Port Eliot Festival 2012 -18-19 July Travel and Arrival

I'm very late posting about our wonderful time at the Port Eliot Festival, but want to keep a record of it so I can look back.

 I've been following DoveGreyReader's blog for well over 5 years now. The last few years I've been reading her descriptions of the Port Eliot Festival, and kind of wishing I could go, sit in her tent and listen and knit...

Earlier this year we decided to try doing some more exciting stuff following the house purchase and renovation, so we visited the Chelsea Flower Show, though I wasn't sure how well I'd manage in the wheelchair! And it worked OK once the heat of the very hot day had passed.

So when DoveGrey began talking about this year's Port Eliot Festival I suddenly thought 'Why don't we go?'! We looked at the Port Eliot website, and we looked at the camping, and before we knew it we'd got tickets and booked a Hotel Bell Tent to glamp in! First ever Festival for us, at age 63 and 66!

Wednesday morning at 11 am saw me limping round the garden collecting lavender, roses and thyme flowers to help decorate DoveGreyReader's tent, with a few purple dead nettles thrown in for good measure along with some Elephant Garlic flowers - very "fragrant" these!

 We left just before 4pm on Wednesday, travelled as far as Taunton and stayed overnight there as we were worried the journey was too long for me in one go. It clocked up as being 307.1 miles from outside our house to the Festival Car Park, so I think we made the right decision



Arrived at the Festival site on Thursday at ten to 12, were fairly well up the queue to get in when the gates opened at midday. Managed to find the disabled parking, and as the stewards didn't know where the Hotel Bell Tent encampment was John phoned Roberta (Bobbie), who was disabled liaison as well as covering a number of other tasks. She was a bit busy at the time, but arrived sooner than expected and drove me and the heaviest of our gear (thank you Bobbie!) down to Hotel Bell Tent, where the crew carried it all to our pitch. I felt a bit like an explorer following a line of porters! 



This was Hotel Bell Tent's first time at Port Eliot, and the land they were allocated was right next to the swamp ("this area prone to flooding"), which John immediately named the Matmos. It took John a further 4 trips to get all the rest of our stuff (!), but in the meantime I began to sort out our luggage in the cavernous tent, and make up the beds. We had two queen size air beds (already blown up thank goodness!) but had decided to take our own bedding plus a hot water bottle for nesh me!



After something of an explore, we were warned we would never get the wheelchair up the hill to the Walled Garden, we returned to tent, sat outside and surveyed the view while John sampled some Symonds Scrumpy Jack and I had a G&T.



Looking out of our tent we saw two rows of bell tents in front of us, then two huge oak trees, and an encampment of tipis beyond. To our left Port Eliot House, to our right more tents across an arm of The Matmos, behind us the main body of The Matmos, further still behind though out of our sight The River.

While I was sitting out in the wheelchair a family with two small boys came past our plot. One of the boys looked at me and kindly asked "Did you break your leg?" I replied "No, I didn't, I just ran out of energy." At which his Mum responded "So you have to eat up all your sausages and vegetables so you don't run out of energy."!



Our tent is just to the right of the bronze flag lit by the sun.

By this time I was pretty tired so got curled up in bed while John went off to find some food. He came back with a burger but I'd gone to sleep and he couldn't wake me - I was very tired after all the travelling. So he ate the burger himself, and told me the next day it was the best one he'd ever had in his life!

Then he went off to explore some more, found a possible way up to the Walled Garden that might be wheel chair possible ready for Friday, and managed to catch the Bayou Brothers in the Cabaret Tent. He even snagged a gold necklace from the beads they threw into the crowd.

What can I say? Long Time No See! Sometimes Life just keeps Happening! But here we are in our new home, been here a while now. I'm crazy gardening at the mo with more seedlings than I know what to do with in the kitchen, utility and porch... It's been so cold and wet it hasn't been nice enough to begin hardening most of the plants off, though today I've finally got some broad beans and Cherokee Trail of Tears beans out in the front garden.

The back garden is looking wonderful after all of the rain we've had recently, though the lawn really needs mowing again. Here's the beautiful azalea in full bloom.



