My Life in the Week Ended 18 January 2026

Well that felt like a busy week but maybe that's because it was! I started off spending my entire Monday finishing some upholstering. It wasn't an insubstantial task. It's quite physical as fabric is heavy and it also takes quite a lot of mental processing cutting pattern pieces to the right size and getting them all sewn together in the right order.

Anyway you're going to have to wait for the great reveal as its part of a bigger project that isn't quite done yet. But there's plenty of other things that happened this week that I can show and tell now. So let's get on with it shall we?

Where Have We Been?

We've ventured outside Devon twice in the last week. First stop was multitasking in Somerset where we stayed overnight on our friends' farm. We spent a busy two days seeing friends and family, attending a special dinner at a country pub and filling our flagons at a proper cider orchard.

A less scenic journey found us on a Taunton industrial estate. Here a lovely man sold us bargain offcuts of melamine to replace damaged table tops in our motorhome. He also promised samples in the post as we're using the same material to make bespoke worktops. It's part of a hand built forever kitchen that we're planning to start shortly.

Next up Cornwall! One brave soul organises an exclusive youth hostel hire each year for us and forty of our friends. The day was our own on Saturday so Paul and I went to the Eden Project. Courtesy of the Blue Light Card discount scheme our admission to the toasty warm tropical paradise was absolutely free.

On Sunday we went to the beach at the wonderfully named Porthluney where the sea conditions were just right for my January swim. I like to have a dip in wild water at least once a month.

Alas, my streak has been broken in December due to that persistent lurgy that I told you about last week. I didn't think it was a good idea getting into the sea with a hacking cough so I was sensible for a change. Anyway I'm now back on form now and hope I'll have a full year of scheduled dips ahead of me. It's inspired me to write a post about my swimming adventures. That should pop up on my blog later in the week.

What Made Me Laugh

Our final stop off on our Cornwall trip was the coffee shop at the Lost Gardens of Heligan where we'd arranged to meet one of my old schoolfriends who lives nearby. Winter admission to these beautiful grounds is on a pay what you want basis. We didn't have time to take advantage of this but we did spot a board telling people what their donation could buy. Would you believe that £25 would pay for the release of five glow worms? I was quite taken by that idea. And apparently £100 would feed a red squirrel for a month. My partner, Paul, seemed less than impressed at the economic reality of this.

'What are the little buggers eating?' he asked in an exacerbated tone . 'Caviar?'

What We Bought

Because we had free entry to the biomes at Eden we decided beforehand that we'd spend a little money to support the attraction. It is a charity after all. We imagined beforehand that we might treat ourselves to some unusual seeds and plants and weren't disappointed. We came home with chilli seeds, arabica coffee seeds and this banana palm, complete with little friend. Fingers crossed we'll be able to separate him and end up with two healthy trees.

I wonder if our new plants will fruit when they mature. This might sound far fetched but it isn't so. Friends on the other side of the town have a banana palm that fruits. The climate is quite mild here. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

What's Been Cooking?

Because of all that travelling I haven't been doing a whole load of cooking . It's been a bit of a treat to have other people feeding us. So nothing fancy came out of the kitchen this week. However I experimented with the air fryer and knocked up amazing cheese on toast. Of course, I laced it with lashings of Worcestershire sauce.

I thought I'd share this as making it was much quicker and easier than usual the grill in the normal oven. I thought I'd add too that the pickled onions garnished are all our own work.

What I Watched

I've loved watching Pilgrimage with Simon Reeve, a 2013 mini series that's currently available on the BBC i-Player. It's in two parts. The first focuses on UK pilgrimage routes and the second moves onto Continental Europe. I was particularly interested to find out more about Padre Pio, an Italian saint. His name has kept cropping up over the last few months and I'd been curious to learn more about his life. I thought he was relatively unknown but not so. Millions visit the town where he lived each year.

It was no surprise to see Santiago del Compostela featured. It's a favourite city of mine that we often visit on our Galician travels. Here's a photo that I took on one of our trips to the cathedral at the end of the pilgrim trail. Now I normally arrive in our motorhome but one day in the not too near distant future I'd like to get to this sacred city under my own steam.

But at this moment I'm happy to be home. Travelling has been tiring. I'm pleased to see that my calendar over the next few weeks seem fairly empty. Hurrah!

Looks can be deceptive though. I'm sure that I'll find plenty to share. Join me next week to see what I've been up to.