We woke late, 8am to be precise so we were slightly out of sink with our daily schedule. It wasn’t raining but it was incredibly windy and when I checked the weather app it forecast rain later this morning so we’d best get a move on so we could go for our walk and get back without getting rained on. We threw down the yoga mats, lay down on the floor and engaged in an 18 minute ‘yoga expand’ session which I must say was most strenuous on the legs, then we completed a 15 minute full body, low impact cardio workout!
Feeling super fit we took Winston out for his morning constitutional, took our empty bottles to the recycling centre and stopped off at the village store and ordered two cappuccinos to accompany our breakfast of cheese omelette, toast and jams. We’re certainly shaking up the order of our day today. It still wasn’t raining so we made haste, dressed in our wet weather gear, just in case, and set off down Shady Lane towards a bridle path we came across on our walk around the village yesterday. We didn’t quite know where it would take us but at least we were prepared for any eventuality, we even remembered to bring our water with us this time! We followed the bridle path down a very steep slope covered with a blanket of wet leaves and came across a fallen tree completely blocking the path. We couldn’t climb over it so we literally got on our hands and knees and crawled underneath it in a most unladylike fashion. We walked on and found the path ended quite abruptly with a fence blocking the path with no way of getting over it. Never mind, positive thoughts. There was another bridlepath we found just up the road from the cottage so we about turned, crawling back under the fallen tree again and headed off in that direction. We figured it would lead us to the road that took us to the wine shop we found the other day and hey, guess what, we were right. Mind you it’s a good job we didn’t walk up it the other day because it was incredibly steep, at least a 1:40 gradient (whatever that means)! But, looking on the bright side it was a lovely walk and the views were gorgeous. Plus, although it was extremely blustery the sun was shining and it didn’t rain like it was forecast to. How fortunate were we. We ended up for one last time at Blackpool Sands, had a snacklet then made our way one last time up Old Road to the cottage.
We treated ourselves to the last of Maices home made apple cake, massive portions they were topped with the last of the M&S brandy butter accompanied by a delicious glass of port. We can honestly say we’ve eaten and drunk well since we’ve been on our Christmas retreat and unlike last year we’ve eaten most of what we brought with us. Needing to digest our huge portion of apple cake we relaxed on the sofas, watched Lucy Worsely on Agatha Christie then took ourselves into the ‘art-studio’ to carry on with our painting by numbers masterpiece. You could have heard a pin drop over the next few hours we were concentrating that much but for all our efforts it’s now beginning to look like the masterpiece it is. Of course we’re going to need at least another two sessions to finish it off. Note to self…….must check the weather app for some rainy weekends!
Maice rustled up a delicious supper of left over Salmon-on-croute to which we were serenaded by the sound of the church bells constantly ringing. They rang for one whole hour so we can only assume they were practising their bell ringing skills. To save time in the morning we showered, packed and then sat down to watch the final episode of Murder is Easy. The jury’s out on this adaptation. Did we like it or not? We’ll probably need to watch it again to see where all the clues were hiding as we’ve concluded neither of us would make very good detectives, although M&A Detective Agency does have a ring to it!!
After taking Winston out for his final wee of the day we made our way, for one last time up the very steep staircase to our beds. For the first time this month we’d need to set our alarms due to us waking later each day.
On that note then, it’s night all from the three of us M, A and Sir Winston xxx
