Walking and Gardening

The weather forecast later this week is awful so with the sun shining this morning Nicky and I took the opportunity to walk.  Sadly Rachel has been very poorly and is on bed rest and Belinda was feeling ropey too so we were just a dynamic duo rather than a fab four.  As we can only exercise in pairs during the current restrictions it was probably easier that there was only the two of us.  I had chosen a slightly longer walk this week which took us through Inea and out to the Bandstand and then cross country back into Droushia.

As it happens Nicky didn't kick start The Woman until we had left the estate so our route was (a) circular and (b) just marginally longer than The Woman declared - so that means we did more than 7.5 kilometers and includedquite a bit of hillage towards the end although nothing on the scale that I encountered on the Witches Gorge walk on Friday.

The feeling of knackeredness tinged with euphoria at having completed another walk is palpable - who would have thought???  To be fair the views on the walk (save for the areas where some numpty has tipped crap - why don't they call it crap-tipping instead of fly because I haven't seen anyone tipping flies?) are absolutely stunning when the sun is shining.  We had panoramic views of various stretches of the coastline including St George's island, Lara Bay and Chrysochous Bay.  

We even managed to complete the walk with Nicky's sole still stuck to her upper so she didn't have to flap home like Coco the Clown which was a bonus.

We are hopeful that the weather will be kind and we will be able to go out again next week and that we will be a full complement even if we have to go Noah style - two by two.

The afternoon was spent in the garden.  John was busy constructing a "ski/sled" affair which is a floating wooden pad which will be used up on the glass conservatory roof where he is heading to sort out a leak which appeared last year as the silicon which is up there has dried out over the year.  He is conscious that he needs to head up there sooner rather than later because of the bad storms forecast.

He will also need the acro-props to make sure we still have the conservatory roof after this exercise and they are stored on the roof of the woodstore and taking them down is a bit of a faff because the solanum is in the way.  I decided that it could have a major haircut - and I do mean major so that is what it got but I did leave two or three leaves attached so that hopefully this scalping wont have killed the tree which is one of the few remaining original plants in the garden.

It looks a bit sad and skeletal at the moment but within a few days there should be signs of life once again and John was able to get his acro-props down without damage to himself, the props or the solanum so everyone/thing was happy.

This evening we had arranged a takeaway supper with Rob and Di courtesy of Fitos.  We had actually booked to go there for an evening meal before lockdown so this was the next best thing.  I caught up with Di whilst Rob and John went off to collect our respective meals.  It was a lovely evening - so good to catch up with them both and the food was fabulous and Rob will be pleased that I left enough of my stifado for him to have another meal.  We have decided to do it all again next week.  We were enjoying ourselves so much that we had to scoot off sharpish in order to get home before curfew which we managed by the skin of our teeth!!