My birthday is at the end of April, and around that time, I tend to do quite a bit of pondering. This year, I was pondering how I'd largely got out of the habit of exercise. Well, I'm not sure I was ever properly in it... but I was doing hardly any, and was feeling slovenly and unfit. I saw an advert for a charity event, where you signed up to do the distance of an IronMan race, but across a whole month, rather than a single day. It was free to enter, there was no set amount to raise for the charity, and the whole thing felt like a bit of a challenge, but not so unreachable as to be off-putting. I signed up. I started with a plan to space all the activity evenly across the month, but, well, May was rather a mess, and life got quite in the way. Still, I headed out on my bike whenever I could, mostly along the old railway trails. It was lovely to do some more cycling. I left the bike in the car, and stopped off at the trails on the way home from work, which isn't something I'd usually do, but was lovely. The swim was, surprisingly, the least hassle. It was 2.4 miles, which worked out as 155 lengths of my local pool. I went swimming each week, including when we were away in Llandudno, and this was the first discipline I finished. I think I was most worried about the cycling - 112 miles is a long way, and takes a long time when you're as slow as me. I did ten miles here, fifteen there, but by the last week or so, I still had 76 miles left. I had a couple of rather long rides, including what felt like a rather epic 36 mile day cycling around and near a reservoir. Some of that day was rather outrageously uphill. With a couple of days before we went to Scarborough (which took us into June, and I didn't want to take my bike), I still had 16 miles left. I planned to go out along the trails one night, but as I got home from work, a piece fell off the underside of the car, and I had to wait for the AA. I was busy being annoyed, when I remembered the exercise bike. I thought I'd get a couple of miles ticked off, but by the time the AA turned up, I'd done five miles, and as it didn't seem that bad, I figured I might as well do another five. The next morning I was feeling quite wobbly, and finished off the final miles on the bike in the living room. I'd thought the run would be ok - it was only 26 miles over a month, after all, and I was meant to be training for a 15 mile running race in June. Somehow, I kept putting off running, until I found myself with about fifteen miles left when we went on holiday. I took my running shoes, and set out for a long run both mornings, accepting that I was going to have to do quite a bit of walking. I made it, finally, and spent much of the rest of the holiday sitting down.
Overall, I raised about £300 for Cancer Research UK, and rediscovered my love of cycling along the trails, and generally being outside. I also ended up quite pleased with myself that I'd actually done it - I often leave race preparation to the last minute, but because this wasn't a single race, and it was impossible (for me, at least) to do everything on the last day, it was fun to have a tracker and add a few miles here and there throughout the month. Obviously, a fair bit did still get left to the end... but it gave me a great sense of achievement, like I could actually commit to something and see it through. I'm still carrying that with me now.
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Right, let's have a few cheerful posts, shall we, after such a maudlin run of woe? A few days after we'd taken Skippy & Daisy to their new home, we took ourselves off to the seaside for a couple of days. This was the first time we'd been away for more than one night since 2017, so quite something. The weather was glorious, and we didn't do very much at all, just wandered between hotel and beach and cafes. It was great, and being somewhere else, even just for a couple of days, was just what we needed. A couple of weeks later, we went on another trip - our first proper holiday since 2016. We only booked it the day before, and were delighted to get a little holiday flat overlooking the sea in Scarborough. We slowly remembered what it was like to be on holiday. We rarely do anything dramatic, so it was a lovely week of wandering along the beach, ambling around town, pottering between cafes. Perfect. We travelled about a little bit while we were there - a day up in Whitby, and another day in Bridlington (and a trip to the dentist, but we're trying to forget about that one). It was only a few days, but it was so restorative. We were lucky with the weather - it wasn't sunny for the whole time, but it was warm and dry and the sun made an appearance. It was just so nice to be somewhere else, well away from everything that needs doing at home.
I'm not sure we'll manage another holiday this year, although we might take a couple of short trips to visit friends in various places. I've missed being able to do that. We've had some lovely weather in May, and I've been doing a bit more wandering. Not far - either in terms of distance from home, or distance walked, but still wandering, and a nice bit of scenery. Up to the moors, down through the fields, along the valley, and across the bridge to the place where three counties meet. I've been here once before, many years ago, but it didn't feel familiar at all. It was nice to be back though. Another sunny afternoon we went in another direction with some friends. Down the hill, through the village, past the little shop-in-a-shed, along the track, over the bridge, stopping for a little paddle. I've been trying to get out in the evenings too for a little wander up and down the lanes. Not far, just a little stretch of the legs. Every year around this time, I start to walk more, and vow I'll keep it up all year, and it rarely lasts past the autumn. Let's see what happens this year.