I did plant some peas and beans in root trainers that we kept outside (well, we stuck them in the blow-away green house if it was going to be horribly cold at night when they were just sown). Took so long to come up that I thought they'd all died, which is why got so many seedlings in house now as chitted some on wet kitchen paper and only planted when they began to sprout. But here's the ones that were planted outside. Soon as John gets the bean frame built we'll plant the Trail of Tears beans and the (climbing) Telephone peas. The broad beans and early peas will have a space in the other side of the veg patch when I've finished weeding it and moved the Love in a Mist (Nigella).



We have a female woodpecker who has been visiting very often the last couple of weeks to feed on Coconut Treats (suet with insect flavour!). She is very greedy and stays feeding even when we're out on the patio - usually she is very shy and flies off if she sees us. Suspect she may have a brood of hungry youngsters, so is catching food for herself when she can.



Today, 12th May, is Florence Nightingales Birthday, and also International ME/CFS Awareness Day. Had my 20th MEversary back in March. I continue to be disabled, am very limited as to what I can do, but as I hope you see from the above I still enjoy my life. You can see my previous International ME/CFS Awareness Day posts over in the right side bar, right underneath the Blue Ribbon Logo: MY ME/CFS AWARENESS DAY POSTS.

Have been having a lot of pain in my right shin for about a year now, so went to see my GP to get it checked out back in November (I think). She suggested I might be Vitamin D deficient (she told me that deep muscle pain can be a problem if you're Vit D deficient) and a blood test proved she was right. I guess that given I am fairly housebound it's hardly surprising. So am now on supplements, though they haven't had much effect on the pain in my shin yet. I'm also working on getting out and sitting in the sun to expose my limbs... Well, currently it's only my arms as far to cold to expose legs! LOL! But I wonder how many other ME/CFS patients are Vit D deficient. Pain is just regarded as part of the illness, I wonder if some of that deep muscle pain might be down to Vit D deficiency. Recent guidelines suggest anyone over the age of 60 should supplement with Vit D anyway. And also it appears that vast numbers of the UK population are Vit D deficient due to the advice to avoid the sun and put on sunblock - it's all been a tad overdone!

I also have high "bad" cholesterol, so have had to change my diet considerably - we're eating lots of fish now, at least 2 portions of oily fish a week, plus other fish too. As usual, exercise is something that can help with high cholesterol, but it's not something I can do.

So that's a bit of an update on what's been happening round here.

I've been really enjoying a blog called Young House Love recently. Two young parents in Richmond, Virginia, doing up their home frugally. It's a lot of fun to read, and I commend their efforts to be as environmentally friendly as they can be as well. It's made me think that maybe I should retrospectively take a look at the rebuild and renovation of this house. While we haven't done the work ourselves, it will still be fun to look back on it in the future. And we certainly took enough photos to be able to write about it all.

This is what we started with.



And this is what the house looks like now.



Well, about a year ago! Front garden is a bit different as we got rid of the gruesome poisonous laurel bushes and have replaced them with some climbing roses. We just got some trellis to train them up (over?) and John treated the trellis the other week, he's left some interesting patterns on the front drive!



We wouldn't normally make such a mess, but the drive has to be replaced as soon as we can afford it as lots of the flag stones are broken from the skips being dumped on them during the extension and renovation.



We've been in for getting on for a year now. And still have to get lots of stuff over from our old home. Hopefully we'll be able to do more sorting now that the days are longer and at least the worst of the winter should be over by now! Though have to say a couple of days this week it's felt more like winter than spring.

The Liver Building as you never saw it before!

We didn't get to any of the celebrations in Liverpool recently, but this video is amazing!

Luminous Flux from the macula on Vimeo.

Hardest Hit

Today thousands of disabled people and carers are marching in London to campaign against benefits cuts. I wish I was there.

This video from The Guardian is from a demonstration outside Atos Orgin offices. The last testimony is particularly saddening.









Tomorrow is International ME/CFS Day. Florence Nightingale's birthday.

Esther Rantzen's daughter Emily cured (again)

Emily Wilcox has been cured again. I truly hope that she has found the answer to her ill health. But I think she has all down the line been too fast to try and persuade people that the latest thing she did was the cure for her.

I no longer have the energy to write a properly referenced post about this, but would like to send you to ChronicallyMe's blog post to read all about it.

But I would just like to make a personal comment - So much for the Lightning Process!