Cakes and Moor

Devil's Chair

I had such a lovely day yesterday. Amazingly, it was dry and even more amazingly the sun shone for much of the time. My choice for celebrating such a momentous occasion and ignoring the gruesomely significant number of years I seemed to have survived thus far was by going for a good stomp around my home turf, Bodmin Moor. This was followed by tea at my Mother's (the house where I grew up).

Luckily, I managed to rope in a few other kindly souls to join me. Some managed the walk, some managed the tea and some managed both.

At Minions, we stopped for a cup of tea and to stock up on pasties for our picnic lunch. To my surprise I was greeted by some friends bearing a splendid banner atop a bamboo pole hewn from their moorland garden. How magnificent was that? After daring the Devil's Chair and enjoying the stunning views upon Stowe's Hill, we found a sheltered spot to eat by the Cheesewring - a rather impressive stack of granite boulders teetering on the edge of a precipice.

Birthday Feast

Later, there was of course, plenty of cake! The worry of having to squish everyone into my mother's cottage for tea was allayed as we were all able to sit outside and enjoy the lovely weather. My industrious aunts, visiting from up country, helped my mother to provide a gargantuan repast including a spectacular chocolate birthday cake soaked in brandy. This was the kind of tea that never stopped - no supper required! I did of course make a few contributions myself:

• Rose cake
• Raspberry curd & white chocolate cupcakes
• Lemon curd cupcakes
• Chocolate friands
• Cornish Splits
• Chocolate drizzled Peanut Butter Cookies
• Spinach & feta filo pastries.

Birthday Cake - had to get the chocolate in somewhere!

Posts about some of these will be following in due course.

So in conclusion to the day's events, I suggest that my chronological age takes a hike, just like I did!