I've not actually done much local adventuring since we moved here. Some wandering, of course, but with one thing and another, not too much exploring. As it happens, I still haven't been anywhere completely new, but I have made a bit of an effort to revisit places I've not been for twenty years. At the beginning of March, I went up to The Roaches, a rocky outcrop overlooking the Cheshire plains. This is a well known climbers' haunt, and there is a house built into the rock face which I once stayed in. There are rumours that a mermaid lives in this pool. It's quite breezy up on the top, but the views are well worth the wind and the climb. I think I only walked about three miles that day. It was chilly, and I didn't want an epic trek. Turning round, Tittesworth reservoir was glinting in the sunshine. A few weeks later, on my birthday, we went down to the reservoir I'd seen from the top. I've been here before too, but not for a while. We didn't walk all the way round, just wandered a little way along the edge, then back to the cafe for a cup of tea. It's a nice mix of scenery - there are wooded areas, and at times the view opens out across the water and you can see back up to The Roaches looming on the horizon a few miles away. There's always a tendency to go to the same places, but I'm going to make a bit more of an effort this year to find some new places, and revisit some I've not been to for a long time. There are a lot on the list.
I do so love looking around other people's gardens, and so I was delighted when our local open gardens came around last weekend. A friend and I bought a map, and sat in a cafe planning our route. There were over 30 gardens open in total, and we would never get round them all, so we chose five to start with that had elements that we liked the sound of. We ended up seeing seven, as a couple of them were right next door to others that were open, and we were practically ushered from one to the next. We didn't regret it. We both came away with several ideas for our own gardens. I liked the idea of having several permanent seating places (we tend to drag the same chairs around to different garden spots at the minute). I was also very taken with the idea of a wildlife pond - this has been in the back of my mind since we moved here, but is now definitely on my list of projects for next year. Several gardens had little solar water features, not connected to a pond, and I think this might be something I end up having near the house as well - I do love the sound of running water. There were some lovely flower beds too, and one particularly epic greenhouse that I didn't get a good picture of - it had lighting and heating and a proper plumbed in sink (I don't think I'd go that far myself, but it was glorious to look at). Interestingly, I didn't see any garden that I would have just adopted exactly how it was. There were plenty of elements that I liked, but others I wasn't bothered about at all. I'm looking forward to shaping our garden over the next few years to get it just how we want it - there's still a long way to go yet.
We are slowly emerging, both from winter and from lockdown. Things are starting to open up a little, and while I am still cautious, we are spreading our wings a little, in the form of some small local adventures. We've not done anything dramatic. We walked around our local town one evening, and discovered a new (to us) bit of woodland, that we've been back to a couple of times. We've also been exploring other local towns. We often head up to Whaley Bridge for a cup of tea and a wander along the canal, but we'd never made it up to the reservoir before. Part of the damn collapsed a couple of years ago, leading to the evacuation of the town (but fortunately no flooding), so it was interesting to see in person what we'd seen on the news so many times. Quite often our adventures involve cafes. Our favourite one is now open again, and we are making up for lost time by visiting as often as we can, always with a blanket in the car, just in case. We're trying out other local-ish places that we've not been to before, and finding some hidden gems (some complete with furry friends). Today is my birthday, and while I don't have any definite plans, I imagine it will involve at least one cafe. I hope the sun comes out, although I'm not holding my breath - we've had a run of lovely, sunny days, and are forecast rain for this afternoon. I've bought myself a book, and might sneak off for a daytime bath - a rare treat.
I've been off work for a week now, and I feel like the days have been drifting lazily by. This is good, but I do want to pin down what I've been doing, because I know from experience that if I don't, I'll go back to work feeling like I've done 'nothing', when in fact the days have been full of extraordinary everyday moments. We've had some glorious sunshine, and had our first visitors since September, and I can't tell you how lovely it was to sit outside in the sunshine. The world seems such a brighter place when the sun shines, doesn't it? Full of possibilities. I even did some cleaning. We took some of our visitors round the fields - there are some signs of life in the woodland, and yet another dry stone wall collapse. We've been elsewhere to visit family and friends as well, and the weather has treated us very well indeed. I managed to get out on my bike, down one of the old railway trails - I'd forgotten just how much fun cycling is, and have now ordered a parking permit so I can go whenever I like without having to find change for the parking meter. I've pottered about in the garden - an activity that is far more fun now the chickens have finally been released from almost 16 weeks under their 'flockdown' housing order. It's so nice to have them roaming around in the garden with me. So there has been lots of rest and lazing around and visiting so far, but I've started to feel a vague sense of drifting, and like I 'should' be doing something. I get this often, and I do try to fight it - rest is important, and I don't want to fill my entire holidays with 'shoulds'.
