Our Wild North

Last weekend I turned 24 years young.

'It's the circle of life, and it moves us all, through despair and hope, through faith and love'.

This week on the farm we suffered the loss of a pig. I found Macy Gray, as Andrew had affectionatetly named her due to her emaciated state, in the corner of the pig hut one morning. All very sad. We found no dignified way to move her body through the mud, but being a pig I guess that's what she would have liked.

At the moment we're about 20 minutes from Brockville, Ontario, working on a pig farm. Other than the mild temperatures in the afternoon, I haven't seen much sign of Spring here. When we arrived last week there was a thick layer of ice and a dusting of snow on everything. Over time it's melted, re-froze, and snowed again.

Just over two weeks ago, Andrew and I landed in Toronto.

Having not flown for a number of years I was pretty nervous about the flight beforehand, but it was actually fairly underwhelming when we were in the air. The choice of films and the food were mediocre at best. And to make matters worse I picked up a bug and spent the next two nights trying my best to avoid the creaky floorboards of the hostel room to go and be sick. This wasn't the 'Welcome to Canada' I was expecting.

We pretty much spent our week in Toronto walking and eating. We went Uptown, Downtown, visited St. Lawrence Market for the farmers market and the antiques fair. We spent far too long walking around in search of the 'world's biggest bookstore', only to discover that it was knocked down in March 2014 (damn you out of date Canada guide!). We ate at three or four different pizza places, had Five Guys twice, and went to a sports bar for wings - Andrew went for the all you can eat option.

Unfortunately I don't have photos of any of these things because I thought that I'd be able to put my SD card in Andrew's WiFi camera, but it doesn't support my photos. Doh!

After days of blue skies and sun, we decided to take a Megabus trip to Niagara Falls. And low and behold - grey skies and drizzle.

Horseshoe Falls

Most of the time you couldn't really see much because of the mist and spray. As it's the Winter season there wasn't much else to see or do, but the lack of people was a nice change compared to the usual tourist hotspots.

The house up North must be some sort of butterfly sanctuary during the winter months. I'm sure there's at least one butterfly hibernating away in every room. I usually find them resting on the floor and have to warn everyone not to step on them, or I have to move them out of the way of the ever so curious cat.
We've recently had some cavity wall insulation put in (at last!), and a rare few sunny days, so I assume the rise in temperature is why Andrew found this little guy flapping around.

We weren't quite sure what to do with him because it's still pretty cold outside. Andrew suggested feeding him some sugar water, in case he was hungry. It didn't take him long to get stuck in, and I eventually found a milk bottle top to put the sugar water in so Andrew could put him down and leave him to it. Since then I think he's found a new spot to rest in.

I've always had a bit of a fascination with butterflies. Sometimes when I was a kid I'd run around the Buddleia bush with a fishing net trying to catch as many as I could. I guess it was just like a real life game of Elefun, minus the elephant.

A couple of Christmases ago my sister bought me a framed Lemon Emigrant to put on my bedroom wall, and she also got me another butterfly in a teapot from a charity shop. I'd love to add to my little collection!

With a week or so to go before leaving for Canada, the last thing I needed was an infected wisdom tooth and a trip to the RVI emergency clinic. I'm not great when it comes to doctors or dentists, I'd much rather let my body try to fix itself. But I think my complaining got a bit much for everyone, so Andrew kindly drove me to the emergency clinic in Newcastle.

When I arrived I was told to come back later on to register for the afternoon clinic. I thought I'd be sat in the waiting room for ages, but I was seen about 15 minutes after the clinic opened. Most of my appointment was just asking me questions about my health and where the pain was, and then I had to sign something to say I was fine with being seen by a student. About 10 minutes later, after being double checked by the student's supervisor, I was out. It was much less of a palava than I thought it was going to be.

To take my mind off things I had a little potter around the garden while it was sunny.

Spring has finally sprung and what better way to celebrate than a nice walk in the countryside.

Andrew suggested we went to Brill, a village in Buckinghamshire that J. R. R. Tolkien apparently used as inspiration for the village of Bree in The Lord of the Rings.

Andrew enjoying the stile in the middle of the field!

Setting off from the windmill in Brill we headed for Boarstall Duck Decoy, which wasn't actually open. On the way we played a game of 'guess the roadkill', after much deliberation we agreed it was a fox. Poor guy.
We walked through a farmyard which was what I like to call a 'proper farm', not like those farms you see on Countryfile where they've pressure washed the mud away and swept up; you know the ones where it wouldn't surprise you if they shampooed their cows? This farm looked lived in and worked on. It reminded me of home up North.

It wasn't the sunniest of days. The recent rain meant that the ground was quite muddy, but we plodded on up a hill, and eventually we were back at the windmill! It was the kind of walk where I could have done a few more miles, but we decided to head to Thame to buy some steak for tea, and a scotch pie and a sausage roll for a snack. Delicious.