Yesterday we walked along the canal path to Tesco for two days food supplies. It’s a good hours walk at a fairly good pace so I reckon it must be about 5 miles there and back. We took some self timers today and one of them was dreadfully unflattering catching me at my worst angle I reckon – I look pregnant with several chins.
I’m putting it here as I am very hopeful this year will have an added side bonus of fulfilling the two rules of weight loss; eat less and move around more. Certainly this week I’ve been doing lots of both!
I prefer this one 🙂
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(fleece undone – I was wearing three layers – and child positioned infront of me 😉 )
We got stuff for dinner last night (we all had pasta – Davies with secret butter (he likes to not be able to see evidence of the butter on it so calls it secret butter although he does obviously know it is on there), Scarlett with pesto and pinenuts, Ady and I with beef bolognaise and all with garlic bread), breakfast today and dinner tonight and then walked home again. There are two routes home, when the path splits – one is along the canal path the rest of the way; longer and with a couple of very muddy and slippy bits, the other by road; shorter but involves walking along with no pavement. I was worried about slipping as my ankle has been slightly protesting at all the walking and I *really* don’t want to put myself out of action before we even begin the year properly, so Davies and I took the road path while Ady and Scarlett took the canal path. We beat them back by about 15 minutes which was enough time to get some scones in the oven and the washing up done so we could all have cream tea with scones, jam (home made, brought from home) and local clotted cream. Very delicious 🙂
We watched Christian, the lion at Worlds End that we’d picked up in a charity shop earlier in the week. Funnily enough I’d tried to get it before when we watched Born Free last year and failed to find a copy so was really pleased to pick it up for a couple of quid. It was a good watch, brought up lots of discussion.
Dinner was nice, eaten all together, we’re doing lots of that and it’s enjoyable. A late night with all of us going to sleep around the same time although the kids had been in their bunk for about an hour before we actually turned the lights out and got into our sleeping bags.
Today was a very late start – I think it was nearly 10am before we actually all got properly out of bed. The kids have taken to coming onto our bed area for cuddles and chats which is lovely. Ady did some van checking and bought a new gas bottle for our spare as they sell them at this campsite while I cooked breakfast for us and then the kids did the washing and drying up under Ady’s supervision.
We then went out for a final walk, there has been a path we have not taken yet as we were always on our way to Tescos so we went that way today and it leads to a section of the River Teign. It was gorgeous, really fast flowing with steep banks and plenty to look at. We must have met about 50 people walking dogs which almost had me feeling we were missing a furry companion of our own. I can see us ending up getting a dog at the end of this year but always knew that was a strong possibility.
We walked for about 90 minutes at a fairly leisurely pace, talking, stopping to look at the river and enjoying the sunshine. At the very end of the walk as we had slowed down to fall in step behind a herd of young bulls who were all moving towards one corner of the field and then had stopped completely to watch a flock of crows all coming in to roost for the night at the top of a tall elm tree when I suddenly caught a glimpse of something on the opposite river bank and realised it was an otter. We stood and watched as it went down the riverbank into the water, swam for a while, then clambered back out and up and down the riverbank again, back in the water, back out and finally back in again. It was very magical, walking alongside it on the other side of the river and we were all so taken in by the moment that it was a while before we even thought to take a camera out and try and capture it, so the couple of pictures we have are of very poor, ‘you’ll just have to believe us that brown thing is an otter, honestly’ quality, but better to have watched with eyes rather than through a camera lens anyway I reckon.
Davies asked if we could ring Granny and Grandad to tell them, so he did that and we all talked to them. We’d had a long phonecall with them last night but it was nice to feel we were sharing the moment with them. The only time I have felt teary at all this week was a brief moment on Friday when Davies said to me ‘you sound just like Grandad’ when I said something silly and I was hit with a wave of missing him :(, getting teary again thinking of it so need to change the subject…. ahem.
Back at the van Ady got cracking at dinner, an attempt at a campervan roast. It was lovely, but took ages – I suspect dinners that require 2 hours of oven use are not really that practical but we do love our Sunday roast so it was nice to have a last one before we start living with other people for many Sundays to come.
We’re all feeling quite mixed emotions today, nervous about sleeping in a tent for two weeks, meeting a whole load of new people tomorrow, what will actually be expected of us and it being our first hosting too, but very excited and ready to be active, busy, useful and properly get going. It’s been a long time in the planning and tomorrow it really, properly starts. 🙂
its going to be fab [mostly, and hoping the comedic moments make up for any less fab moments] really looking forward to the start 🙂
Comment by HelenHaricot — 06 March 2011 @ 10:17 pm
Am all excited thinking about it! Good luck lovelies x
Comment by Ali — 06 March 2011 @ 10:44 pm