ladyofastolat | Recent Entries

After dithering for a while, we decided on North Wales for our now-traditional late June holiday, since you can never go wrong with castles and mountains. We wanted to go to a slightly different area than last time, when we stayed mere inches from the Menai Bridge, and - after much more dithering - ended up settling on Criccieth, lured there by a Balcony With A View.

( Castles, mountains, level crossings and wind )

We were on holiday in North Wales the week before last - a week in Criccieth, followed by two days on the borders on the way home. I'll write up the rest of the week one day, but I have so many pictures of the various comical creatures of Plas Newydd that I thought I'd put them in a separate post.

( Comical creature carvings )

Agh. Once again, I fail dismally in my "I'll try to be better about posting and reading" resolution. I never even finished writing up our Cotswold Way holiday, and here we are, returned from another trip. I'm still writing it up, though. When in the Lake District, we were trying to remember details of our previous holiday there in 2017, and my then write-up caused us much amusement and cries of, "oh yes, I remember that!" Would I remember a single thing in life if I didn't write it, I wonder? (And how much has been forgotten over the last few years, when I've been so bad at doing so.)

Oh well... Last October, we had a weekend in Grasmere for a family gathering, which reminded me that the Lake District has been my Best Place Ever since I was 8, and obsessed with Swallows and Amazons. So we duly booked a week in Grasmere, staying just a few hundred yards from where we'd stayed in October.

( Lake District: an enormous post with pictures )

Part one was here

( And now for part two... )

Oh dear. I've really not done well with that whole "let's get back to reading and posting things here" resolution of two months ago. So here I am, returning to my usual habit of coming here only when I want to post another immensely long post-holiday write-up. Maybe I'll do better from now on...

Anyway... We needed to be in Bradford-on-Avon last Saturday for a day of dance, and didn't fancy doing it as a day trip, so decided to spend a week walking there from the north Cotswolds. Well, the thought process wasn't quite as simple as that, but... well, that's really what it boiled down to.

( Following the acorn )

For a while now, Facebook has been giving me adverts for a Walking to Mordor virtual challenge, and I've been very tempted, but put off by the ridiculously high price. However, half way through January, I decided to give it a go. Ever since I finished my Walking All The Paths project a couple of years ago, I've done rather less walking than I used to do (although still quite a lot) and I was keen to encourage myself to do more. I'm very, VERY motivated by challenges like this.

(TOO motivated, really. There was that time when I resolved to walk 1000 miles in a year. Lazily refusing to spend even two seconds working out the actual monthly average, I thought, "that's about 100 a month," which quickly became "I have to do at least 100 miles every month, or I have Failed," which quickly became, "I need to get to 100 miles as early as possible in the month, so I reassure myself that I won't fail," and quickly saw me doggedly striding around Cowes at all hours, come hell or high water, determined to get my miles in. I'd reached 1000 miles by early July, if I remember correctly.)

Anyway... Justifying it by the fact that we always do Dry January and February, so were spending less, I bought all five challenges for the price of 4. (The Shire to Mordor is broken up into 5 stages, each one sold separately.) I'm now nearing Rivendell.

It is indeed ridiculously expensive, and I'm not that sure what you get with the money. You get an app, but it doesn't live track your walking; that has to be entered manually, or else by synching with other exercise apps. I'd kind of hoped that I'd be out walking and my phone would ping me to point out that I'd just escaped being eaten by a murderous willow tree, or something, but the synching only happens at the end of a walk. You can engage with a community, but I don't want to do that. Every now and then you get "postcards," but they're just stills from the movie, with a new sentences of description. (The same company does loads of real-world virtual challenges, too - Land's End to John o'Groats etc. - so I guess postcards from the real world places you were "visiting" would be more interesting.)

But, even so, I am enjoying it a lot, and it's definitely getting me out walking a lot more. I reached Bree (140 miles or so) and got my first medal, then moved on to Challenge 2: Bree to the Doors of Moria. This is when it got odd. Since I was walking, it put me in "story mode" - 90 miles, in which you walk a few miles on either side of a key location, then teleport a hundred miles on to walk a few more. This was not at all in the spirit of "walking to Mordor," so I switched to "long mode (recommended for cyclists)" and was promptly hit with a 680 mile challenge instead. Cue a LOT of extra walking. I've started doing a mile before work and a mile straight after, as well as the mile at lunch I was already doing, but I think that's quite a good thing for me, really. And I guess it means I'm getting more of my money's worth, since the whole thing will take a lot longer.

