The weather has been incredibly kind to us this week choosing only to rain once we have completed our daily exercise. This is very generous of it and, as I said yesterday, unexpected by both us and the weather apps. All this meant that once again on opening the curtains while there wasn’t clear blue skies the grey sheet above didn’t look too threatening.
Given the current restrictions there are some limitations on where we can go at present and having done the National Trust places we’d booked and another local beauty spot we fancied somewhere new for our final “holiday” day. Much research last night led us to California Country Park which while only being a few miles down the road we have never been to in the 30+ years we have lived here. Having been round today I can’t understand why we haven’t, it was lovely.
Visiting today early on in the day when many are still at home in bed or at work it was quiet but the masses of car parking that’s available as you drive in shows just how busy the place must get on a normal summer day. It would be heaving when full.
After an incredibly long wait for a cup of take away coffee (to be fair there was one person in the queue in front of Helen) we set out. There had been some discussion last night about whether I should print out the map of walks around the grounds. This idea had been dismissed as the map “looked as if it had been drawn by a child”. I felt that any map, even one drawn by a child, would be better than no map but apparently not.
We’d not been walking long when we came to a turning that was marked as being one way only. It didn’t say where the path took us or why we should take it but being the adventurers that we are we boldly made for the unknown. Turned out that the path lead initially through a meadow before giving way to a boardwalk above some wetlands. It was really very pleasant.
The boardwalk out the way we then wandered through the woods before rejoining the main path back to civilisation, the car park and home.
Above I called this week a “holiday” with the deliberate use of quotation marks as this has not been my idea of a break. The staycation has been forced upon us by the current Covid-19 situation which has also lessened the options of places to visit. Had everywhere been open I think that we might have chosen some more urban options such as a wander through streets of Portsmouth along the beach, a train trip to somewhere like Bristol or maybe a shopping trip to Reading. None of those were really an option.
Also, not actually being away, led me to being more available to work than I might have been had I actually gone away which meant that what should have been a break from work wasn’t in the end.
Still, on the bright side, at least I didn’t have to use that paint I bought on Monday!