Life on the road
With the heatwave, we thought we take the new campervan on the road and live the life of free spirits.
We love Rosscarbery so it was the most natural choice for our first outing. En route, we always stop in SuperValu in Clonakilty (one of the best supermarkets in my humble opinion) to stock up on essentials.
Although we were talking about this trip for the entire week, we were still badly organised (I am creating a checklist for future adventures) and were short a few things. Thanks to our visit to Clonakilty we had beautiful cheese and bread and excellent butter.
It was our first time trying out Gloun Cross milk and what a revelation it has been. The milk is thicker than the watery stuff you might be used to and the flavour is like I remember milk from my childhood before the best of the milk was removed. Although pasteurised, Gloun Cross milk is not homogenised which means that you might get a bit of cream on top.
Milk is homogenised to prevent the separation from milk and cream by emulsifying the fat in the milk which makes shop-bought milk normally unsuitable for cheese production.
But back to our camping trip; my morning tea tasted delicious with the milk and as I love a cold glass of milk now and then, the milk didn’t last long. Nothing is more refreshing than a glass of chilled milk.
Mr T went foraging for mussels and samphire and both were cooked in seawater, making it a perfect lunch paired with freshly baked bread from Clonakilty. I have to admit, if Mr T didn’t find the mussels, lunch would have been a different affair so we really need to make a plan for our next adventure.
Cheese and crackers are a must (I got slightly addicted to Roblochon cheese but we also had Durrus and Wicklow Blue in our cooler box), a good bottle of wine – in our case it was a lovely bottle of Les Fréres Bastards Rosé wine, thankfully with screwcap as I also forgot a corkscrew (you see I really need to make a checklist).
This is perfect for an evening snack when you watch the sun going down and the tide coming in. A few salads, sausage rolls and snacks are a must throughout the day if you get the munchies.
We didn’t have a small transportable BBQ (although I have seen one) and I don’t like the disposable ones, so we kept it low key.
But being the glutton that I am, I am looking for tastier options. Rather than coleslaw, I might prepare a fragrant couscous with some buffalo feta from Macroom, some cheese filled arancini (risotto balls) and other tasty snacks are on my list.
And thinking of sausage rolls, I tasted some beautiful homemade sausage rolls by a local lady whose name I don’t even know. She added black pudding and tomato relish to the mix and the result was divine. I might just steal her idea for next time.
The secret to a great sausage roll is the sausage meat and I think the best comes from Avril Allshire in Rosscarbery from her Caherbeg farm. I better get started with the prep work so that we can head out, living the life of the free spirits once more!