The medals are undoubtedly lovely, though. The first one is large and shaped like a hobbit hole surrounded by green scenery. On the other side is a metal envelope with a hinged metal flap, beneath which is a little hidey-hole that contains a real One Ring. :-D

And, yes, if you're wondering if I've learnt the lessons of my Walk 1000 Mile obsessive behaviour, and have learnt how to be rather more measured this time... Of course I haven't! "Got to get that Ring a little closer to Mordor," I say as I head off into torrential rain at lunch, determined to get that mile in OR ELSE. (Although, to be fair, I'd planned to walk a quick 2 mile circuit round the block this morning, before heading off to an afternoon of dancing (we're walking there and back - 5.5 miles each way) but am writing this instead, so perhaps there's hope for me yet.

It's just a shame that the countryside is full of unmitigated squelch and all the interesting paths have fallen into the sea over the winter. I'm getting rather fed up of cycle paths, old railways and pavements.

I've not been here for months. I dimly planned to rectify this with a New Year's Resolution, but forgot or failed to. So I'll just have to pretend it's 1751 and we're still starting the year on March 25th, in which case, go me!, I'm two days early - gold star, pat on the back, and so on.

Anyway... Not coming here is Bad, because not only does it mean I don't get to read any of the interesting things other people post, it always means that in years to come, my life will be a blank to me. I'm forever having to check back on my old LJ to remind myself what on earth we did on past holidays etc.

Oh well. I'm not going to attempt a retrospective to catch up on what I've missed. But I will post a few of those things that have prompted me to think, "I should do a post about that," before going on to... not. (Honestly, don't get your hopes up. I'm talking items of supreme lack of consequence, here.)

So without further ado, here is the inconsequential (but pleasing) Saga Of The Steve Who Was Promised.

( The Steve Who Was Promised )

One day I will post something that isn't a belated holiday write-up, but today is not that day. Once again, there will be far too many words and pictures, and a good few comical lions. There is also a guest appearance by my other favourite art thing: the drunken eagle.

So. Four weeks ago, we had a week in Derbyshire, staying in Ashford in the Water. My grandma lived in Derby throughout my childhood, and my mum is a very proud Derby... um... Derbyite? Derbist? ("The best county IN THE WORLD!"), so I had many childhood excursions to the southern reaches of the Peak District. However, I have to admit that our main reason for choosing Derbyshire wasn't nostalgia, but convenience. We'd vaguely intended to go to Suffolk, but Pellinor had a conference in Birmingham on the last Friday in September, so it made sense to choose somewhere for which Birmingham was en route.

( Derbyshire dales, rain, mines and, naturally, comical lions )

A few weeks ago, we had a long weekend in Cambridge for our wedding anniversary, going there by way of Hatfield House and returning via Audley End. Typically, most of my pictures ended up being comical lions.

( Comical lions, grumpy angels, a heron, a Wheel of Doom, and some towers )

The week before last, we walked Hadrian's Wall. This being a National Trail, it meant following the sign of the acorn. Within a few hours, we started calling this "the unicorn," accidentally at first, but soon deliberately. "Hadrian's Wall Path" became "Hadrian's warpath," so here is an account, with pictures, of our adventures following the warpath of the unicorn.

( The warpath of the unicorn: a truly enormous account )

The weekend before last, we had a day trip to Chichester for a Day of Dance. We'd intended to go by train from Southampton, but then they announced a train strike. Pellinor keeps a car on the mainland, so the choices were, A, drive there and back, with him having No Beer! at a Morris event! :-O B, go with the rest of the side on an epic journey involving several buses and a hovercraft. Or, C, stay over in Chichester. Since Pellinor was due to go LARPing not far from Portsmouth on the Sunday, we went with option C.

( Dancing in Chichester )

Then, on Sunday, Pellinor headed off LARPing, detouring briefly to drop me at Portchester Castle, which I'd indentified as a good starting point for my planned walk back to Southampton.

( Walking from Portchester to Southampton )

Yesterday I posted 8 months late about a short holiday we had in Jersey last October. By that standard, today's post is barely late at all, since it's about a holiday we had in early May, in the Wye Valley.

Yes, early May. That time when it rained virtually every day - remember the Coronation? - before turning to non-stop sun the day after we came home.

( Dodging rain showers in the Wye Valley: an overlong account, with pictures )

Dearie me. I've not posted for nearly a year. I keep meaning to, but you know how it is. The longer you leave a thing, the more daunting it gets to start. I've not been reading things, either, so apologies if I've missed big things. I will attempt to do better from now on.

