding to soften them up first

I’ve not tried following any set recipes yet although I have looked at some on the web and in books. Most of the one’s I have seen seem to require odd measures - e.g. use half a pineapple, or half a banana. So what are you supposed to do with the other half’s then?!…