July 11th Two rather tired teddy bears this morning would be an understatement, for me anyway. I was exhausted, mostly after a bad night’s sleep and another early alarm call. Having dropped Huan off I really didn’t want to walk in the countryside at all. However, once I started, nature reminded me that we live in a wonderful place and we should walk more often!
Having only one hour again I decided there would be no probes today, just a walk into Changhao (township), a swift u-turn and then a walk back again. I took these two photos where I turned around, at the end of Changhao road.
Now here’s one that we can’t explain for you. It is obviously another filler cap, the octane rating required is 92, what the rest means we have no idea.
The last photo of this morning’s countryside walk is where I have my short rest when I return to pick up my passengers. It is a pleasant enough spot as I’m sure you’ll agree.
Arriving home I sent Huan upstairs to fetch her bank card and then forced her into a morning walk with me. With the bank on the route she didn’t need a lot of forcing. The ladies have almost finished their paid for lessons, two have been kept in reserve for just before the test day. I believe that more lessons are needed, definitely for Huan and probably for Yú. Thankfully Huan agreed with me hence the bank walk, I provided the payment for the next few lessons.
We carried on walking, up the main street, through the bap market and then around the river. It was a warm day but the shade of the trees helped us enjoy it anyway.
At one point Huan was muttering “bird” and pointedly looking at me. Of course I was looking in all the wrong places but I did eventually see it and I managed one decent snap.
Let’s finish off the day with Chef Bob’s prawn curry. It’s not my recipe of course but came from Saudi. Original grammar and spelling have been kept for authenticity. Did I change anything? I used garlic instead of garlic powder, added a boiled egg left over from lunch and included some豆腐泡, dòufu pào – tofu puff. My complaints were that I should not have used frozen prawns and I should have made more. PS Cucumber Raita recipe included for your culinary pleasure.
Photos of our dinners never look right with our multicoloured rice but as that is what we have to eat. (Courtesy of WeChat and Dr. Mă) This is Her Ladyship’s plate.
July 12th Today I had a lot of kilometres (real ones, not fake ones), but took very few photos. What happened? Well, we both stayed in all morning, generally being bone idle. After lunch, and because she really needed some down time, I got Huan to stay in and have an OAP nap while I went for a walk. I stuck to the main road and the riverside with sandals and not boots. The route I took usually provides us with at least one lizard photo but today there were none to be seen at all. I guess they were all being lounge lizards and relaxing at home too. I did find a flying object though, I believe it is a moth, correct me please if I’m wrong.
Being alone, I stopped off for a break for a minute or two; this was my view at that time.
This was my final photo before arriving home after 11.2km, the avenue to the front door.
From the walks of yesterday and today it looks like the km error has disappeared. If it really has, perhaps turning off the auto-pause function worked. I’ll try a few more days without it switched on before putting it back on to double check. PS Xiaomi have not replied yet!
July 13th Extra walks were planned today, apart from the necessary one while I pass time waiting for the ladies this afternoon. Looking in the fridge I found a severe shortage of eggs and I also needed a substitute for “pipe rigate” for something I am going to cook next week. A mini detour gave us the chance to take a snap of this fountain in operation.
We saw a squirrel there too but it was much too fast for us! In Baijiahui we found some kind of carrot flour pasta, that should do me for next week. (Why is it white and not orange?)
Nearly home and Huan spotted ice
creams at ¥1.00 each, there was no way she was going to walk past a bargain
like that. That’s about 11 pence for
Once home it was straight into the kitchen for me, dinner needed to be served the old fashioned way, (for poor people), at lunch time. Today it was a Philippine dish, Chicken Asado.
A long time ago I did try and make this dish but I was not too impressed with the results. Today, I used home made passata with a dash of tomato sauce, it was much better. I forgot to add the calamansi juice but Huan thought that made it better. Here is her plate before she cleaned it.
It made a change to drive the ladies and Zhao De to the training ground at a respectable hour of the day instead of early in the morning. Within minutes of dropping them off I had my first ‘event’ although the photo wasn’t taken until I reached home. My feet betrayed me and I went flying into the side of the road, the photo is because the Minister of Information wanted a record, no doubt so that she can blackmail me with it in the future!
My own first photo was a cow peeping around a tree.
