Where's Bertie? By way of a sneak peek of what is to come, I'll tell you that Bertie has spent 10 hours of today travelling south and is currently sitting in a car park in the village of Surville, France.
Before I launch into daily blogs about the trip upon which we have today embarked, I thought I'd first nip back to the final 3 months of 2021 and summarise them in five memorable (not all in a good way) occurrences:
1) At the end of October, whilst running at a parkrun, I found a pothole, hidden under flood water, with my left foot. A not insignificant amount of damage was done to the soft tissue that sits over the cuboid bone and as a result not a single step did I run in November. In December I started tentatively throwing some short running intervals into my walks (a week after doing the damage, I could walk again, but only forwards and on flat tarmac; anything else was yelp-inducing). It's still not completely better, but it's now two weeks since I last yelped due to an unfortunate foot placement.
2) If there was a good time to do a run-stopping injury to myself, then the end of October was probably as good as it got, as we spent November all-consumed by refurbishing a rental property. The memorable moment came five days into the work, when I said "I'll just stick my head up into the loft to make sure it's clear.". That's when I found the previous tenant had constructed a cannabis farm up there, taking up half of the area. Its removal proved educational for someone as naive of such matters as I am.
A small snapshot of the inside of the structure. We're not sure if the mess was created during the police raid or by the tenant, but all the pots had been upended and the floor of the structure was inches deep in compost. There were no plants remaining, but my goodness, the few leaves in amongst the compost were pungent!
3) Just as the refurbishment was coming to a close and we thought we might manage a short trip to Wales, along came Storm Arwen, which brought down a huge conifer at another rental property. Of all the directions it could have fallen, it fortuitously fell the most convenient way so as to minimise damage and danger, but on its way it destabilised the adjacent tree that then became liable to fall into the building next door. It was an expensive do getting that sorted (and 'sorted' transpired to be having 7 large conifers and 1 deciduous species that I can't now name removed), following which the garden was left exposed to the parkland behind. Ideally I would have employed a fencing team to sort that out but finances dictated otherwise. Fence panels weren't an option for a couple of reasons, but I think Mick and I did a pretty decent job of constructing a feather-edge fence, even if it did take us two full days to achieve.
4) Trees continued to be a theme in December, when we decided it was time for our apple tree to come down (I like having an apple tree, but this one is far too big for the space it's in and only produces fruit about once every three years). On the first day of the task, during which I was the one up the tree, I questioned whether I'm getting a bit old to be climbing trees. Apparently not, as the following day Mick took his turn. Working on the basis of tackling a minimum of two branches every day (getting them down and processing for disposal; most days we did more than 2), it took us around 10 days of work to get it into the state in which we have currently left it.
During and after. A tree surgeon could likely have achieved this in a morning. Disposing of the waste is nearly complete, but ongoing.
5) Mick started training for the Seville Marathon, and we were all geared up to head to Spain at the beginning of January, to get acclimatised to the heat in good time for the event. Then France decided that we dirty Brits* were a danger to the health of their nation, and banned us from entering. All ferries to Spain were booked solid until the end of March. Would we get the trip that we've been so longing for, or were we going to be thwarted again? (The answer to this question is of course obvious, given the spoiler I gave right at the beginning of this post.)
(*For my future reference: As the Omicron variant of Covid19 swept through the UK, France implemented border restrictions such that Brits could only enter the country from the UK for a limited number of essential purposes. Omicron soon swept through France too, with even higher case numbers than the UK was seeing, yet the restrictions remained in place until 14 January.)
Before I launch into daily blogs about the trip upon which we have today embarked, I thought I'd first nip back to the final 3 months of 2021 and summarise them in five memorable (not all in a good way) occurrences:
1) At the end of October, whilst running at a parkrun, I found a pothole, hidden under flood water, with my left foot. A not insignificant amount of damage was done to the soft tissue that sits over the cuboid bone and as a result not a single step did I run in November. In December I started tentatively throwing some short running intervals into my walks (a week after doing the damage, I could walk again, but only forwards and on flat tarmac; anything else was yelp-inducing). It's still not completely better, but it's now two weeks since I last yelped due to an unfortunate foot placement.
2) If there was a good time to do a run-stopping injury to myself, then the end of October was probably as good as it got, as we spent November all-consumed by refurbishing a rental property. The memorable moment came five days into the work, when I said "I'll just stick my head up into the loft to make sure it's clear.". That's when I found the previous tenant had constructed a cannabis farm up there, taking up half of the area. Its removal proved educational for someone as naive of such matters as I am.
A small snapshot of the inside of the structure. We're not sure if the mess was created during the police raid or by the tenant, but all the pots had been upended and the floor of the structure was inches deep in compost. There were no plants remaining, but my goodness, the few leaves in amongst the compost were pungent!
3) Just as the refurbishment was coming to a close and we thought we might manage a short trip to Wales, along came Storm Arwen, which brought down a huge conifer at another rental property. Of all the directions it could have fallen, it fortuitously fell the most convenient way so as to minimise damage and danger, but on its way it destabilised the adjacent tree that then became liable to fall into the building next door. It was an expensive do getting that sorted (and 'sorted' transpired to be having 7 large conifers and 1 deciduous species that I can't now name removed), following which the garden was left exposed to the parkland behind. Ideally I would have employed a fencing team to sort that out but finances dictated otherwise. Fence panels weren't an option for a couple of reasons, but I think Mick and I did a pretty decent job of constructing a feather-edge fence, even if it did take us two full days to achieve.
5) Mick started training for the Seville Marathon, and we were all geared up to head to Spain at the beginning of January, to get acclimatised to the heat in good time for the event. Then France decided that we dirty Brits* were a danger to the health of their nation, and banned us from entering. All ferries to Spain were booked solid until the end of March. Would we get the trip that we've been so longing for, or were we going to be thwarted again? (The answer to this question is of course obvious, given the spoiler I gave right at the beginning of this post.)
(*For my future reference: As the Omicron variant of Covid19 swept through the UK, France implemented border restrictions such that Brits could only enter the country from the UK for a limited number of essential purposes. Omicron soon swept through France too, with even higher case numbers than the UK was seeing, yet the restrictions remained in place until 14 January.)
Bittersweet - first, ouch! from the pothole, but lucky you didn't break anything (glass half full.) Then the cannabis farm was so unexpected I sort of paused before breaking out into loud laughter much to the consternation of my son who was sitting close by. I look forward to your further adventures.
ReplyDeleteWhilst my reaction was also 'at least it's not broken', the response from the Nurse Practitioner who interpreted the xray was that I would have been better off with a simple break than with soft tissue damage, as it would have healed more quickly. Surely, though, you're unlikely to incur a break without also doing the soft tissue damage?
DeleteThe cannabis farm was at the same property as you stayed in on your MacMillan Way walk a few years back, at which point (as you likely recall) every door in the place had been broken by the previous tenant. We don't seem to have much luck with that place...