Shoreham Woods – Peace & Quiet

We occasionally go walking in Shoreham Woods, but much of it is quite noisy due to the adjacent M25. However, with lockdown, there is very little traffic and the woods were nice and peaceful:

It’s also one of the best places to see bluebells at this time of year:

Rocco of course likes wearing himself out chasing sticks:

And paths that are horrible and slippery during the winter are nice and dry:

We went a slightly different way today, and looking back you can see the phone mast at the top of the hill badly disguised as a tree:

And in close up – whoever designed the fake tree has no idea what a deciduous tree looks like:

Next is Polhill Bank, where the ground slopes down from the North Downs to the Weald. Rocco does like carrying a pair of sticks as a large X:

The railway line comes out of the tunnel under Polhill here:

and it’s a lovely spot to sit and watch the world not go by:

By this time, Rocco is often thirsty, but he remembered a water trough just off the path. The water level was a bit low for him to reach, but he solved the problem in typical Labrador fashion:

Then more nice paths and bluebells on the way back to the car:

A lovely walk in warm sunshine. Worth driving a few miles on empty roads!

Priory Gardens

Rocco has cut his paw, so I was on my own for the morning walk. One bonus was that I could walk through the “Dog Free” part of Priory Gardens, which were lovely in the spring sunshine.

The pond was looking good as well, nice and clean!

Spring is here

The warm weather at Easter seems to have triggered many plants to flower, and the local woods were exceptionally nice this morning with bluebells:

Rocco of course likes his sticks:

A special treat was seeing the new Wild Garlic in a part of the woods noted for it:

I was very surprised that Rocco actually stood still long enough to take his photograph – maybe he is finally growing up!

Virtual Pub

One of the biggest disadvantages for me during lockdown is not being able to chat with friends and enjoy a few beers in a pub.

We solved the beer problem by converting our social club into an off-licence serving draught local real ales – it does seem strange drinking beer out of milk bottles, but needs must!

The chat side has largely been solved with technology; not perfect, but better than nothing:

Propagator Divider

I was just about to plant some seeds in the electric propagator for next year’s chilli plants, and it was suggested that it would be better to divide the tray up.

So after a bit of measurement and design later, I set the 3D printer going. It took a while, but used surprisingly little plastic:

Hopefully, this will help stop the roots getting entangled.

Now just need to print two more for the other trays!

Gloucester

We had a nice steak and chips in the Pilot last night – timed it just right so that we walked there in the dry, it rained while we were in the pub, then walked back in the dry…

The forecast today wasn’t too inspiring, with rain scheduled for lunchtime, so we walked along the canal to Gloucester.

On the way, we crossed the Severn to Alney Island, but many of the paths were flooded and muddy from the recent rain, so we headed back into Gloucester.

First stop was The Fountain, a lovely ‘Country Pub’ in the middle of the town. Then to the Turk’s Head, a recently opened Micro Pub. Then finally back to the Gloucester Brewery pub in the docks.

The dogs were quite bored by this time, but still well behaved (especially with a treat in the offering)

Then back along the canal to home.

Chessington Walk

It was a nice day today and I thought it was time to get Rocco used to trains again, so we went to Chessington. This involved two trains (changing at Waterloo) but no underground (we’ll save that for later).

The train was quite crowded on the way up to London, but Rocco seemed to impress (almost) everyone – I can’t recall a time when I’ve talked to so many different people on a commuter train!

We shared the lift at Waterloo with grandparents and a child in a pushchair. Luckily, they liked dogs so Rocco got even more attention.

The train to Chessington South was very quiet and eventful.

We only had to walk about 100 yards from the station until we were on footpaths:

And soon, we were in countryside:

We had to struggle to get through some fields with horses a bit further on – unfortunately Rocco started barking at them which didn’t help:

Finally, we reached Horton Country Park – not the most interesting in the world, but covered a large area.

All too soon, it was time to take another footpath back to the station:

and the trains home:

A nice day out, and we’re both exhausted!

The Robots are taking over

One of the ‘adventure’ activities along the Grindelwald-First cable car route were some ‘mountain carts’ that you could ride down the hill to one of the intermediate cable stations. We’d seen these on the side of some cable cars coming up, and were impressed with an automated robot that was hanging the carts on the cars:

We assume that there was a similar robot at the top that detached them…