Because my bootlace snapped as I was getting ready I was back in my shoes today so my planned route was the road into Changhao with maybe the odd detour. This place looked likely so I took a right turn here and then a sharp left up the dirt track.
When that track came to an end it branched into two, one left and up and the second right and down. If Huan had been with me and if I had been wearing my boots we may well have gone up, today I took the right hand fork.
Before too long though, at the other side of the forest, I came across my usual obstacle on my Changhao walks, the uncrossable river, especially with no boots.
Within minutes of being back on the road I felt the wind coming towards me and looked ahead to see this view of the mountains.
Almost immediately after taking that photo there was an almighty flash and a very loud bang from a small electricity tower in front of me and then a huge thunderclap. The time delay between flash and sound was zero! Huan then called me and suggested I stop and take shelter.
As you can imagine I was already soaked to the skin by this point. When I reached my normal rest spot for my cool coffee the shirt and hat had to come off. Even the selfie camera was struggling with the weather.
My walk was curtailed, only 5.6km instead of the expected 7.5 but I desperately needed to get into the car and put the heater on to dry out a bit. The worst part was waiting an extra twenty five minutes for Huan to finish her lesson, the thunder and lightning had meant a delay. The best part was that she did get a little practice in the rain.
July 14th Well that was a short respite; we were back to an alarming start again today. At least the weather was fine. In fact all the water that came down yesterday was making its way back up again this morning.
After dropping the ladies off, and with my newly laced boots, I headed towards Wuzhishan via Caoban village, intending to see if I could find a spot where I had cut my legs before. On my way the only life I found was snails, like this one. I helped him and a few others, to the side of the road. They were the lucky ones; there were many dead ones today.
These next two shots were to show Huan where I had walked, she should remember the route. I thought you may appreciate the views too.
I was timing my walk to make sure I wasn’t late getting back to the ladies so at this point, I realised that I was not going to find the ‘scene of the incident’ and decided to turn back.
Imagine my surprise when I arrived back at the training ground and found neither of the ladies driving. The early start must have scrambled my brain today; I should only have planned a one hour walk and not two. Still, I only ended up being half an hour late.
We weren’t as lazy as usual today, no naps were taken in the afternoon, but then again, no additional walks were taken either. I decided I had walked enough in the morning and Huan decided that getting up so early entitled her to a lazy day too.
July 15th Don’t you wish you were retired too? No early mornings to worry about and no job or boss either. I wish I was! Instead I was dragging myself out of bed before the milkman again to deliver the boss to her driving lesson. Today I only wore my sandals thinking that would trigger my brain into not walking for so long. The scenery was still fine.
That was almost the end of today’s photography in the countryside but then I spotted a frog on the training ground. Obviously he needed rescuing before he became a flat frog courtesy of all those learner drivers. In retrospect, a video would have been better.
Most importantly, it was me who had to wait for the ladies and not the other way round, just as a good chauffeur should. Our plan had been to go to the market before going home, to stock up on salad stuff for the weekend’s dinner. However, the Minister of Planning decided that we would go out for a cheapo buffet meal this evening because we are going out for an anniversary dinner tomorrow evening. I’m not going to argue!
We still went to the market though, and bought nothing. On the way back to the car we spotted yet another lizard stuck on the footpath, or maybe it is the same one as last week. I don’t know.
In the pond of the Bob Eating fish Huan insisted that I take a photo of this little turtle. I guess you can almost see it. The man-eater was still there too, eyeing me up suspiciously but I left him well alone, his teeth are too sharp.
So dinner out today was at our usual buffet place, here are our spreads, you’ll know which one is mine and which one is Huan’s.
And we’ll finish off the day with some sights of the evening.
July 16th Both of our phones have been going crazy with messages since late yesterday; it seems that we are going to receive a lot of rain in the next few days. There is a typhoon on the way but it is not a strong one and it’s not headed for us. Still, maybe they are working on the premise of better safe than sorry. The ladies still had a lesson this morning; I had to have Huan there for eight. The sky did look a bit ominous, so I took an umbrella with me.
As is usual when Yú starts earlier than Huan, I only have to while away an hour. This morning I didn’t even manage that. My sandals died before I had walked one kilometre.
