It’s story time! Yesterday I decided to go out for a walk and some foraging in Holders Wood in Birmingham. I’ve been watching a lot of Atomic Shrimp videos in which Mr. Shrimp goes out for walk to admire nature and find the occasional edible plant of fungus. It made me realize I am really missing being out in nature. I’m quite jealous of folks who have lovely parks or countryside on their doorstep, whereas I have the urban (and often, ugly) streets of central Birmingham. So during the corona-lockdown, I’ve been staying indoors a lot. But, I was being a wee bit silly, because by bicycle it’s only about 15 minutes to get to Canon Hill Park and Holders Wood. I also deem the corona-related risk to be quite low (it’s pretty easy to keep a distance from people).

Going for a walk is nice, but it usually helps me to stay motivated if I have a destination or some other goal as well. So I figured, I could forage stinging nettles and perhaps find some wild garlic as well. It’s a bit late in the season for both, but, it turns out the area is so full of nettles it’s not hard to find enough leaves that are still looking fresh and untouched by bugs. Walking out into a patch of nettles with a bag and gloves on, picking leaves, I felt like some passers-by could have easily been thinking “Oh that must be one of those vegans I keep hearing about”. But anyway, I managed to make a tasty soup today. I recommend doing it yourself as well (however, never eat something you picked unless you’re absolutely certain you’ve got the right plant).

My friend Elinore managed to find me off a location pin, which can’t have been easy because the area is quite a maze. We had a really lovely afternoon of walking, looking at plants and trying to guess what they were (obviously not picking any of those), and luckily not getting rained on but for one random cloud which passed over in about 10 seconds. There were so many blackberry brambles! But no ripe berries yet so we’ll have to come back for those later this year. We also found some raspberry plants which did have a few ripe berries on them; delicious! Elinore spotted a tree that was growing nuts and we wondered what it might be. I took a branch for identification at home and I’m pretty sure it’s a hazel! So perhaps we can return to confirm the ID and find hazelnuts later in the season.

I’m not used to walking lots and I wasn’t wearing particularly good shoes for it, so by the time we headed back my feet were really quite sore. That’s okay though, we were not in a hurry and at least we could walk on grass. When we got back to were I parked my bike, I found the front wheel to be strangely wobbly. Turned out, someone had removed the quick-release mechanism that was keeping the wheel attached to the axle! What the shit?! My guess is that they tried to steal my front wheel (a despicable move anyway), but only realized half-way through it was locked to the frame and a fence with a cable AND a D-lock. That idiotic stunt meant I had to walk home with extremely painful feet. On top of that, I will now have to take it to a shop and pay for it to get fixed (hoping that will not bee too complicated). What a shitty, shitty way to end the trip.

Anyway, I refuse to consider the day ruined , but it certainly does make me angry at the thief. Stealing bikes is a nasty business because it almost always leaves someone stranded without transportation. And it this case, for no gain! I don’t imagine those quick-release clips are worth much on their own. Anyway, I do think I doubly-deserved these nachos for dinner (with vegan cheese and crème fraîche, of course).