Brighton Beach

This year's ARA conference came from the Grand Hotel, Brighton (a faded glory currently, but they are obviously working on it).

Initially not to impressed with Brighton (looks like a right dump on the walk down to the sea from the train station), but  the area round the Pavilion and the Lanes is much nicer.



The Welcome Reception was on the Pier - not quite as grand as Edinburgh last year - but hey, the wine was free!


Good conference on the whole - learnt some stuff - including some salsa steps on the final 'Latin Night'.  It was a late train back on the Friday though, and glad to be home . . .

Not Exactly Small Potatoes

Not a bad potato crop this year - including some absolute monsters (egg shown for scale):

Kept a quantity of the smaller / better specimens for ongoing use - and spent a happy few hours peeling, chopping, boiling, ricing and packaging the rest for the freezer. Should keep us in ready-to-use mash for a good 12 months at least!

Yes Peas!

Peas Please?  Time to report back on the success (or otherwise) of the 2012 pea strategy.

Tranche 1 did very nicely thank you and yielded a fair crop of peas - tranche 2 was less successful and the peas didn't really swell (but I'll blame that on the weather!).

All in all the strategy seemed to work fairly well, and I'll replicate next year, but might plant a bit more densely to hopefully increase the yield.