Tuesday 4th to Thursday 7th June – Hognaston

Where's Bertie? He spending three nights at a Camping & Caravanning Club Temporary Holiday Site (a field with a tap and a waste disposal point) in Hognaston, next to Carsington Water in Derbyshire, at a cost of £11 per night.

Weather: Tuesday: rain and an increasingly gusty wind; Wednesday: A couple of showers and some sunny intervals, breezy with a high of just 12 degrees; Thursday: Sunny intervals and a high of 16 degrees.

Mick was taken by surprise when I suggested on Monday night that we should go away for a few days the following day. I thought we might be held at home awaiting some deliveries, but they’d both arrived on Monday, giving us the opportunity for a short escape. This in turn would give me somewhere advantageous for a long run on Wednesday, as it turns out that even though it’s June, mud-season at home still hasn’t abated and is at levels expected in February and early March.

We might have gone to the campsite on Cannock Chase where we stayed for a couple of nights last year, except that it was barely worth £15 (a combination of lack of facilities and lack of privacy/security) and was now asking £20. When I saw that there was a Temporary Holiday Site currently in action in this field at such a reasonable price, our destination was decided. The only downside of Carsington Water over Cannock Chase is the lack of route options, but that didn’t trouble me for my objectives this week.

So, after doing a bit of work on Tuesday morning, I threw myself into packing Bertie (who no doubt felt like he’d only been unpacked moments earlier) and by early afternoon we were ready for the off.

Not long after 3pm we were parked up on site, and would even have had a view of the water had we parked facing in that direction. We don’t tend to think about the best view when we choose how to park; maybe we should.

With rain coming down and Bertie being rocked by the wind, the rest of the afternoon was spent indoors, although by evening the sky had cleared and things were looking good for fine weather on the morrow.

Taken on Wednesday when the weather was better. 

Wednesday

The route around Carsington Water is around 13km long, or 14km if you take the Dam Trail. Starting at just gone 8am, I did one 13km loop (barely met anyone), followed by two 14km ones (met loads of people on #2; it’d calmed down again by #3), doing the out-and-back up the hill to Bertie after each one to top up my drink and snack supply (and, after the second lap, to slam-dunk a package of sushi and a mug of tea).

Bearing in mind that after last year’s surgery, I only started tentatively running again at Christmas, and didn’t continuously run 5km until mid-February, I haven’t done anywhere near as much mileage as I had by the end of May in recent years (2022: 1500km; 2023: 1100km; 2024: 450km). That may make yesterday’s activity look ill-advised, but there was reason behind my madness, and as it went, I felt good for the first 2.5 laps. By the final few miles a few bits of my body were protesting, most notably the little toe on my left foot. It’s not had the chance to toughen up this year, so blistered early, after around 35k.

Not wanting to risk losing my little toe nail (again!) just now is what stopped me from going out for another half an hour, although once I’d tended the blister, eaten a cheese toastie and downed a pot of tea, Mick did come out with me to cover 1.1km, just to make the distance up to a full marathon. A lumpy one too. I’ve run around Carsington Water a few times before, yet still I was surprised at how undulating the route is.

Mick was a little jealous of my activities, particularly as he was due for an 8-hour outing this week, but he hurt his Achiles last weekend.

Thursday

On arrival we’d paid for a two-night stay, but as I headed out for another short circuit this morning (not of the reservoir, but of the Dam plus the Dam Trail), Mick went and paid for another night.

I was soon back from my run (oh, my body loved me for that!) and in good time for our next activity: a walk to the local pub for lunch.

I felt cheated! Surely by definition a sandwich involves two slices of bread?! The woman on the next table ordered a different sandwich and had two absolute door wedges containing her filling.

A better route was chosen to get back, avoiding a stretch of the busy-ish B-road.

We made time for a crossword before returning to the laptops for more TGO Challenge tasks. Hopefully the 2024 Event will be wrapped up by the end of June, allowing a complete rest in July, before preparations for 2025 start in August. (Post-blog note: ha! Naive of me to think so!)

Friday

Home. No leisure for frittering the morning away, as I have a lunch date.

Wednesday - Saturday 17-20 April - Home to Killin

Back in mid-January we thought we may still be able to fit in a trip to Spain. Then a tenant gave notice and factoring in the work that would be required as a result, we thought maybe we would get to France for a few weeks come early March. The work on the house expanded to fill the time available and we finally declared it complete on Tuesday afternoon (16 April) - although we did take last week off, spending two nights at the C&CC club site at Crowden (£31 per night; campsites have become awfully expensive, but on this occasion the location suited us), followed by two nights on Ma-in-Law's drive, followed by a night on a campsite almost within spitting distance of the M62 at Heywood (£25 per night - not worth it for the facilities available and the noise of the motorway). Friday night was spent parked in a road near to Martin & Sue's house (phreerunner.blogspot.com) who kindly invited us around for dinner. After running Fletcher Moss parkrun with them on Saturday morning, followed by coffee and cake at the nearby clubhouse, back home we went to tackle a lengthy to-do list in a small amount of time.

By Wednesday morning this week Bertie had been unpacked and repacked and northwards we went. Shap was our objective for the end of the day, via couple of hours in Halifax with Ma-in-Law. The journey sped by for me, as I sat in the back learning how to use a particular bit of software so as to achieve a task related to the TGO Challenge. The evening at Shap passed in the same vein until Mick finally dragged me out of the rabbit hole in which I'd become entrenched, pointing out that it was past my bedtime.