But, first, I'll start with winding the clock back to last October, when we had a few days on Jersey. (We had a wonderful week on the Isle of Man in June, so last year's theme was clearly off-shore tax havens. As far as Vodafone is concerned, they're All The Same. "Welcome to Guernsey!" it said when we arrived on the Isle of Man. Throughout our four days on Jersey, it sent us a constant barrage of messages welcoming us to Jersey, Guernsey or France, sometimes all three within 5 minutes. But, disappointingly, not to the Isle of Man this time.)

ANYWAY... I know it seems silly to post about a holiday 8 months after it happened, but it's been demonstrated several times lately that I completely forget everything about a holiday unless I've got a blog post to refer back to, so for my own future reference, if nothing else, here goes:

( A few days on Jersey )

( Mountains, ritual sheepfolds, seals and photobombing insects )

Days 2, 3 and 4 of our Isle of Man walking adventure, in which we encounter many, many hills, get attacked by the Black Dog, meet a water bull and a buggane, see a windswept wedding, and did I mention the hills?

( Hills, hills and monsters )

Back in the winter of 2019, we were discussing holidays and said that we fancied walking Hadrian's Wall. However, the trouble with that is that we would need to book accommodation months in advance - we're not prepared to do the full on "carrying your tent on your back and camping in the wild" option - which would mean that you're then committed to each day's walk, no matter what the weather.

Then I was flicking through a colleague's Country Walking magazine and saw an advertising feature on the Raad ny Foillan, the Isle of Man coastal path. It had never occurred to me to go to the Isle of Man before, but it looked really good, and since it's a circular walk around an island, it could easily be done by staying in a central location and travelling back by bus every day. It occurred to us that this could be a very good test run for Hadrian's Wall, but one with a get-out clause, in that we didn't HAVE to walk every day, if weather and/or sore feet intervened. We went from initial idea to booking it within just a few days - very much an impulse holiday.

As I said, this was back in the winter of 2019. Then 2020 happened, followed by 2021, so our "impulse holiday" ended up being the holiday of Damocles, constantly there, constantly being postponed, constantly looming over us with its possible Covid-related complications. As the much-postponed date drew nearer, I really doubted we'd ever get there. We were flying there by Easyjet, who were cancelled planes all over the place. We were due to take the train to Gatwick, travelling on a train strike day. Several colleagues got Covid the week before the holiday. But we got there in the end. I almost kissed the ground in relief!

( Days one and two of a walking holiday on the Isle of Man )

We had a day trip to Winchester on the first day of the long Jubilee weekend. Our first trip was to the museum where, it being half term, activities were happening. As we approached, a family with a small child were talking to the Roman soldier who was stationed outside. As we queued, the small girl charged in, bypassed the short queue, and declaimed in a VERY loud voice, "we're coming in! We're going upstairs to make a crown and do some lovely activities." She repeated this many, many times - it was always "some lovely activities" - and earnestly told the staff that these "lovely activities" were upstairs. "And then we're buying a wooden sword," she said, many, many times. Pellinor and I were highly amused, and when our turn came to be served, we let her family go first, saying that we couldn't be so cruel as to delay by even a minute her "lovely activities." All was all in her delivery, really. We both found the whole thing hilarious.

Later, we were having lunch at a very good pizza place just opposite the museum, and saw her come out, complete with crown and wooden sword. The Roman soldier got attacked. (Mind you, I think he deserved it. We'd just witnessed him taking advantage of a quiet moment to write "romanes eunt domus" on the ground, clearly trying to frame the People's Front of Venta Bulgarum.)

Anyway, after lunch we went to the cathedral, which offered up no comical lions, but a very comical unicorn and many other comic delights.

( The comical creatures of Winchester )

Here is the last installment of our North Devon holiday. I never got round to writing up the holiday we had last summer, which is a shame, since my memory is dreadful, and unless I make a written record of what I've, I forget all about it. I've frequently had to refer back to my old holiday write-ups to remind myself of where on earth we went and what on earth we did when we got there.

Anyway. Here goes:

( North Devon: the final part, with a short guest appearance by Cornwall. )

Resuming from where I left off, with us at the bee place...

( Sea, sunsets and scary sheep )

We had a week in North Devon the week before last. We broke the journey en route with a night in Tiverton, with visits to a Victorian Gothic pile and a bee farm.

( Gothic fancies and the bees )

I very much enjoyed this series by Marie Brennan. Set in a Victorian style era, it is the memoirs of Lady Trent, a much-respected naturalist, looking back on the discoveries she made in their younger years, during the course of adventure-filled journeys to far-flung corners of the earth. The twist? The subject of all her scientific enquiry is dragons - but not magical dragons. This is a world in which dragons are just one more variety of wildlife, little different from tigers or wolves or bears. Her interest in them is to understand them For Science. The series is classed as fantasy, but it reads as a historical novel, just one set in a world that never was.

