For the last seven years (2014/5, 2015/6, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20 and 2020/21) I have been documenting our attempts to get out between Christmas and the New Year to get some fresh air and burn off gained calories. The very last paragraph of last year’s entry ended thus:
The hope was that things might be better this year and we would get out more. That’s clearly not been the case as we managed only two properties. I would like to say that this is another casualty of the pandemic but I don’t think I can even use that as an excuse. We are not locked down and the National Trust aren’t imposing restrictions any more. It was more to do with timing and other commitments. We did, however, manage a trip to a very muddy Vyne and a lovely walk through Cliveden.
All this started with us wanting to make sure that we were getting the best value out of our membership. To do so you really only need to go about four times to have covered your annual fee and squeezing them in between Christmas and the New Year seemed like a good way of doing that. Of course a better idea is to make sure that you are going regularly through out the year, which is exactly what we now do.
Next Christmas will be different for reasons that I will expand on later in the year but for now I am knocking this experiment on the head.