We went to Seaton Carew for a walk along the beach and a half serve of fish and chips from the renowned "The Almighty Cod". The Hartlepool Council are still doing massive engineering works to the beach and sea front.
In the old days, Seaton Carew was visited by locals and day trippers and a bus station was built right on the foreshore.
It is very large and very Art Deco, with some well maintained toilets, some seats, a clock and not much else. It does an amazingly good job of blocking the sea from view along a large stretch of the promenade.
If you owned a property on the other side of the road you'd be waiting for a big wave to have an impact on it.
A much worse eyesore is the Longscar Centre and it is very aptly named. The council are hoping to get a compulsory purchase order so that it can be demolished and the site incorporated into the new seafront design. I hope it all happens soon.
DJ is a very happy man. He is now the proud owner of a Routemaster 1:24 model. It is being suggested that this is the start of a wonderful collection of such delights. They even have a home to go to on the new shelves. It is a lovely bus and it looks grand on the first landing.
There seems to be quite a lot of fruit around this year. The weather has helped the growth of all plants. Our weeds are doing really well and unfortunately I bought unsterilised topsoil to top up the garden beds and all the weed seeds within it have done very well. The job of removing the weeds will have to wait till next early spring. The hedge is growing again and it was only clipped a couple of weeks ago.
A friend brought round a large bag of red and black currants and an even larger bag of red and green gooseberries. I have cleaned, topped and tailed all the gooseberries and apart from a couple of crumbles they have all been bagged and frozen for use at a later date. The red and black currants have also been dealt with.
They have been doused in gin and some sugar for xmas drinks, jellied for give-aways and frozen for later use. This pic also shows some of the goosegogs bagged and frozen for 'ron. These lovely fruits reminded us that there were wild raspberries to be had alongside the footpath on Brusselton Hill and so we went out early this morning and returned with a couple of tubs.
They are getting harder to reach every year as the nettles and sticky weed encroach on their patch. We had a bit of a fight and got stung on our picking arms but the harvest was lovely and we had them in a crumble tonight with some of the goosegogs.
Too much to eat really, but there we go.
Cheers Gillian
3 comments:
Hello Gillian
What a harvest of fruit and I love how you are preserving them. I love gooseberries. They are scarce here and if available are expensive.
Have a great week
Helen
I hadn't realised they were working on the sea front at Seaton. Haven't been there for many years. Have you seen Redcar's vertical pier? Doesn't quite fit with all those pound shops. I've been making small quantites of jam (and cake and pies) with fruit from the market but haven't spotted any gooseberries yet. I love gooseberry crumble. And gooseberry fool.
Made some goosegog jam, not sure it tastes of any particular fruit, but it is deliciously sweet! There are too many bushes really in the garden so some are going to waste, but there is just so much topping and tailing i am prepared to do!
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