The setting is not an AU version of our world. The geography is different, with different country names, different leaders, different histories and different religions. However, most of the places visited have clear parallels in our world, as reflected in the language, names and social structure. "Ah, that's France. That's China. That's Indonesia," you can say, as different places are mentioned or visited. The main character's homeland very clearly equates to England in early Victorian times. Just like real Victorian England, it's a society dominated by rich men. Lady Trent is a pioneer, and has to fight sexism every step of the way.

The author has a background in anthopology and archaeology, and it very much shows. Most of Lady Trent's journeys involve stays with people whose social structures and values are very different from what she's used to, in interesting ways. Archaeology and ancient language is a strong thread running through the books, with some scenes carrying a strong Indiana Jones vibe - but an Indiana Jones who actually adheres to archaeological good practice. There's some romance, too, and some humour, and a solid cast of supporting characters who grow and change along with Lady Trent over the 20 or so years covered by the series.

I enjoyed it all very much, so much so that I immediately went back and read it all over again.

As well as spotting comical lions, last weekend we made Bronze Age swords!

But before that, we revisted the Weald and Downland open air museum, which was basking in glorious weather. The main attraction of the place is the many dozens of historic domestic buildings which have been carefully demolished and carefully reassembled on the site, minus all the modern additions that they had acquired over the years. Confronted with all this history, what did I photograph? Ducks and a fence.

( Duck bottoms and a wiggly fence )

And then, on Sunday, we made swords! This was an all-day workshop at Butser Ancient Farm, done with a backdrop of battling Anglo-Saxon re-enactors and a half-built wicker man. (I meant to photograph the massive nestbox on a prominent dead (or dead-looking) tree overlooking the farm, but forgot. It truly was an enormous nestbox, large enough for a small dragon. Apparently it was there for owls, but no owls had bought it yet.)

Anyway... There were just two of us on the workshop, and we both worked together to make one sword, then another. A lot of the time was spent making the mould out of sand - piling it in, pressing it down, hammering it down, putting in more sand, hammering it down again, rinse and repeat. Then we made bronze out of copper wire and old tin tankard fragments, poured it into the mould... and within less than a minute, there was a sword, solid and ready to pick up with pliers and plunge into a vat of water. Yay!

But now comes to hard part: polishing it. We started the job on site, filing away the thin edges where the metal had seeped out beyond the edges of the mould. My sword didn't have much of this, but Pellinor's had a lot. But it will be hours and hours of hard work sanding and scrubbing and buffing before they're good shiny bronze. I've done odd hours here and there. The sword's getting quite a bit smoother, but my fingers seem to be, too, since the fingerprint recognition on my phone has stopped reliably recognising my fingerprint. (Time to rob a bank, perhaps?)

( Sword pictures )

And, finally... while we were sitting on top of Portsdown Hill near Fort Nelson (a lovely view of Portsmouth; I could have sat there for hours just looking out at the vista below us - a view that was too big for a photograph to do justice to it)... Anyway... we were talking about comical lions, and Pellinor, whose live roleplaying character (one of them, anyway) has a winged lion as a badge, said it would be nice to have a winged lion on his helmet. "But I don't know if it would be possible..."

Challenge accepted.

( A winged lion sitting on a hat )

We had a few days on the mainland last weekend, as Part 2 of Pellinor's 50th birthday celebration. I'll post about the rest of the weekend later / tomorrow (we made swords! Actual swords!) but as is now traditional, here are the Comical Lions in a post of their own.*

* Other comical animals are available.

( The Comical Lions of Fort Nelson )

At Christmas, my parents had rediscovered some school work books from my first couple of years at infant school. I was particularly amused by my "book on travel," which started unsurprisingly with pictures of transport, lists of travel methods, drawings of road signs and short accounts of walks around the local area.

And then suddenly, with no explanation, is this:

It MUST be Wordsworth, surely. There's the Lake District scene in the background. There's the daffodil. There's the... wellies? Why is Wordsworth suddenly gatecrashing a project on modes of transport? The pages on either side are no help, since they're both about pirates. To be honest, I'm not really sure what the pirates are doing there, either, but at least they hang out on ships, so might presumably have been introduced by a teacher in a ship-themed lesson.

I was clearly enamoured of these pirates, since they do rather take over the rest of the project, elbowing their way into odd spaces in between dull pictures of road signs. The piratical stories do leave something to be desired, though. Just before Wordsworth, we get this: "Once upon a time there were some pirates they kept on fighting with some people." Afterwards we get "Once upon a time there was a red pirate he was very poor for he did not have very much money so he looked very thoroughly and saw a cave."