Unusually the ladies had a second lesson after lunch today; that is because the test is coming up soon. It was another umbrella walk, with shoes, and a reminded to follow instructions and stay out of the forests in the rain. Here’s a view you haven’t seen before.
Sometimes I try and look for subjects that are different for you, not just the scenery, even though we both like it very much. I’m sure you have heard of a ‘cat on a hot tin roof’, well this is not that cat. Instead it is a ‘duck on a cool tin roof’. It usually has siblings around; maybe the weather was not right for them today.
Let’s not leave cats out of it though, here’s one enjoying the cool afternoon.
With some time to spare I walked through the village across from the training ground, thinking I could have a little exploration. Turning left away from the weir, the view is nice.
Having two hours to myself today I had my boots on so I took the little track you can see on the left of the photo above. Before too long my way was blocked by some water buffalo. Now these guys are not quite as docile as cows and I decided backtracking was the best bet, especially as there was not really a way around them.
On my way back I thought that the river looked quite good, so snapped a few photos to show the student driver and of course to share with you as well.
For a change I thought I would try and find another way to the main road. That entailed going through the woods which were very damp. Luckily I didn’t find any leeches today!
Once I had clambered over the crash barrier it was just a few hundred metres walk to where the ladies were not yet finished. No problems, coffee time for me!
No cooking for anyone today, it was our wedding anniversary, our fifteenth in fact. We actually got dressed for the occasion, for a change, and went out for dinner.
Free nibbles were provided, as well as mints for after dinner.
Here we are enjoying our pre-dinner drinks. Well Huan is making a good impression of it, hers was a little too sweet for her. I was very much missing some wine, preferably white but red would have been fine. (PS They told us later that we can always take our own wine in with us.)
Having a good old nosey while waiting for our food I was mostly
impressed with the décor and the place settings etc. I suspect very strongly
that this is a chain (franchise) restaurant, probably based on the mainland
somewhere. My eye did fall on this though. Now two questions for you: - First,
do you, like me, make sure all sticky labels are removed when you buy
glassware? Second, why is it written in English when it was obviously bought in
Our dinner surprised us when it arrived, we were expecting a fish dish and a prawn dish, but someone, who shall remain nameless but wasn’t me, didn’t read the menu properly. What we got was a fish dish and a crayfish dish, both in a garlic sauce (that was what we wanted).
You may well have seen videos on the internet of Chinese people going crazy over crayfish so I was quite happy to try it. Huan took too many photos of me doing just that, but I couldn’t get a decent gif out of them so you’ll have to make do with just one. Here I am probably complaining about how little meat you actually get once you have found your way in.
Did we enjoy our meal? Yes, we both loved every mouthful. We will go back to this restaurant, but next time with some wine of our own and we will probably skip the crayfish.
July 17th Monday comes but once a week and normally we would be off shopping. This morning however, Huan had booked an extra lesson; Yú was having a day off. I was quite pleased because I feel that Huan will learn much better on her own, without any distractions. The rain warnings were still in place everywhere, and it did rain most of the day. I guess it was somewhere between spitting and a drizzle, not much really. It did mean an umbrella walk though and no camera. This was my view as I walked towards Changhao.
After Huan’s lesson, we did a quick shop, before heading home for lunch. An OAP nap would have been good but Huan had been lucky and managed to get another lesson this afternoon. Here she is setting off to do her cornering practice.
I was lucky today, no umbrella was needed but I stuck with the phone and left the camera in the car. Caoban was my first stop, even with miserable weather it all looks beautiful.
The only wildlife I spotted today was this little snake. I watched it for a while and I could swear its tongue was flickering in and out. I took a video and its tongue didn’t move at all so I just took this still. As I walked away its tongue flickered again. I’m not sure whether it was badly injured; it didn’t seem in any hurry to move.
My plan was to walk as far as the weir before retracing my steps back to the training ground which is exactly what I did. I didn’t have my boots on, only my shoes, but I think the weir would have been a no go even with boots today.
On my way back the snake had disappeared so maybe it was fine after all. Back home we headed; neither of us wanted any more walks today, in fact staying awake long enough to do this post was hard enough. Tune in again next week to see how the student is progressing and whether or not the taxi driver has gone completely round the bend yet! Bye for now, see you then!
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