April and May 2022

Before I launch into a new set of "Where's Bertie?" posts, here's a quick summary of April and May:

April
First job on 1 April: tax Erica. She was already packed and ready to go on what was, from a logistical point of view, to be a complicated trip. It was to go like this:

Friday: drive to Ma-in-Law's (MiL) in Halifax
Saturday: Mick drops me off at Windy Hill (M62) for me to trot 35km up the Pennine Way to by Haworth.
Sunday into Monday: a micro 1-night backpacking trip up onto t'moors.
Monday eve: drive up towards the Lakes
Tuesday-Friday: in the Lakes for Mick to do some Lakeland 50 training runs.
Friday: back to MiL's for her 97th birthday.

It started well, with easy traffic on the Friday drive and with a successful outing on the Pennine Way on Saturday.

Not the conditions I'd expected at the start of my outing, but certainly pretty

By the Sunday morning we'd noticed that MiL's cough was worse than usual and thought that, before calling the doctor on Monday morning, we should rule out Covid. It was MiL's first ever Covid test, and it came back positive. As, by then, we'd already spent 2 days in close proximity to her, it was inevitable that we were already infected. So, the rest of our trip was cancelled.

Happily, other than the cough, MiL had no symptoms and felt fine the whole time. We didn't become symptomatic until the Wednesday. Mick was poorly for a few days, then improved. I had swollen glands, a sore throat, and a stuffy nose and that was about it (no fever, no cough, no aches, no lack of energy) - however, for me, those symptoms hung around for the entire month.

A benefit of sitting around at home through April: I finally finished this blanket, 11 months to the day after I started it.

May
Come the first of May we were both feeling fit and well again. I was building the running intensity back up, and Mick was doing local walks with his backpack, in preparation for the TGO Challenge.

Mick wasn't starting the TGO Challenge until the 14th May (the starting window was longer this year, running from 10-15 May), but we'd hatched a plan that involved Mick doing a run through the Lake District and me bagging all of the Marilyns on the Cowall Peninsula, thus we were to leave home in the middle of the first week in May. Both Erica, and Mick's backpack, were duly packed again.

A few days later, Erica was wondering what she's done to offend us, as for the second time in as many months, she got unpacked without having had the adventures we had promised her. Likewise Mick's backpack.

Poorliness was again the cause of the cancellation, with Mick suddenly finding himself on a two-week course of drugs - not the state to be setting out into the wilds of Scotland. 

As the month went on, Erica no doubt wondered some more as to what she'd done to offend us, as her sofa/bed cushions got removed and replaced with the removable rails I'd made a while ago to turn her into a garden-waste tranportation wagon. Her entire living space was then covered with a huge sheet of plastic, held in place by strong magnets. She was thus all set to help us to achieve this:

In the first collage the 'before' snap is from last December, immediately after the trees were removed following damage by Storm Arwen. In the second collage the 'before' snap was taken the day before the 'after'

Along with a few other jobs on rental houses, the month wasn't a write-off, and our next trip was only just around the corner...