The project ends on this note: "Once upon a time there was some bad pirates he had lots of money and gold he stoal Mr Catley's car he was cross he hit the pirates croo he was mad he did not like it at all." (I don't know who Mr Catley was. Not my teacher, anyway.)

( A few more pictures )

It was Pellinor's 50th birthday on Thursday, so we took two days off to make a 4 day weekend of intermittent celebration.

On the birthday itself, I recreated a much-talked-about breakfast we had when on holiday in Sorrento. (Or, rather, a breakfast he had; I spurned it.) The extensive breakfast buffet included leftover chocolate puddings from the night before, and glasses of Prosecco. All around the dining room - almost entirely inhabited by older British couples - the same conversation was being repeated. Man comes back from buffet looking smug, clutching chocolate mousse and a glass of Prosecco. Wife says "you can't have THAT for breakfast!" Man, smug and beaming, says "Watch me!" and digs in. He's often spoken gleefully about it, so his birthday breakfast was chocolate mousse, Prosecco and a garish rainbow cupcake. (I had a hot cross bun.)

For dinner, his large family had clubbed together and booked us into a very nice local restaurant. It was the time I'd eaten out in a restaurant since pre-Covid, so I was rather nervous, but it was very nice indeed: REALLY good food, and they'd only arranged for a small cluster of birthday balloons, rather than anything too embarrassing.

Our original birthday plan had been to have a large lunch, eating outside, at the Garlic Farm, but the weather forecast for the day itself didn't really lend itself to this plan. Then, of course, the sisters got in touch and the evening booking was made, and plans changed. So we headed there yesterday instead, and didn't eat outside, anyway, since the fear barrier about eating inside had been broken through. We had their garlic mezze, and very nice it was, too: all the garlic, all the time, in all the ways.

Today we're having an archery lesson, then going to a National Trust garden. We went there last year on his birthday, too - it snowed a little! - and did a great interactive nature trail designed for children. It's not scheduled to start until tomorrow this year, but we're hoping they might have started early. It was great fun! We had to count the number of shades of green in the garden, and wobble across the lawn like a newborn lamb. We might just do it anyway, even if the trail isn't in place.

( Some more experiments with new camera )

So I REALLY didn't do well, when, inspired by reading my ancient diaries, I said I'd try to post a lot more often. Then, of course, the longer I left it, the more daunting a prospect it seemed to resume things. (Not that I've really done anything noteworthy for ages, except for slaying multifarious nefarious monsters at the command of Odin himself, and building a Viking metropolis. Which, granted, would be pretty impressive, had it been remotely real. ("You have played Valheim for 393 hours. Would you recommend it?" Steam rather amusingly asked me the other day.)

So, anyway (and, as I've said before, I should really stop starting sentence with "so," but today is not that day), rather than bother trying to catch up (and, really, the last three months can basically be summed up by "Valheim") I'll just launch straight in.

I got a new camera for my birthday. This has actually added rather to the daunt of posting, because the camera has been sitting there staring at me, saying, "hello! I'm new and complicated! You can do such things with me, what they are you know not, but before that you have to learn how to use me and I am HARD!" Then there was that knowledge that even if I DID work out how to take a picture with it, I wanted to find a non-LJ alternative for photo posting, and that, too, was full of daunt.

But last weekend ("But." Probably not much better than "so." Oh well.) Pellinor went off to the mainland to hit people over the head with swords, so I girded up my lions (comical ones, naturally), grabbed the camera, and went up a Down.

( Up a Down with a new camera )

On Sunday we decided to have a day trip to Stonehenge. Our departure was somewhat rushed, since Pellinor's alarm malfunctioned (its user failed, something sadly not covered by the guarantee) and - very unusually - I didn't wake up early. "It's 8 o'clock!" I exclaimed in alarm. "We need to leave at 8.30!" Since the start of the pandemic, ferries have been considerably less frequent, so deciding to go for a later ferry wasn't a desirable option, but we made it without too much trauma.

The weather and scenery was lovely, and traffic was very light. After a cup of tea, we headed to the shiny new(ish) visitor centre, where our chief learning point came from watching the sign language version of various videos, trying to work out which signs went with which words. We worked out "druid" and "Stonehenge" - not, admittedly, the most useful two words to have in your repertoire should one need to urgently communicate in signs, but better than nothing.

Then we walked towards the stones, where we immediately realised that it was FREEZING. I guess technically it wasn't that cold, but there was a bitter wind roaring across the plain, and it's been so mild lately that we hadn't dressed for an icy blast. We shivered our way around the stones, paused on a bench to eat our sandwiches with ice-lashed hands, then set out to walk around the surrounding landscape.

