Exploring the Forest and Spotting Wild Deer

Tuesday was the french girls last whole day, we spent the morning getting the hotel ready for guests and then headed into the forest after some lunch. Its a shame Esther has already moved on, she really wanted to explore the forest but we never got around to it. It’s literally across the road from the farm. We clambered up a bank full of brambles only to later discover a road that presumably leads to the one the farm is on… Oh well. We would have missed out on this if we had found the road before.

It technically not really cold here yet, around 0 degrees, so I imagine the ice must get a lot thicker into winter. You could already spot little animal prints across it. I wonder if it gets thick enough for ice skating? Not that I can skate to save my life, but still.

The forest is completely made up of Christmas trees!

Big and small. Can you believe how tall they get?

Its so well kept (ok, not the best photo to demonstrate that, you’ll see what I mean though) , you can see where trees have been thinned out to let others grow and theres no crazy ferns all over the place. Or ivy, which is a shame because we wanted to collect some for Christmas decorations.

You would have thought that it must be great getting christmas trees here. Just wander into your local woods and pick one… There are all shapes and sizes. But its actually illegal to cut down any tree here. Even on your own land. This forest is part of the farm yet we had to go out and buy a tree! Apparently there are forest guards which you have to get permission from before cutting anything down. If you are caught without one your in big trouble.
I think its great that there are such strict rules on cutting trees down. But I got the feeling its a lot of hassle getting a permisson. We could clearly see that trees have been cut down in the forest by the guards (they do all the looking after) and after inquiring I found out that the trees aren’t given to the owner. Which leads me to wander what the hell is the point of owning a forest?!

We spotted the farm through the trees.

And stumbled across an original piece by Andy Goldsworthy! He wasn’t feeling so elaborate on that day though…

We walked quite deep onto the forest, but we didn’t worry because there where paths and we always kept to the one on the right which is the side the farm is. We found another pond, with a little stream running into it.

And what must be deer feeding stations because there where no fences around them. We couldn’t see any deer here though. I imagine these are here to keep them fed in the winter when everything is covered in snow. Tom mentioned that they keep their horse chestnuts for the deers. Its nice that the locals look after the wild animals.

As the forest started to clear, we headed towards fields where we spotted wild deer! Unfortunately my camera is pretty shit, so any hope of getting a photo was nil from the beginig. I tried anyway.

They where quite far away but we could see them relatively clearly. The best bit was when we saw some on a field lower down from us, hoping away like giant rabbits!
It was such a great experience.

We headed home wards and found some decorations on the way! So it turned out to be a great day!
This is Clementine with our foraged decorations.

Visiting the local towns

We make the most of our days off to get out and about and see something new.
Last week we went to the castle and this week we visited Tábor, a historical town about an hour away. But more on that in a moment.

Two more volunteers have joined us in the meantime, so we decided to visit Votice one afternoon we all finished early. Votice is the neighbouring town, about a half an hour walk from the farm. We had only been there once briefly, to buy milk, besides our arrival that is. So it was an adventure for us all! It gets dark here at about 4.30 so we left early in order to have time to look around.
Luckily its a straight forward road there so no chances of getting lost.

The first time we walked there two of the kittens followed us and we ended up carrying them once we got to the main road and standing outside the supermarket with them because they go mental at any sign of food! We got lots of funny looks to say the least. They kept us warm on the way home though!
But this time we made sure no one was following us.

Its a funny little town, a bit run down.
This church is by far the main feature.

We wandered around attracting lots of attention with the girls bright jackets and big cameras, not to mention being foreign.
Skoda was a czech brand until audi bought them apparently, so there are loads of old ones that you wont see anywhere else.
David had fun spotting them, heres one:

And a typical house, they remind me of Portugal with the orange tiles :) along with other things like random abandoned washing machines in driveways….

We came across that while following signs for a rstaurant, which eventually just stopped with no restaurant to be seen. We found one eventually, in the square where they where putting the christmas tree up. We also stumbled across a post office, we bought post cards in Prague which we still haven’t sent, so we figured we may as well buy the stamps. Armed with an iPhone which said stamps in czech we approached the desk only to be pointed outside and signalled to buy them across the road! As no one had any post cards with them we decided to leave that adventure for another day and find food.

For a little czech town, there sure where a lot of pizzarias! I guess kind of like chinese takeaways in england… Even Newlyn has one! So we ended up having pizza for lunch. Its the first time I’ve gone out for food since not eating meat and man does that make things difficult with a menu all in czech! Ironically when they all arrived one of the french girls had ordered what turned out to be a vegetarian pizza which was way more exciting than my one with about three toppings! We shared :) david asked for something traditionally czech so they made him something specially! Which turned out to be almost half the price and surrounded by dumplings obviously! We had some strange shot after lunch, a “digestive”. It tasted like nail vanish remover but actually had an ok after taste. Warming too :)

Heres an entertaining sign we spotted on the way home. Who knew america was so close to the czech republic?

