To set the scene, It’s day 3 of our South Downs Way (SDW) walk and we’re due to walk 28km.  Day 2 we’d walked 23km and by the 20km mark my shoulders and hips hurt so much from my rucksack I was almost in tears.  I couldn’t even tip my head back to drink from the water bottle (At this point I learned to ‘hinge from the hips’ instead).  I’d spent the last 2 km of the walk working out how to get home on my own and leave Mr R and Percy to do the hike without me.

So I was struggling a bit, but decided to start Day 3 with my big girl pants on and get on with it.  Obviously, it started raining heavily, it was the most hilly walk of the week and was the day I congratulated Mr R for instinctively knowing where to go, only to realise we’d taken a wrong turn…

Anyway, we decided to take a different approach to Day 2 and walk as far as we could before we stopped to eat.  This was in part because it was raining so hard that making and eating porridge was going to be hard, and part because we realised that we are far faster and focussed first thing, possibly because that’s when we’re both used to doing most of our usual running.

We were a few hours in, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  We had made the fantastic discovery that the only thing better than the perfectly ripe blackberries hiding in the hedgerows was perfectly ripe blackberries hiding in the hedgerows that have been kissed by the rain (seriously, if you see any in a rain storm or even a short shower, have try – they are delicious!).  We’d had a fair few though, and I’d started to day dream about other food.

And in the middle of nowhere, a couple of houses at the ends of long drives appeared in the distance .  And at the end of one of the long drives, I could make out a wooden table.  I decided to incorporate it into my day dream and said to Mr R:

‘See that table in the distance?  I’m daydreaming up the perfect vegetarian breakfast on it.  I’m thinking brioche bun with grilled halloumi, a little chilli jam and lambs lettuce.  What would you have?’

Mr R went for shakshouka, which I always find tricky to make and get the eggs just right, so I’m not terribly keen, but presumably I’d not cooked his daydream.

We giggled about the fact the only actual options we had was porridge, or our dehydrated pouches of lunch food as there were no stops near by the entire day.

But as we got closer, something weird happened.  On the far left of the table something came into view.  A plate covered with a glass dome.  As we reached it we could that see under the glass dome was one perfect, enormous flapjack.

Under the table was a plastic box which I opened .  Inside, there was a plate of flapjacks and a small sign saying they were £1 each, and to leave the money in the box.  We bought three.  And it turned out that the very best vegetarian breakfast either of us needed was a perfectly cooked, enormous flapjack that tasted better than any flapjack either of us had ever eaten.

And I think I might have magiced them 😉