30 vegetables a week

I've seen and heard a lot recently about aiming to eat not just five portions of fruit and veg a day but thirty different ones each week.  It's easy to understand why that would be good for us - different vitamins and minerals, lots of fibre, etc etc; what I wondered was exactly how difficult it was because it actually seemed easy.

Now, I eat a lot of vegetables anyway - salads for lunch, meals filled with allotment produce for dinner - but a closer look at what I was eating made me realise I'm probably repeating the same meals and/or eating the same vegetables in a different way eg peppers and tomatoes in lunch-time salad, peppers and tomatoes with evening pasta or in chilli. This obviously isn't the way to get thirty different varieties a week.

So, I decided to keep track of my meals for a week, and see how things went, starting off enthusiastically with fairly usual breakfast for this time of year with blackberries and strawberries,




 

After a couple of days I realised that, yes, I was eating lots of fruit and veg by volume but a limited range. I needed to make some additions - beans, beetroot and corn to my lunchtime salads, courgettes, peas, and different beans to dinners.  I also decided I should supplement my apples an easy-peelers with a greater rage of fruit - grapes, peaches and melons.

By the end of the week, I'd a list of 27 fruits and veg, which I didn't think was too bad. When I shared my efforts on social media people were quick to let me know that I could also include rice, potatoes, grains from bread and breakfast cereals - so I squeezed over the 30 mark.

Dinners had proved to be the hardest part as the weather turned warmer and I didn't feel like cooking every evening. I wonder if they might prove easier in autumn or winter when I could add cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli or pumpkins to meals. With that in mind I've decided to repeat the experiment, maybe once each season, to see when is the hardest time of year to make that magical 30 mark.

Middleton Top

Middleton Top engine house sits at the higher end of the railway incline that starts far below at High Peak Junction on the Cromford canal. There's a small visitor centre selling snacks and ice creams, a bike hire centre,  picnic area, and of course the engine house looking dark and mysterious in this rural setting.

If you're interested in the technology of the Industrial Revolution the winding engine can be found running on certain weekends - it doesn't pull up or lower trains down the incline these days though. If you're not interested, it's a lovely spot for views looking south towards Derby or for walks and cycle rides along the old railway.

The track is now lined with wild flowers - a far cry from the days when actually in use.

 

Hopton Rose Garden

July is the second time in the year that the gardens at Hopton Hall open to the public; the first is in February for snowdrops, this occasion for the magnificent roses.

Set on a south-facing slope, the garden acts as a suntrap which along with its Italianate styling gives the impression of being somewhere warmer than the Peak District. 

Not all the roses are in full bloom at once, so mid-month is the best way to catch most of them, though a second visit would be worthwhile.

I wouldn't say I'm come late to loving roses but a garden like this makes me realise how much was missing from my parents' garden of formal beds of roses underplanted with lobelia and alysum.

I don't have space to add this many roses to my garden but I'd love to.

 

Sandringham Gardens

Last but not least on our Norfolk trip was Sandringham, country retreat of the Royal Family. Visitors are allowed in the house, gardens, and parkland, but our priority was the gardens. 

They cover 60 acres and there's a little puzzle over which area to investigate first. Instead of heading directly towards the house, we first headed along a woodland walk which more or less follows the perimeter while affording glimpses of the house.

I'd particularly wanted to see these huge gates as among my parents photo collection is one taken from the opposite angle, outside the gardens; presumably the nearest the public could approach in the 1950s.  

Close by the house are the cottage-style flower beds, designed by Geoffrey Jellicoe to give an open view but with privacy in the side-gardens.

The Topiary garden is a new creation, again mixing a formal framework with looser mixed planting within.

Heading round the house, we passed one of the ornamental lakes with a summer house sitting above a waterfall. This would have been a lovely place to have spent the whole day but this was the last day of out holiday and we had to get home.