Annoyingly, it turned out that I hadn't charged my camera battery, so all I had was my phone. My camera's getting old and clunky, and I'd sometimes wondered if I even needed to replace it, given that phone camera are getting so much better. But my phone - although useful for snapping pictures of people - turned out to be useless in the extreme when it came to photographing stones. Not that it stopped me from trying.

( Rubbish pictures of Stonehenge and environs )

Between the ages of 12 and 18, I kept a very detailed diary. It mostly fell by the wayside when I went to university, although I did manage occasional bursts of activity here and there. Over the last few weeks, I've reread the entire lot of it - all 55 A5 exercise books, filled with very small writing and no paragraph breaks. It wasn't that embarrassing an enterprise, since I kept it completely free of teenage angst. I gushed about things I loved - mountains, Orion, Tolkien, history, Star Trek etc - but drew a discreet veil over anything negative or embarrassing.

But that's not really the point. The point is that I have forgotten SO MUCH! Obviously, I wouldn't expect to remember that what I did in Maths on a particular day in 1984, but I'd completely forgotten people who I chatted to in school every day, or enormous school-related dramas that dominated weeks, TV series I loved, or clubs and societies I was a member of. If I hadn't written it down, it would be lost forever. Which is arguably no loss at all, really, but it's nice to be reminded.

LJ served that same purpose for years, and I still frequently refer back to it to remind myself of things we did on various holidays, and so on. But for the last few years - ever since I started using my phone more and more for consuming things on the internet - I've written hardly anything. So I hereby resolve to write more. I've no idea if I'll be able to keep this resolution, but I can but try.

Rather than starting with anything daunting, like catching up on the last few months, I will instead start with the very scenic walk I did today. I've got the whole week off, using up some spare leave before the end of the year, and today the weather couldn't have been better. So have some autumn leaves, plus a random headless cow.

( Pics )

Three years ago, I made some posts about a project I was starting: to walk every single official Right of Way on the Isle of Wight (footpaths and bridlepaths). I haven't mentioned it here for over two years (yes, let's be honest: I haven't mentioned much of anything) but I was still working at it in the background, as and when lockdowns and winter squelch allows.

I have now finished! Three years and two months since I started, I have now walked every single official Right of Way on the island, barring those that are still shown on the map but have actually fallen into the sea, or (in one case) been under water since 1954. (Why is that one still on the map?) I'd have finished it a little earlier without lockdowns, I expect, but would still probably have paused it every winter, when I prefer to walk high chalk downlands or paved cycle paths.

It's certainly brought me to some lovely new places, ones which I will try to incorporate into my repertoire of walks. After every walk I shaded in every path I'd done on my OS map, but it only occurred to me very near the end that I should have used different colours, to distinguish between lovely paths I wanted to walk again, and Never Again! paths.

It's hard work. I don't plan the route ahead, but print out the OS map of the broad area and spend a lot of my walk poring over it while on the move, trying to work out the best way to negotiate the complex spiderweb of intersecting paths without TOO much doubling back and without leaving stray orphan paths in the middle of nowhere, which have to be returned to at great effort later. It produces confusing walks that look like this, and prompt "are you lost?" questions from farmers and slow ramblers as I pass them for the fourth time from a different direction each time. ("WHY?" they sometimes say, when I explain what I'm doing.)

walkmap

It's also sometimes quite stressful, when a path leads into a field of bullocks, a thicket of brambles, a building site or a swamp, or goes right across a busy golf course or even through someone's back garden, and I have to follow it come what may. I hate being where I shouldn't, so find it very stressful when I lose a path.

So it will be relief to be able to walk in straight lines, and if a path looks stressful, just change the walk to avoid it. It will be a relief to be able to spend the day walking an old favourite walk without thinking, "I should really be walking new paths somewhere else." And today, with hot weather and a day off, it's a relief to be able to do NO WALK AT ALL and actually have a day off at home - my first in weeks.

I didn't take as many pictures as usual on holiday, for various reasons (weather, shortage of comical lions etc) but looking at them now, I see that almost half of the pictures I did take were taken at the same place: Woolbeding Gardens. To reach these National Trust gardens one must engage in quite a Quest, since there's no parking at all at the site (except for pre-booked disabled spaces.) It's only open two days a week, and is strictly pre-bookings only, in which you book a 10 minute slot with very stern warnings that you Must Not Be Late. There's a free minibus from a car park in Midhurst, but since the Gardens were only about 5 miles from our cottage, we decided to walk. I mean, Galahad never took a courtesy minibus to take him to the Grail, did he?

