Tuesday and Wednesday 3-4 November
Where was Erica? She spent the night in a small parking area in Herefordshire, just a few hundred metres away from the Gloustershire border.
Weather: Lovely! Chilly overnight.
It felt like I spent most of last week making curtains for Erica (a process hugely more time consuming than making the sofa covers), however, I did also find the time to plan Erica’s first overnight trip (the reason for hastening on with the curtains). At that point, because I pay so little notice to the news, I was unaware that England was teetering on the brink of another national lockdown.
With Boris’s announcement on Saturday I contemplated whether it was still reasonable to go away. We would be back before the lockdown came into effect and would be completely self-contained and socially distant whilst away, so ‘go’ was the decision reached. This did, however, make us bad tourists from the point of view that the isolated nature of the trip was going to prevent us from spending money in any local businesses (a shame, as a breakfast out wouldn’t have gone amiss).
Monday morning was a flurry of activity as we packed Erica, with the impediment of not yet knowing in which cupboards things sensibly belong. Monday afternoon was a flurry of the final bits of curtain making (did I mention how long they took?! Such a lot of effort and at some point they’ll likely be completely redone in different fabric).
On Tuesday morning, under fine skies, we set out. Herefordshire was our immediate destination, with a list of seven hills that we were to visit before returning home. The plan, if all went well, was that we were going to do five on them on Tuesday and two on Wednesday.
All did not start entirely well; a small incident of programming the wrong destination into the SatNav (wrong hill; wrong co-ordinates even for that hill), but fortunately I spotted the ‘wrong hill’ error just in the nick of time (I didn’t spot the ‘wrong co-ordinates’ issue until it had inconvenienced us later in the day).
Wearing pyjamas to prepare lunch whilst sitting outside of a village hall – the starting point for our next hill
Aside from those issues, the rest of the day went smoothly and before we knew it the sun was sinking and with it the heat was leaching out of the day. I’d had in mind to spend the night in the vicinity of Wednesday’s first hill, but when we found the parking area by Tuesday’s final hill to be wholly suited to the purpose we decided to work on the basis of ‘better the devil you know’. The fast food wrapping and drinks cans that looked to be freshly deposited in the originally intended car park when we arrived there the next morning suggested our choice had been good and that we wouldn’t have had such a peaceful night there.
It was a chilly night for Erica’s first test, and we woke to a ground frost. Being on higher ground played to our advantage on this occasion, as a temperature inversion not only gave us a fine view over the cloud-filled valley, but it also meant that it was slightly warmer. We watched the thermometer drop as we drove down towards Cheltenham at rush hour on Wednesday morning (the downside of not having proceeded to Wednesday’s first hill at the end of Tuesday).
Wednesday morning’s view from our kipping spot
By early afternoon all of our hills had been visited, we’d enjoyed some lovely views in incredible weather and we were on our way home.
Where was Erica? She spent the night in a small parking area in Herefordshire, just a few hundred metres away from the Gloustershire border.
Weather: Lovely! Chilly overnight.
It felt like I spent most of last week making curtains for Erica (a process hugely more time consuming than making the sofa covers), however, I did also find the time to plan Erica’s first overnight trip (the reason for hastening on with the curtains). At that point, because I pay so little notice to the news, I was unaware that England was teetering on the brink of another national lockdown.
With Boris’s announcement on Saturday I contemplated whether it was still reasonable to go away. We would be back before the lockdown came into effect and would be completely self-contained and socially distant whilst away, so ‘go’ was the decision reached. This did, however, make us bad tourists from the point of view that the isolated nature of the trip was going to prevent us from spending money in any local businesses (a shame, as a breakfast out wouldn’t have gone amiss).
Monday morning was a flurry of activity as we packed Erica, with the impediment of not yet knowing in which cupboards things sensibly belong. Monday afternoon was a flurry of the final bits of curtain making (did I mention how long they took?! Such a lot of effort and at some point they’ll likely be completely redone in different fabric).
On Tuesday morning, under fine skies, we set out. Herefordshire was our immediate destination, with a list of seven hills that we were to visit before returning home. The plan, if all went well, was that we were going to do five on them on Tuesday and two on Wednesday.
All did not start entirely well; a small incident of programming the wrong destination into the SatNav (wrong hill; wrong co-ordinates even for that hill), but fortunately I spotted the ‘wrong hill’ error just in the nick of time (I didn’t spot the ‘wrong co-ordinates’ issue until it had inconvenienced us later in the day).
Aside from those issues, the rest of the day went smoothly and before we knew it the sun was sinking and with it the heat was leaching out of the day. I’d had in mind to spend the night in the vicinity of Wednesday’s first hill, but when we found the parking area by Tuesday’s final hill to be wholly suited to the purpose we decided to work on the basis of ‘better the devil you know’. The fast food wrapping and drinks cans that looked to be freshly deposited in the originally intended car park when we arrived there the next morning suggested our choice had been good and that we wouldn’t have had such a peaceful night there.
It was a chilly night for Erica’s first test, and we woke to a ground frost. Being on higher ground played to our advantage on this occasion, as a temperature inversion not only gave us a fine view over the cloud-filled valley, but it also meant that it was slightly warmer. We watched the thermometer drop as we drove down towards Cheltenham at rush hour on Wednesday morning (the downside of not having proceeded to Wednesday’s first hill at the end of Tuesday).
By early afternoon all of our hills had been visited, we’d enjoyed some lovely views in incredible weather and we were on our way home.
Seven summit selfies
So, how did Erica perform? I’ll answer that question in my next post.
Brilliant. The whole achievement of the conversion and sneaking out just in time as you sneaked in just in time before the last embargo. Of course I want to know about the hills and the performance of Erica - some more photos of inside and out would be welcome. but I will wait. Reminds me of my short lived French pen-pal when I was back at school and my opposite number had to write saying "J'attends avec impatience votre réponse."
ReplyDeleteI've got a backlog of blog posts to write (about the hills and about Erica), not to mention two videos to record and edit. It's a good job I've little else to be occupying my time in the near future!
DeleteI should have the post of the first day of hill-bagging published tomorrow, over on the other blog. It'll be my first post on M&G Go For A Walk for over a year, that being how long it is since I last went up a UK hill - or indeed on any walk in the UK other than a short bimble near home.
Well done Gayle. Some nice little hills. Surprising how many you can go up in a day around there. I like the composite image. How do you do that?
ReplyDeleteI use an App called 'Collage Maker'. There are many collage apps out there and I have to say this one probably isn't the most user-friendly, but it's the one I picked pretty much at random and I've not tried any others.
DeleteThanks Gayle, that's an original name!
ReplyDelete