Glorious sunshine and a wonderful walk

Although we are under quite strict measures at the moment there is no restriction as to the amount of times you leave the house or for how long but this is going to change once the new restrictions are announced tomorrow.  We have planned to spend the new lockdown getting some DIY done - I have earmarked painting the kitchen and John wants to freshen up the walls in the lounge although that might be a bit premature as we haven't finished using the woodburner yet and it is the woodburner that makes the walls dirty.  Having said that it has been so mild we haven't really needed the fire save for when Mum was here over Christmas.

We were walking today on a Liselotte route which was around Kritou Terra (that means hilly) and using a walk someone had done some time ago which meant that it was untested recently and so we had some interesting sorties into fields where the original path was nowhere to be seen and one crossing over a river bed where it had been washed away and we had to scramble over the wet and soggy remains - it was all a bit more like Tough Mudder than Happy Wandering!!

Having said that the scenery was spectacular and the weather unbelievable.  I would probably like to dawdle around a bit longer admiring my surroundings but then we would have been out for four hours rather than three!!!  

I struggled a bit today because I forgot to put a plaster on my toe where the nail has cracked across on the bed of the nail and is sore and my shoulder has been playing up.  I injured my shoulder thirty odd years ago when I was involved in a head-on car crash (not my fault) and it has plagued me ever since.  It used to hurt when I drove long distances for work or when I had been sat at my computer for long periods of time but now I think the swinging of my arms when walking has aggravated it.  As we approached the waterfalls at Kritou Tera I thought we were on the home stretch and then instead of taking a right back into the village we took a left away from the Holy Grail (our parked cars!!).

This final loop did allow us to walk through some beautiful tree lined tracks where it felt almost like being back in England with a carpet of autumnal leaves from the avenue of oak trees either side.  It was cool and green and muddy even though we haven't had rain for weeks!

Eventually we made it back to the village of Kritou Tera which has, over the last couple of years, had quite a lot of time and money spent on it.  It has an interesting history and the municipality has gone to great lengths to make this village somewhere visitors would like to see.  The beautiful waterfalls are a huge draw but suffer when lazy tourists and locals leave behind their unwelcome detritus.

Both John and I felt rather tired after our exertions so our afternoon was spent on a quick trip to Paps to stock up in readiness for being confined to barracks - we had fully expected the supermarket to be packed to the gunnels but it was surprisingly empty and it was a pleasure to shop - particularly as we were able to get liver for the cats!