Nonetheless, there are things that need doing, and I know a sense of achievement makes me feel good. And all the days are starting to feel like they're merging into one, and I don't want to lose any more of my holiday to internet scrolling and supermarket trips. So, as I often do when I start to feel a little like this, I'm going to post in here more often, trying to pin down the cheerful moments in what I've done each day, creating a record to look back on at the end of the holidays. I'm not sure where today is going yet. We have to collect a prescription, and we'll probably combine that with a walk and a couple of errands. I might try to jump start the second car, which has had a flat battery for weeks. But I feel like there needs to be something fun in there too - even if it's just some light garden pottering with the chickens. We'll see. We're going through quite a bit of upheaval round here at the minute. It's like some kind of epic spring clean, except the weather is not very spring-like, and so far there's not been much cleaning. But there has been an awful lot of sorting out. This is our loft. Well, one of our three lofts (the other two contain mostly mouse droppings). Neither of us have minimalist tendencies, and as we've gone through life, we've collected many things that 'might come in useful one day'. Many of them have, and our propensity to buy things when we see them cheap and squirrel them away has saved us a fortune over the years. Still, times change, and we're getting to a point where carrying round old projects and endless tubs of beads, paperclips and crayons just doesn't feel quite so appealing. Many of those projects have been unfinished for a decade or more, and now feel more like sources of guilt than sources of fun. With our new decision to get the builders in to sort out the kitchen and bedroom, we're looking forward to a more organised space, and it feels like a good time to start clearing some stuff out. Of course, it does mean that things become yet more chaotic in the meantime, piles of boxes and bags for the tip collect near the back door. We're fortunate that we have two relatively local household recycling centres, and between them they have recycling bins for metal, plastic, wood, clothes, books etc, so not much is going to landfill. In another time, we would likely have donated to charity shops, but they are all closed now, and many of the donation bins have been removed. We might also have put stuff on Freegle, but that feels like quite a daunting task (and also we're not in a town, so I wouldn't want to be encouraging a flurry of special trips out here to collect individual items right now). It feels odd to be getting rid of this much stuff. Ornaments I've looked at for 15 years are disappearing, shelves are emptying, and the amount of space in the loft now is really quite shocking. Peter's been doing most of this clearing out. I'm focusing on the kitchen ceiling for now - but the more he clears, the more obvious the rest of my stuff is. I certainly won't be throwing everything away, but I've got a decent stash of fabric that I've probably had for 20 years and not done anything with for a start... The other activity at the minute is planning the kitchen itself. This has become more of a fun activity now we don't have the prospect of figuring out how to fill massive holes in the walls, and can instead thing about paint colours and tiles and where to put the kettle. The kitchen/dining room has four windows now, and I am loving the way the sun streams in. Can't wait to sit at the table with a cup of tea and a jug of flowers. It's a bit daunting making choices though. We've spent so many years making do with what we had, picking up what we could for free or cheap, that our decisions have usually been along the lines of 'how can we make good use of this?' rather than 'what do we want?'. 'What do we want?' feels like such a big question. (I should point out that I'm fully aware how fortunate we are to be in a position of deciding what we want, and I'm not remotely complaining about it - it's just interesting how difficult it is after years of having decisions bounded by other factors). This is the kitchen in our old house - it looks so empty because it's taken on the day we moved out. We just had one strip of work surface, and the fridge was round the corner near the back door. There never felt like enough space. This is the temporary kitchen we've been using for the last 18 months. It's pretty tiny, but if it was properly laid out as a permanent kitchen, it would still be a reasonably useable space. As it is, it's a bit of a nuisance to do anything in.