Obviously, doing a 5 mile walk in unfamiliar terrain to reach a strict 10 minute time slot is not really advised. But Midhurst was en route, with many eating options, so we decided to walk to Midhurst in the morning, have lunch outside the tea room on the Cowdray Estate, then, depending on how long lunch took, walk either 1 mile along a lane or 2 miles along the river to our destination. We took the river route in the end, and arrived right on the dot of our arrival slot, much to the surprise of the person at the ticket booth, since the minibus for our time slot hadn't yet arrived. "How did you get here?" she asked in astonishment, as if we'd arrived by magic.

Anyway, to the gardens. ( They're great! )

I keep forgetting to write about the books I'm reading. Oops. Not that there's anything particular to report, since it's mostly been about revisiting much-loved authors, with many re-reads and a few new ones.

( Books )

A couple of months ago, we booked last week off work, but I didn't want to book a holiday away. There was just too much anxiety and uncertainty about lockdown easing, and I didn't want to worry about a booking that might end up cancelled, or a holiday taken during spiralling infection rates, being glared at by furious locals. But if things were going well, we decided, we'd consider going away for a few nights mid-week, since - unlike whole weeks away in nice cottages - such things can usually be booked last-minute, if one is prepared to relax one's usual long list of holiday cottage criteria.

(Which, to be honest, can pretty much be summed up by: Balcony. Or, if we want to go into details: 1. Balcony with nice view. 2. Or, at the very least, a terrace. 3. But, really, balcony. 4. And a windowseat would be lovely, too, if you can manage it. 5. Oh, and free wifi and stress-free parking, and a pub within walking distance would be nice, although less important at the moment, and in a nice location, and ideally detached and quiet, and with lots of walking from the door and castles etc. within half an hour's drive, and... and... and... 6. But, really, just a balcony.)

So, anyway, with a week to go, with vaccines achieved and local infection levels at such a low level that I felt we could go the mainland with minimal feelings of guilt, we decided to book a mid-week break in Dorset. Various options presented themselves at us: boats moored in harbours, yurts, shepherd's huts - what's with all these shepherd's huts? - but most of the availability was on holiday parks. I've never considered a holiday park before, since the ones I've walked through or past on the coastal path have looked rather unappealing - vast ranks of characterless caravans fairly closely packed on expanses of featureless grass - but we found one that looked quite nice. This was at Osmington Mills, on the coastal path a few miles east of Weymouth. It was a smaller park than most, with wooden lodges on a wooded site, carefully arranged amongst the trees so as not to be too overlooked by the others.

( So off we went )

Look, Weather. This is going beyond a joke. A few weeks ago, when you suddenly decided to throw an ENTIRELY ILLEGAL snow storm at us, we could forgive you for it, even though the forecast promised not a drop of precipitation to be seen; and even though, as result of this, we had no coats or waterproofs; and even though it became apparent that just two miles away, people had basked in unbroken sunshine; and even though we got DRENCHED UNTO THE SKIN and had to wring out everything we were wearing when we'd shivered our way home. Because, well... SNOW! And the whole unscheduled, not-a-drop-of-it-to-be-seen-just-two-miles-away thing allowed us to amaze the disbelieving multitudes over the next few week when we countered their scepticism with them photographic proof.

But last weekend was less forgiveable. Again, you conned the weathermen into promising not a single drop of precipitation to be seen. Again - and, yes, perhaps at least some of the fault is ours, because we Should Have Learnt - off we went without coats or waterproofs, only for you to hurl a torrential downpour at us. Once again, drenched unto the skin, all clothes sodden, much wringing out and shivering etc. And once again, just two miles away, the sky was blue and the roads were entirely dry. To add insult to injury, Weather, we'd planted loads of plants the day before, and you couldn't even be bothered to water them, just drench us.

And then today, what did you do, but EXACTLY THE SAME! Same car park, attempt no. 2 to tick off All The Paths in that particular part of the island. Same total denial of any possibility of rain. Same sudden, unscheduled torrential downpour. Same dry roads just two miles away, as I drove home after giving up on the walk. Same abject failure to water my garden, just drench me. At least I'd learnt somethign from your previous treachery and had a waterproof with me, but, really, Weather, this had become Too Much. Stop with all these illegal downpours that fall on me and just on me!

And then when I'd squelched back to the car and started to drive away, heading towards those dry roads and sunshine, the radio was playing a song called Rain On Me. I bet you were behind that, too, Weather. I am not pleased with you. Stop this. Now.

Books read since the last time I posted about such things - some historical, some fantasy, some children's book re-reads.

( Books )

It's great to be able to walk in places other than my own home town! I got very fed up with walking long circuits around the edge of Cowes, even if they did occasionally offer up piglitts!!

