Floating down to Camelot

Last year I didn't go away anywhere until the trip in mid-November to stay with our daughter. I used to rely on G organising our trips away and it took me rather a long time to realise that he just doesn't want to travel any more. He used to travel because he wanted to give a paper at a conference, but he doesn't want to do that any more. Now he has everything he needs and wants here. He's busy with his projects and has some of the most beautiful countryside in the UK to go for walks in. However, I felt I'd got into a rut and so we had a conversation about going away for short breaks and G said he was perfectly happy for me to go on my own.

The weather has been so bad up until now, that I didn't want to go anywhere. However, there was a post on Facebook from a friend saying that she was planning to visit Birmingham art gallery to see their pre-Raphaelite paintings on Good Friday of the Easter weekend and did anyone want to join her? That prompted me to actually arrange the trip I'd been vaguely thinking of since I saw online that the gallery had reopened.

I've just booked a hotel for one night. You can do Birmingham as a day trip, but not if I want to get there for 10 a.m. So I'll have half a day on my own on the Thursday and then get an early afternoon train back after meeting with friends on the Friday morning. It should be enjoyable. As a precaution, I've paid the extra so I can cancel up to the morning of the day I intend to stay. I won't buy the train tickets too early either. Early April can be lovely, or it can be awful with rain and floods or even snow. The railway companies also have a habit of arranging engineering work at Bank Holidays. But hopefully all will be well and I'll get a nice mini-break.

We had a very spring-like day last week (Wednesday) and I thought the weather was finally improving. I felt rather tired on Thursday for some reason, so G went for a walk on his own. We finally managed a walk in the forest yesterday (Saturday) and it was dry and even a bit sunny, but today we're back to deep gloom and drizzle.

But here are a few of photos from the walk in the forest. For a change, we drove up to the main car park by the mountain bike centre. It was so busy! We were astonished. We've not seen so many people there since last summer. Of course we usually walk mid-week, so the fact that it was a Saturday will have made a difference, but we wondered if it was the half-term holiday in England. Either that or everyone has been stuck at home during the endless rain, saw the decent forecast for the weekend and all rushed out at once with their bikes on the cars and in their vans. Anyway, the route we walked was quite quiet, though we did meet a few walkers with friendly dogs, a jogger and a few of the cyclists. ( More here... )

I think this is the mossiest route that we do. At least the moss has enjoyed the extremely wet winter.



( More mosses... )

We also passed one of the wood ant nests. There wasn't much activity, but there were a few ants wandering around, but only on the nest itself.

The walk is just 3½ miles and is the shortest of the three forest walks we do. Strangely, though I'd felt tired and achy on Thursday, after the walk a couple of days later, I felt much better. The tiredness could be hay-fever. There's a huge alder tree out at the back beyond the bottom of our gardens and it's been covered in catkins for ages. I'm taking an antihistamine which is keeping the symptoms damped down, but I hadn't been feeling quite right. The area of the forest where we walked was pretty much all conifers, so pollen was minimal.