How Elderflower Champagne led to Spontaneous Hospitality

Today was an interesting day.
One sort of trendy thing to do (especially out in the country where we are) is to make Elderflower Cordial or Elderflower Champagne. I tolerate but do not love the smell or taste of Elderflower anything, but since they grow on Elder trees (and there are several around here) and are free to harvest, I figured I would try making something. I decided on the champagne version because...well, I like champagne and so even if this has a low alcoholic content and tastes of elderflowers, I figure it is worth a shot! So I harvested some elderflowers the other day and followed this recipe...
But then I got to the bit where you need to filter all the flowers and lemons (and dead ants) out and pour the substance into large plastic bottles - the kind that soda, Coca-Cola, sparkling water are sold in. The thing is that we don't buy that stuff so we don't have any such bottles. Fortunately for us, though, the village hall recycling depot is only a few hundred meters down the road so I reckoned I would go dig through the plastic bottle dumpster. Needless to say, Rhodri was absolutely horrified that I would be 'dumpster diving' in our own neighborhood in broad daylight! But I figured if I put a baseball cap on and sunglasses, nobody would recognize me. Bentley and I walked up there and I had a reusable bag folded discreetly in my pocket to carry home the goods. Everything was going well and I found my bottles, but then a car pulled into the parking lot and saw me! Whoever was driving quickly turned around and left, but as I was walking back home I saw the same car looking very suspicious and parked outside the village bus shelter.
The man driving the car was wearing a football (soccer) team uniform and had a brightly colored plastic bag which he quickly put in the trunk of his car when he saw me approaching. I walked past, said hello (with my black bags of rescued plastic bottles from the dumpster), and kept walking. As I turned around I could see him putting the brightly colored plastic bag suspiciously into the bus shelter! Then the car sped away with his hazards still flashing (clearly distracted or paranoid).
I got home, told Rhodri about the episode, and he immediately persuaded me to go back to see what was in the bag! Soooo, I did this and that is when I met Roy, a Welshman (from south Wales) who has been walking around the world collecting statistics on "Spontaneous Hospitality". Here is Roy and his "push/pull" contraption:
Well, you can imagine the surprise on Rhodri's face when I brought home my new friend who had accepted my spontaneous offer of a cup of tea! Bentley was definitely not so sure about this wild-looking stranger wearing just a reflective vest, shorts, red socks and shoes with the toes cut out (for ventilation, he later explained - not because they didn't fit).
So, Roy spent an hour or so (more, I think) chatting about his findings which he has compiled over the past 10 years and keeps neatly written on the back of a cut out cereal box (durability, i suppose) inside a laminated map case. At the moment Roy is making his way from Cardiff to Israel, by way of Belgium and Turkey and whatever else is in between. Definitely an interesting fellow. Here he is getting ready to walk to Crowborough (about 9 miles away), photo taken around 2pm.
After we all said goodbye and good luck to Roy, Rhiannon and I went on to the next stage of the Elderflower Champagne recipe, which is when you pour the liquid gold into the sterilized (or at least mostly sterilized) plastic bottles.
Will keep you posted on the next chapter of the Elderflower champagne saga, but I don't think we'll hear any more from Roy.... It didn't sound like he has made it into the internet age yet....