Lockdown walking

There is an announcement tomorrow from the Government and we are fully anticipating a lockdown in our area. We aren't too bothered as we have plenty of stuff in and, even better, we received out winter fuel allowance today albeit for the last time as we will not qualify next year when the UK is out of Europe good and proper - we only got it this year because of the transition period.  Still we never look a gift horse in the mouth.

The weather forecast for today was a bright morning followed by storms this afternoon.  

Looking back on last year, when I caught up with my old school friends Linda Painter and Sheri Eyles down at Baracas beach bar (with John and Linda's husband John), it was a much nicer November then than now.  

It would seem that our winters are going to be longer and wetter than we experienced when we first moved over - certainly the frosts and snow then are becoming a thing of the past.  We have to make the most of the sunshine whilst we can so that meant this morning our little band of four walkers were setting off early to tackle the 'Inea Loop' which John and I had measured to be about 6Km but with quite a long uphill section to get the heart rate pumping.

It was glorious when we set off at 8.30am and although the walk looked a little daunting (because we could see our route stretching out in front of us) we attacked it with gusto and a lot of chatting and before we knew it the worst bit of the uphill was more or less traveled!

There are some fabulous views along the way.  You get to see the coastline which includes St George's island and the two sweeps at Lara Bay.  These are roads much less traveled so there is little danger of much traffic so we are able to take the middle ground and make our way.

Rachel brings her 'motivator' along with her - the woman informs her of her progress and whether we have stopped and how near we are to our target distance - sometimes we shout at her - today Rachel had her on silent because we thought we might need to shout at her!!!

When we got back to our starting point we could see that we had traveled 6.36km with an average speed of 4.7km/h - last week we did 6.01km with an average speed of 4.2km/h so we are improving in everyway.

In fact as we neared the end Rachel said she was feeling so good that she could have walked further if needed - this is a good sign because there really was quite a lot of uphill and I had thought we would all be moaning about the back of our legs - we probably will be tomorrow!

We are hoping that we will be allowed to go out again next week but at the moment this is all up in the air - it will be a real shame to lose the momentum - walking in a group is much more motivating than walking alone - or with John for that matter who makes it more like a route march - you can take the man out of the Forces and all that!!!

We got home and the weather was still good - I was hopeful that the forecasters had got it all wrong as I wanted to get things done in the garden but no, no, no!!!  It wasn't long before the weather started to close in and we had a pretty spectacular and heavy storm which knocked out our electric for quite some time.  Mum had an issue with her central heating which ended up with her having to have not one but two new pumps.  As we said she cannot be without heating or hot water so best she got it sorted now than in a couple of weeks time when she really needed it.

We hunkered down in the afternoon, shutting the conservatory curtains and keeping the bad weather out.  Our electric was restored in time for us to have our tea and watch some TV - we are in the middle of a series called the Undoing.  The storyline is good but I cannot stop looking at Nicole Kidman's surgically enhanced visog which now is totally unable to convey any sort of emotion save for a weird smile as the corners of her mouth are turned up like The Joker.  She was a beautiful woman - how sad that she is now quite a scary imitation of her former self.