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igenlodeI think I've spent more time out of doors in the last three days than ever before -- there's nothing like threatening people with having something taken away to make them rush out and start engaging in it!
And if you tell the Great British Public that it isn't allowed to engage in any indoor pursuits, the result is that it immediately flocks en masse to the outdoor ones. The National Trust announced that it was opening all its gardens for free, so I cycled off twelve miles to the nearest NT property to go and visit it. (I have been there before, but only by public transport... in the days when I had spare money for activities that involved public transport.) The place was heaving, and judging by the various snippets of conversation I overheard, a lot of other people were there who have never been before or wouldn't normally have gone.
I suspected I would cool down a lot as soon as I got off my bike, so I brought a couple of extra layers (and ended up knotting a large spare handkerchief around my ears, as my head got cold once I took my helmet off!) I did a two-mile walk around the grounds, bought some beetroot in the farm shop -- which had been almost cleaned out of anything else, but I snap up uncooked beetroot whenever I can get them anyway -- and then cycled the twelve miles back again through the east wind. My bare right (map-reading) hand was pretty reddened and chilled on top of the existing chilblains by the time I got back into known territory and could put my glove back on, and I got straight into a hot bath and fell asleep in it before cooking a large late meal ;-)
On Friday and on Sunday I went for walks in the grounds of various local properties, all of which were busy with kite-flyers, dog-walkers, children in pushchairs and out, hordes of cyclists, middle-aged couples out for a stroll, groups of teenagers (one confided disconsolately in my hearing that she had 'never had to spend a weekend on her own before', by which she presumably meant not 'going out'), the elderly and infirm in their wheelchairs, walking frames and mobility scooters, and generally just about everybody you could think of, all trying to make the most of the sunshine and ignore the biting east wind. I sat down on my coat-tails in the lee of a sturdy tree-trunk for an hour or so until I got too cold and the angle of the winter sun decreased, then walked the mile or so briskly home.
I called in at a supermarket on the way home. No milk, no rice and no porridge. And no vegetable seeds, which is a new one. The flower seeds are untouched, but there's nothing left of the vegetable seed display save such oddities as tarragon.
Cycle computer mileage: 1693.7
And if you tell the Great British Public that it isn't allowed to engage in any indoor pursuits, the result is that it immediately flocks en masse to the outdoor ones. The National Trust announced that it was opening all its gardens for free, so I cycled off twelve miles to the nearest NT property to go and visit it. (I have been there before, but only by public transport... in the days when I had spare money for activities that involved public transport.) The place was heaving, and judging by the various snippets of conversation I overheard, a lot of other people were there who have never been before or wouldn't normally have gone.
I suspected I would cool down a lot as soon as I got off my bike, so I brought a couple of extra layers (and ended up knotting a large spare handkerchief around my ears, as my head got cold once I took my helmet off!) I did a two-mile walk around the grounds, bought some beetroot in the farm shop -- which had been almost cleaned out of anything else, but I snap up uncooked beetroot whenever I can get them anyway -- and then cycled the twelve miles back again through the east wind. My bare right (map-reading) hand was pretty reddened and chilled on top of the existing chilblains by the time I got back into known territory and could put my glove back on, and I got straight into a hot bath and fell asleep in it before cooking a large late meal ;-)
On Friday and on Sunday I went for walks in the grounds of various local properties, all of which were busy with kite-flyers, dog-walkers, children in pushchairs and out, hordes of cyclists, middle-aged couples out for a stroll, groups of teenagers (one confided disconsolately in my hearing that she had 'never had to spend a weekend on her own before', by which she presumably meant not 'going out'), the elderly and infirm in their wheelchairs, walking frames and mobility scooters, and generally just about everybody you could think of, all trying to make the most of the sunshine and ignore the biting east wind. I sat down on my coat-tails in the lee of a sturdy tree-trunk for an hour or so until I got too cold and the angle of the winter sun decreased, then walked the mile or so briskly home.
I called in at a supermarket on the way home. No milk, no rice and no porridge. And no vegetable seeds, which is a new one. The flower seeds are untouched, but there's nothing left of the vegetable seed display save such oddities as tarragon.
Cycle computer mileage: 1693.7
