It's time for some vintage driving, so today we're taking the Pick-Up out on to the open road before heading down to The 2018 Mount Edgcumbe Classic Car Show. It was a beautiful, hot sunny day, perfect for some motoring nostalgia browsing the hundreds of cars, meeting some great people and brewing up cups of tea in the shade of the truck ... We might even have won a little prize ... (Well, sort of ...)

The Mount Edgcumbe Classic Car Show is a charity event held at the estate in Cornwall. Money raised goes to Cornwall Hospice Care https://www.cornwallhospicecare.co.uk

With special thanks to the folks who appeared in our film and made our day what it was ...

Pete the Chevrolet Man and provider of some much needed shade ... (Paint! We Don't Need No Stinkin' Paint!)

The Owner of the massive American Dodge who was afraid of our rust but loaned me his state-of-the-art USB point to recharge my phone and without whom there would have been a lot less film footage ...

'The Twins' ... Nice to see you again ...

Bob, Ian & Jann for braving the heat and the crowds to come and say hello ...

Gordon The Judge for being so nice and making our day ...

Ian Webb and his very cool cars ... http://ianwebbspecialistcars.com

And all the other great folks we chatted to over the day ...

Music licensed by https://artlist.io 
'Dark Fields' by Giants & Pilgrims 

Filmed and edited entirely on Lisa's iPhone SE

It's midsummer and the fields and hedgerows are wearing their finery, so we thought we'd take advantage of nature's abundance, go foraging for elderflowers and attempt to make a cordial from our harvest ... This is the result ... 

Our recipe - (Recreate with caution ...)

Ingredients:

- A minimum of about 30 elderflower heads in full bloom. Try not to pick from a roadside or you may get a delicate hint of diesel.
- 3 lemons (for zest and juice).
- 1.5 litres of water.
- 1kg of sugar.

Method:

(Don't forget to shake out the flowers and check for little critters. We rescued and re-homed several tiny hitchhikers before we turned on the heat!)

1. Trim elderflowers heads from stalks into a large pan (1.5 litres) of cold water.
2. Add the zest of 2-3 lemons.
3. Bring to the boil and then simmer gently for a minimum of 30 minutes. (For a stronger infusion leave elderflowers to steep in the cooling water for 24 hours).
4. Add sugar and lemon juice and dissolve, bringing back to the boil.
5. Allow to cool.
6. Strain liquid through muslin or a clean tea towel into a pouring jug.
7. Transfer liquid to a sterilised bottle and fill to no more than 3/4 full.
8. Keep in fridge for a few weeks or freeze to keep for longer.
9. Enjoy your (hopefully!) delicious drink ... (Don't forget to dilute it with water, lemonade, tonic water, champagne etc etc etc)

... Can also be used as a dressing on fruit salads etc ...

All filmed and edited on Lisa's iPhone SE.

*Summer Girlfriend, a tongue-in-cheek phrase inspired by an episode of Black Books and oft quoted by us to each other ... 'I'm literally jumping for joy' etc ... Check it out. It's funny ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgbDJ...

Once again, we would like to extend fond gratitude to the boatyard for providing the ambient sounds of power tools in the background.

Music licensed by https://artlist.io
'Reminiscing' by Assaf Ayalon

Well, this is a new venture for us ... Making videos.
This is something we've been wanting to try for some time now, but we've been so busy all winter just trying to stay alive and get the boat all painted and repaired. She's looking wonderful now and the weather is glorious after the seemingly endless rain, wind, hail, snow and fog of the last few months. We're still super busy but taking a little more time now to kick back and enjoy the sunny days of May, and May is a glorious month down here in Cornwall. So with the new season, a new direction, and for us this means we will be making a lot more videos to accompany the blog.
Some of these we anticipate will be about our life here. Some will be about the truck and vintage driving, car shows, practical demos etc. Some will be about the things we make, particularly our upcycling. And some will be demos on the things we do in general, like this of ​Tim giving a demo on how he created the woodgrain effect on the steel wheelhouse of our boat 'May Queen'.
​We get asked a lot how the effect was done, so we hope this gives some insight into the whys and the hows, including the materials he used to achieve the end result. If you have any questions about anything we might have missed, leave a comment and we'll do our best to provide an answer. We hope you enjoy our first (proper!?) video, brought to you from the deck of our boat in the boatyard where 'May Queen' is moored in sunny (and a little windy!) south-east Cornwall ...