Tábor

On friday night (the night we cooked for 30) Tom told us that as we had done such a good job we could have saturday off and visit Tábor. It was a lovely surprise! They also bought us a cake! Bless them.
So the next day we all piled into the car and then ran for the train which possibly waited for us. On board we attempted to by tickets separately and gave up. As we where trying to sort out how much we owed Esther, the ticket lady came along and changed our tickets! She had charged us too much. She obviously has more morals than that first bus driver…

The train journey was quite something, most of the stations here are still from when Czech was communist and they are so tiny and so old. Some of them don’t even have platforms, others you have to cross train tracks to get!
I bought my postcards along to write on the train and then post in the town. However I forgot my address book! The stamp adventure is to be continued…

I wasn’t around when the others where deciding on visiting Tábor so I missed out on Petr’s information. He used to be a tour guide so he knows all about everything that there is to know about well, anything touristy or historic realy. Anyway, from what I can gather, Tábor is special because of its natural defences. Its built on the summit of an isolated hill, separated by a river on one side, and on the other by very thin windy roads, making it very difficult to attack.
Heres a close up of said windy road.

And a very blurry photo of the other side:

This is how the town looked back in its day…

The town was very beautiful, full of old fancy houses, the remains of a castle and houses that look like palaces…

There seem to be so many grand houses still in use in the czech republic, its great. Whether they are flats, or bars, or shops, or still houses… It really keeps the cities alive. Unlike in Porto as David pointed out where new buildings just get put up and the rest left to waste…

We had a really lovely day, we where all pretty tired from the big group though so we only managed to take so much in… What we all needed was a good nap on the train :)

Food, food, and more food!

It appears this blog is in danger of becoming more of a food blog than a travel blog.

Is that bad?

We have had a big group of 30 people staying and what with Tom’s bad leg they have needed lots of help in the kitchen. My god can czech people eat! It was a company doing team building exercises and attending confrences. And drinking. And eating. And more drinking.
They arrived on thursday to cottage pie for lunch, then they had cakes and cold meats for an afternoon snack, two hours later they where back for a full roast dinner, then they had a buffet at 10!!

Friday we where in charge of making their spanish tapas buffet. We did lots of prep in the morning, cutting potatoes and peeling onions, boiling eggs and making the croquette mix. Which is lucky because not everything went to plan.

They where meant to have a suckling pig around 5.30 for dinner and then the tapas as a night time buffet. The butcher arrived at 11am! The pig was done at 10pm!! Something about wind….

Anyway, so we made our tapas and sent them out early and all was saved!
I have no idea how many croquettes we made, thankfully we did them in the deep-fat fryer or it would have taken ageees. We made chicken ones which apparently where much better than the beef ones we did the other night!
I made some sneaky cheese ones for us which were so good!

David made 4 giant tortillas! We still have some leftover :)

Here he is doing the scary flipping part

We also made 20 egg tapas. Along side some homemade pizza for our dinner. One of the activities for the group was a pizza competition, so we made the most of the leftover toppings and the pizza oven being lit. Although we did have to finish them off in the conventional oven because the fire went out.
We took the eggs very seriously :)

And it paid off! Look at them! They all got finished.

They are pretty easy actually, just boiled eggs filled with a mixture of the scooped out yolk, tuna, mayo and spring onions.

So as if this wasn’t enough, Esther and I where asked to make the fortune cookies remember? We decided to put a twist on them, by writing dares instead of fortunes. Not bad ones, things like imitate a chicken, roll in the snow, kiss your neighbour, and so on.

We waited until they where all reasonably drunk and then had a great time watching them! I was pretty impressed with how enthusiastic they all where. Especially the guy who had to roll in the snow, he didn’t read his out loud to everyone like others had but led them all outside and suddenly threw himself down to roll around. We had just had a good snow fall too!

All in all it was a very fun day, we stayed around for a bit and had a couple of drinks but we where all pretty tired.

Previously we also made…

I have got into making bread.

It all started with our idea to make potato bread, which admittedly wasn’t the best bread in the world. Nothing like the stuff you get in Portugal which is almost like cake. We did use wholegrain flour though… And accidentally used a bit too much sugar…

Shortly after this experiment, Tom asked us to make rye and pumpkin bread. It was so good! I was left in charge of moulding it for the second rise and chose to attempt a 5 strand plait, it doesn’t actually look to different from a regular plait when its by itself, but the strands are much thinner. Next tome i want to try a 6 strand!

And then came the pizza dough for the group, shortly after I made another batch for us!

We have also made pasta! Ravioli to be precise. We made two fillings, a spice onion one and a spinach and cheese one. They are actually quite easy to make. With a pasta machine. But folding them was fun too!