A Bonnetful of Bees

For a variety of perfectly good reasons, I neglected to put the Dutch Oven bread on to rise last night and breakfast saw the last of my bread disappear as toast.

I thought about my Beer Bread recipe, an hour from thinking about it to eating it, but my memory of it was not quite what I wanted.  I have been enjoying the taste and texture of the Dutch Oven Bread so much I wasn’t ready to settle for less.  Out of the inner tantrum came a thought.  What would happen if I mixed up a batch of Beer Bread, and cooked it the way I do the Dutch Oven Bread?

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OK, back to walking again.  With the possibility of a walk along the St James (NZ, not Spain) in November being dangled in front of me, I’ve been putting some kilometres behind me down at Rimmers.  The main problem is that right now, I weigh as much without a pack as I did with a pack when I last walked the St James, and I still recall the demands the up and down first day en route to Cannibal Gorge Hut made on my legs.  (See “Duke of York Territory”

It’s been said that a fit fat man is in better health than an unfit man of average weight, and while I believe there’s an element of truth in that, we are here talking about the kind of loads that an 18-20kg pack are going to place on knees and ankles over 5 days, in addition to what’s already there.

Anyway….  The Coast Rd down at Rimmers is a useful starting place to get into training.  It’s flat, and straight, and even if you think pine trees are boring — I do — there’s lots to observe besides.  To get there, turn west at Rimmers Rd, about a couple of km south of Helensville, and follow the tarseal until you reach the forest turnoff, then through the forest until you reach the Rimmers Rd parking lot.  About 13 km from Helensville all up.

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