A couple of days after Easter, we were walking in West Wight, when we saw, rather than our surprise that Mottistone Manor Gardens were open. We hadn't booked, but they let us in anyway. They assured us that we were not Too Old to purchase the children's Easter Holiday activity trail, which this year was all about Adventures in Nature, since presumably the usual Easter egg hunt had fallen victim to the pandemic.

( Shades of green, gloopy cakes and drunken lambs )

( Books read since last time I posted about reading )

My childhood cat, who died in 1991, is still a feature of our living room. For reasons that doubtless made sense at the time (Inspired By History, I believe; perhaps something to do with Victorians or stately homes) my Mum decided to commemorate her by making a lifesize wooden standee of the dear departed Mitzi. So there Mitzi still stands, engaged in the important duty of hiding some of the tangle of wires that run to the TV unit.

( Pictures below the cut )

Anyway. This morning, I saw a New Cat in the garden. Little more than a kitten, really, very thin, leggy and curious. I opened the patio door, crouched down, and signalled my willingness to make its acquaintance. After some hesistation on kitten's part, the overture was accepted. Nose duly touched hand, and cautiously Kitten ventured inside. Tiptoe tiptoe, she went. Sniff sniff sniff. Ooh! Embroidery wool! How exciting! I must...

HISSS!!!!!

Yes, Kitten had just noticed Mitzi. HISSSS!!!!!! Kitten fled to the patio to... Oh. Sorry. Kitten executed a strategic retreat to Patio HQ where she could bask in her victory, while staying sufficiently far away from the vanquished enemy to avoid being unsportingly gloaty.

"It's not real!" I assured Kitten, picking Mitzi up and bringing her to the window sideways on, then turning her slowly round and round. "It's flat, see?" I turned Mitzi upside down and back to front. "Not real, silly kitty." Kitten watched the whole thing avidly, a look of fierce concentration on her face. I could almost hear the cogs whirring, as I witnessed a young animal achieve a developmental milestone, its cognitive development developing Even As I Watched.

I put Mitzi down again, sideways on, and watched and waited. Kitten tiptoed forward. Kitten paused for a minute to conduct a vital study of a passing woodlouse. Kitten - having ~~decided that the woodlouse was actually Far Too Scary for it to take on~~ charitably decided to let the puny woodlouse live to rejoin its wife and family - came in again. Kitten sniffed the side of Mitzi. Kitten moved to Mitzi's back, and sniffed it again, nose touching the wood. Kitten moved further round, sniffing, thinking, processing. Kitten worked round to Mitzi's front, looked up, and...

HISSS!!!!! HISSSS!!!!!

Kitten fled, hissing, and never came back.

Books read since last time: 1920s mysteries, a Victorian mystery, Regency mysteries, with a brief diversion through a hedgerow.

( Books )

After my last post on walking, in which I'd concluded that the guidance allowed me to drive a short distance to walk as long as I hated every minute of it, I concluded that although it did technically say that, it didn't really mean it, so I've been making endless circuits around the perimeter of Cowes. Since that includes several semi-rural roads - not, perhaps, technically "in Cowes", but near enough for my conscience - and a long stretch of seafront, it's not too bad, really.

Everyone is being really incredibly scrupulous about social distancing. I think our meteoric ascent from one of the lowest infection rates in the country to one of the highest must have shocked people into action. There's an awful lot of incessant road-crossing going on, and people walking in the middle of the road, or pressing themselves face-forward into hedges and buildings when that isn't possible. Lots of situations when I and some distant approaching person conduct one of those polite "who's going to move out of the way of the other?" dances at 50 yards' distance.

One of my dancing groups is having a fortnightly photo challenge, just for fun. This fortnight, we're to look out for signs of spring. The very next day, I saw piglets on my usual circuit - piglets in a place I'd never before seen pigs. Naturally, I had no camera on me, and not even my phone. So I went back that way every single day - sometimes twice a day, on days off - and not a piglet to be seen. But on Monday, I finally achieved pigs! Not that they were very photogenic pigs, since they spent most of their time with their heads down, rootling up against a fence, but, still... PIGLITS!!!!!

Also daffodils, they but, unlike pigs, they're less of an achievement, since, unlike pigs, they do tend to still be there when you return the next day with a camera.

( Pigs! )

I was trying to answer an online question the other day about my favourite book read in 2020, and realised that I couldn't remember what on earth I'd read. A few years ago, I managed to write reviews of everything I read, but it became rather arduous and daunting. A useful record, though, so I'm going to try to do it again in 2021, but with shorter write-ups. Although I am now laughing hollowly at myself, since the chance of my ever being succint in writing is very low.

( Murderbot and Flappers )