So what do we want from our new kitchen? We can't move the drain without a big faff, so the placement of the sink is already decided. We want a four ring hob and a full sized oven (what luxury!), and I want plenty of worktop space, and enough storage day to day things and also empty jars and bottles for preserving food. Of course there are other decisions too. What type of kitchen? Should we have a tiled splashback above all of the work surfaces, and what colour? Shall we re-do the dining room floor now, or wait until later? Where should we put an extra radiator? I do know I want it to be a productive and welcoming space. I want to make cheese, preserve food, bake cakes, and batch cook dinners. We already have a big table, and I'm looking forward to having people sit round it. Maybe there'll be a window seat too, and a breakfast bar. Right now the prospect of other people in the house feels a lifetime away, but I do hope it'll come round eventually. The builders are coming in July, and in the meantime we'll keep sorting and tidying and passing things on. Between the building work and the space-clearing it'll be like having a whole extra house. If you haven't been round in a while, you might get a bit of a shock... We've had a bit of a sunny spell recently, and it's been nice to talk advantage and do a bit of walking. First of all, a wander through the woods with a friend in Sheffield. I don't get chance to wander through woods much around here, and very rarely by running water, so having both together was a proper treat. The next day, we finally made it up the big hill near our house with some other friends. We look at this hill every day, and while visitors have walked over it, we never have ourselves. From up at the top you can really see why this ridge is often called the dragon's back. It was a lovely day (although rather breezy) and we weren't the only ones up there, but we did find a quiet spot for some lunch near the top. I don't do much hill walking, and clearly I'm missing out on some epic views. The route off the hill was rather convoluted, but we did end up on this rather jolly path, and found another nice sheltered spot for a cup of tea. We didn't have to drive anywhere for this walk, just straight out of the gate and down the footpath across our fields. We didn't measure it exactly, but probably walked no more than six miles. I'll definitely be tempted to do it again - maybe I'll even try to get up there early one morning to see the mist swirling in the valley below.
Anyway, all this walking is good practice, as it seems my sister and I have signed up for the virtual London marathon at the start of October. Not running, I hasten to add, and as it's a virtual event, we have a full 24 hours to do the distance, but even so, 26 miles is a long way. I'm probably not going to get any more training walks in before the event, which means my longest walk this year is currently, er, six miles. But we've done the distance more than once before, and given that we'll be walking in loops near her house, really, how hard can it be? I suppose we'll find out. This week has been a veritable flurry of activity and adventure. First of all I took myself off on a solo adventure to Lyme Park, after spotted it on a road sign last week and realising it wasn't actually as far away as I thought. Only a small part of the house is open, so it only took about twenty minutes to walk through, and I spent most of my time out in the gardens, and wandering about through the grounds. I confess I can never quite enjoy these places as much as some people can - my mind always goes to the unfathomable levels of wealth it would have taken to build (and where that wealth came from), the sheer number of people who would have been servants (or worse), and the general inequality that lets some people live like this and others very much not. I did spend most of the day there though, wandering around the herbaceous borders and up through the woodland. Yesterday I had a very different type of day out - an impromptu visit to my sister. We'd booked both a 10k race and a half marathon this year, and of course both were postponed, and later cancelled, and we missed the opportunity to ramble about the countryside for a few hours putting the world to rights. Then it dawned on us - why not do that without a race? We walked out to Hilbre Island, and it was more seaside than countryside, but it did the trick, and the sun even came out eventually, and our mum met us for lunch in a little cafe by the beach. I don't get to see the sea very often so this was just the thing I needed. Today has been different again - a friend and I went to the gardens at Chatsworth. I didn't think I'd been before, but it turns out I have, probably about 17 years ago. We were more interested in the kitchen gardens, and cottage gardens, so we headed there first, and weren't disappointed. What a huge number of gardeners it must take to keep this lot in check! I can barely keep up with my tiny veg patch. I confess I was secretly pleased to see their kale had caterpillars too.... I definitely had shed envy on the way round. I was interested to see they were growing ginger, which I'd always thought needed more heat. I think it was quite sheltered there, but it gave me hope for starting my own ginger experiment in the future. We both came back with plenty of ideas for our own gardens (some of which might even be implemented). The rest of the gardens weren't quite so interesting (to us, anyway), but we did manage to lose nearly four hours in there, as there was plenty to look at. Again, the sheer unfathomable wealth to be able to pay someone to design your garden to fit with the landscape - and to be able to shape the landscape because you own that too was quite mind-bending. There were a few other ideas we came away with - less on the scale of a massive fountain, and more like making a fence from old branches. We brought ourselves back down to earth with a cuppa at Cauldwell's Mill on the way home. It started to rain while we were in the cafe, and hasn't really stopped since, so I think we timed our visit pretty well.
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Hello!Sit down and make yourself comfortable. I'm Jenni, and I write here about our new foray into country living, which includes growing food, knitting, baking, wandering around the fields, and seeing which local cafe serves the best cake. Categories
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February 2024
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