On the rocks

"I roamed the countryside searching for answers to things I did not understand"  ~Leonardo da Vinci

     I don't mind admitting it- times have changed. These days I like my leisure served up steaming on a plate or three (don't be shy with the mayo), followed by the swift gestation of a food baby. Either that, or complete with reciept, snug inside some crisp carrier that I can swing merrily down the high street.
I've always been partial to emptying my purse to fill my wardrobe and my stomach- trading money for treats never stops looking like a good deal. But as I glance back at the past few years unfurled behind me, I wonder- how can it be that I've grown, when I seem to have lost my roots?

     Those roots that scuffed my knees and boots, pinked my cheeks with gusts, rays and showers, shot my skin with sea salt and grass stains, drenched me, bruised me, froze me, tired me, tested me... but never anything less than transfixed me. The Great Outdoors- it always has me paddling, trekking and climbing back for more. Or at least it did...

     Cue the Donkey- to pull me out of bed, into my walking boots and back onto the straight and narrow of meandering open fields. Luckily for me, Donkey generally makes a living out of keeping it rural, and can usually be found hoofing up rockfaces rather than cantering down town. So, waking up to find a nearby cove stroll, my trusty yellow Micra and party-food posing as picnic, all swirling around in the big empty sun-brushed Saturday in front of us, we knew what to do. It went a little something like this:

Waterfalls: washing worries and essay tension away since...well, long before essays existed.

It's probably wrong that this makes me want a waterfall-chilled Diet Coke...

Unadulterated Vitamin D

The blue beyond.

Nice boots them shoes...

 Jigsaw for giants.

Picnic spot... spotted.

Riverside rock basking... I'll get up in five minutes...

...or maybe in ten...

Malham Cove: sunbathers-eye-view

Nature keeps things trendy with a spot of colour-blocking

"Every wall is a door" ~Ralph Waldo (...or a stile...)

Grass criss crossed

In Malham we (National) Trust

And it's home time...

...but not for the last time. Roaming the green stuff with Donkey has planted my feet back on the ground, and while they may soon find themselves back to toppling in vodka-stung stilettos, or patiently padding round sale rails, they've had a walk to remember. Because while times might have changed, mud on my hands and grass between my toes has always made me happy. I'd just forgotten how much.

Out into nothing

An odd thing struck me at, ooh, about 13,500 feet above Seville. As a self-confessed pudding enthusiast, I wish I could say that I was inspired at this point, by the dusty curvature whistling towards my trainers, to bake some kind of spherical, earthen Heston Blumenthal creation. Or perhaps the correct food blogger response (to the initially feared, but actually giggle-fit-inducing, sky-plummetting situation i found myself in) would be to empathise with the fateful sinking of souffles everywhere. Amongst the ruffling silence and gravity getting all carried away, my mind should have been gloriously awash with the smells and flavours of dinner-times past, flashing before my eyes....
THUD.

Nope. Somehow, all I wanted was 1 x can Diet Coke, fresh from the shop fridge, with all those beads of condensation on the outside, as if it had been making such a (successful) effort to be delicious it had actually begun to perspire. Such drinks might be tins of effervescent murk, chemical-ridden enough to polish a coin to a sheen, but if anyone thinks they can tell me Coca Cola don't know how to market themselves, then I would like to bloody hear it.

'Cafe Cloud 9' -Vendors of the glory drink