slowcoast odyssey

 
Back in June, we told you all about our friend, Nick Hand, who was cycling round the coast of the UK, making little films about artisan crafty types he met along the way and raising money for the Parkinson's Disease Society at the same time.

Lots of you got in touch to suggest other crafty coastal folk for Nick to visit on his travels as well as recommending a myriad of good cake shops to help sustain him enroute.

From Norwich to the Orkneys, along the way Nick has met everyone from saddle makers, surfboard carvers, tea tasters and a man who makes walking sticks to the likes of Tilda Swinton and Paul Smith. And you can watch all his excellent little films here.

70 films, 5000+ miles, over £5,000 raised for charity and countless slices of cake later, Nick is now back from his cycling odyssey. He's asked us to say a big thank you to everyone who got in contact with their tips (especially the biscuit related ones). So thank you from Nick.

Having been back in Bristol for about 4 days, he's just about to take a little cycling holiday to Cornwall with his partner, Harriet for a week.

Talk about a busman's holiday.
 

go do

Last week myself and Ceri (doing our very best catalogue poses below) drove a grassy van down the entire length of the M4 to West Wales for a long weekend at the Do lectures.

(picture by talented camera pointer James Bowden)

We rambled, ate hearty food, drank tea, chatted to strangers who became friends, chatted to Ade, went bird watching and slept under the stars in kata's (Swedish tipis). And learnt loads. Like loads and loads. In the spirit of 'sharing is caring' we've now started to spread some of the lessons we picked up throughout fruit towers. Here's the left overs from a session we did yesterday.

If you want to decipher the mystic one liners we'll give a curated guide to the best of this year's lectures once all the videos are up online. Done?

cycling odyssey

From Liverpool to Arran and beyond, Nick's bike ride round Britain is still going strong.

 

He sent us these pictures from Scotland where he is at this moment pedalling round the Orkneys.

Apparently, he's managed to avoid most of the rain on his trip so far. 

 

Which sort of makes you wonder which British isles he has been cycling round... 

You can stay updated on his every cadence by following his Twitter here and if he happens to be passing your way, maybe invite him round for a cup of tea and a biscuit.

long distance nick

Do you live on the coast? Know any nice places to eat or a man who crafts fiddles or makes surfboards for a living?

Then Nick would like to know.

 

Nick is the chap responsible for most of the photos in howies' catalogues and for the next 3 months, he'll be cycling the 5000 mile or so bikeride clockwise round the coast of Britain.

As well as raising money for charity, he's also going to be making little films about the artisan types who live and work along the coast to post here.

 

So if you know of anywhere along the coast that has:

• Nice places to stay (with or without tent

• Interesting craftsmen who like a chat

• Good cafes (with cake and strong coffee) 

• Free hot showers/sofas to sleep on

Or if you fancy cycling a bit of the way with Nick (or just meeting him for a mid morning coffee break) simply post your comments below or contact Nick here.

He's going to be popping in to see at Fruit Towers in August (slight detour from the coast so he can catch Wilco) so we'll update you on his progress (and saddle sore) then.

kladdkaka you see it

...and now you don't.

 

Bronte popped in today to bring us some of her amazing kladdkaka (very sticky Swedish chocolate cake).

Bee used work at Fruit Towers, pretty much running the innocent ship, before setting up Scandi Kitchen a couple of years ago, and was as famed for her organising skills as she was her carrot cake, her chilli and chocolate cake - just cake in general really.

Today, the kladdkaka lasted all of about 12 minutes.

 

You've got to be quick in this kitchen.

ukulele idol

Do you recognise this man?

Well for those of you who came along to our fete last summer, you might recall this handsome chap as Mr. Rod Thomas, who was strumming his ukulele at about 2 o'clock on the Sunday on The Acoustic Bandstand stage.

As well as working the sports casual look rather well, he's also just won Best Ukulele Video of the Year award , which features another rather fetching jumper and some very friendly socks.

You can listen to more of Rod's ear candy here or simply just kick back and watch his award winning video (and jumper) below:

win your own fruit garden

January.

Rain. Grey. More rain. Not much incentive to go outside.

Thankfully, the good people at Rocket Gardens are a jolly sort and have given us a very good reason to get out, keep fit and assuage our biscuit cravings by doing a spot of gardening.

   

You see, right now is the perfect time of year to start planting soft fruit in preparation for crumbles, summer puds and jam making.

And they've very kindly given us 10 of their compact fruit gardens and 10 of their large fruit gardens to give away. 

All you need to do to bag yourself one is tell us your most memorable fruit pie/crumble/pudding experience.

Post your answers below by Monday 26th January and come next autumn, you could be running your very own black market fruit pie operation (with a nice sideline in preserves).

(This competition has now closed.

Congratualtions to Big Tom, Sammy, Karen, Rachael, Susan F, Ian, Soo, Julie Lee, Steph, Emma, Lulu, Stephen Armstrong, Esther, Sarah Bruch, Anita, Ook, Davkt, Simone, Lindsay and Abby Bookham. Gardens on their way to you very very soon).

the fat duck vs. innocent

The development team from The Fat Duck came in the other day to see us. They're the people who invent all of the groundbreaking new dishes that eventually make it onto the menu of what is arguably the world's finest restaurant. Our Lucy (Head of Products/Chief Smoothie Inventor) recently spent 3 months working at The Fat Duck, learning lots of foodie tricks and techniques, so she thought she'd invite her new friends over to ours for a day.

"Mmm, dog food"

The highlight of the day was the sensory challenge. Blindfolds were donned (blue for The Fat Duck, pink for us) and a range of weird smelling things were passed around, with points being scored for guessing what the 'thing' was.

"But is it Pal or Winalot Prime?"

"I'm more of a Whiskas girl myself"

We can confirm that dog food, garden herbs and some other tricky items were on the menu, but modesty forbids us from revealing which team won the challenge. That information will remain strictly between us and losers.

friends in high places

We feel quite popular today as 10,000 people have decided to become friends with us on our facebook page. That feels like quite a lot of people to us. More than you you can fit into fruit towers in one go anyway. We can't tell you who our 10,000th friend was as we weren't watching at that point unfortuanetly. You are all as special as each other to us though.

Here's to 12,250. I don't know why that many, it just seems quite a monumental number as well. We'll let you know when we get there. If you fancy helping us along our way, and we're not hooked up already, you can link us up here.

if you DO one thing today

Back in September, Meera and I went along to The Do Lectures in Cardigan Bay, run by the good folk over at howies. 

As well as foraging, breadmaking and lighting a fire in a teepee (thanks, Ade), we got to hear some really interesting and inspiring people speak and met lots of other excellent people who are all out there right now, doing all kinds of brilliant stuff.

Since the lectures were such a success, howies are hoping to run them again but they need a bit of help to do this. The more people who go to the Do website and watch the lectures, the more chance they have of being able to run them again.

So if you only do one thing today, why not have a look here and watch a few of the lectures. And then maybe get your mates to have a butchers too.

Sure beats spending all afternoon, poking someone you used to go to school with on Facebook.