My work-on-the-road efforts continued into Thursday morning, and we were in Scotland before I finally started looking at hill-bagging.co.uk to decide what hill I was going to tackle that afternoon. Strathyre was where we found ourselves, in a community car park where we were happy to oblige the request to pay £5 per day. 

One hill was bagged in the rain on Thursday afternoon, two in mixed conditions on Friday morning. Friday's linear route involved Mick having to drive a few minutes down the road to pick me up. Bertie was probably only missing for half an hour and returned to find the only other vehicle present was now parked where Bertie had been. Fortunately there wasn't a lack of other options - it's a sizeable car park. 

With a pause just long enough for me to strip off my smelly clothes, have a flannel wash and slip into something fresh, straight over to the Broch Cafe we went for lunch. We snagged the last inside table - fortuitous timing as having been so cool on the hills all morning, I wouldn't have fancied sitting outside. 

Lunch.

I didn't find time during the rest of the afternoon to plan a hill for Saturday, so that was my first task on Saturday morning ... except that our mobile phone signal, that had been good enough to stream TV for the last two days, had mysteriously disappeared overnight. That led us to be away before breakfast, for the 10-minute drive up to Lochearnhead. The drive warmed Bertie up (it had gone down to 2 degrees overnight; Bertie's heating, set to 7 degrees, had come on at 3am) and the car park in Lochearnhead had the benefit of not just a good phone signal, allowing hill research, but also some public toilets and bins. 

With hill bagged, a decision needed to be made as to where we were going to spend our final night before reaching Newtonmore tomorrow morning. That decision was made, but with the day being young, I suggested we stopped off at Killin en-route.

Continuing our quality control visits to cafes within the TGO Challenge area. Mick's Victoria Sponge was truly massive. My Boiled Fruit Loaf looked disappointing by comparison, but its flavour made up for its relative lack of size. 

We didn't then leave Killin. Given the choice between going 25 minutes further along the road to pay £7 to stay in a Forestry Commission car park, or staying here for free, staying here seemed the obvious choice. It's Bertie's second visit here, although last time Mick wasn't with me and the weather was jolly wet.

Friday to Sunday 19-21 January – Chatsworth

(There should be photos in this post, but I don't have time to locate and add them just now. Please just imagine what should go with the captions for the time being)

Where was Bertie? He spent two nights at the Caravan & Motorhome Club Site at Chatsworth.

Weather: Cold but nice on Friday, increasingly rainy on Saturday

The Caravan & Motorhome Club’s prices for its club sites used to be very reasonable in winter, usually beating independent sites. In 2021 they were still remarkably affordable, helped in part by the Covid reduction in VAT on hospitality. Then last year they rocketed to the point that we were priced out and it was looking like we weren’t going to get a single stay to offset out membership fee of £58.

As well as the fees increasing beyond affordability, the Club also implemented deposits on bookings advertised as ‘fully refundable’ but in reality only refundable up to 3 weeks before. In our case the deposits weren’t an issue (because we don’t tend to book in advance), but I think both things have hit the number of nights stayed on their sites quite significantly. By the end of the year they were advertising that deposits had been halved to 10%, and every member was given a voucher for a free night between Jan – March.

That’s the long-winded explanation as to how we came to be at Chatsworth this weekend. With the voucher effectively making a two-night stay half-price, that’s what we went for.

Friday

Arriving a few minutes after the earliest arrival time on Friday, a quick lunch preceded a foray onto the Chatsworth Estate. I had expected to be limited to the footpath that runs through (that Mick, and my blog, tell me we used on our way from Dover to Cape Wrath in 2010), but not only were we able to access the estate via a gate in the back wall of the campsite, but the ‘welcome’ leaflet also told us we were free to roam the estate at large.

Nice day, if a bit parky.

Big house.

The sun was nearly at the horizon by the time we got back to Bertie.

Saturday

Before choosing a campsite at which to spend our voucher, I’d checked the parkrun map, and thus this morning’s first entertainment was set. Four weeks after returning to running post-surgery, today I was only ten minutes slower than the PB that I set last August, and it didn’t feel anywhere near as hard as last week’s 5k had. Progress in clawing back some fitness, I hope.

Somehow, neither of us (at least to our recollections) had ever been to Bakewell, and having read that the town car parks get rather busy, even mid-week in winter, we made haste in getting there before it got too busy. A good move, and the car park marshall greeted us by moving a cone to give us access to the only Bertie-sized space (there being no overhang behind any space, but this one had a bit of space in front due to a protruding wall).

We wandered. We went for breakfast. Breakfast was disappointing. The teapot held only two and a half cups (between the two of us), but at least they topped it up when asked. Breakfast took about a week and a half to arrive, and then Mick’s was luke warm. Objectively, mine was probably fine, but I should have paid more attention to the mention of ‘truffle’ in its description. Had it been a plate of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs I would have devoured it. As it was, it tasted of nothing but truffle oil and I disliked it to such an extent that I was only able to battle through half of it. This is unheard of, in that I cannot remember the last time I left half a plate of food – and certainly not when I’m paying good money for it!

My consolation prize was the browsing of a wool shop and then the impulsive purchase of a top in the Inov8 shop (the latter made Mick jealous, as the women’s model in the girly colour was discounted from £75 to £30; the men’s was full-price).

It’s a very pleasant town for a wander is Bakewell, with lots of old buildings. I’m sure that on a warmer, less rainy day we could have spent longer in its backstreets. As it was, after three hours we headed back to the campsite, just beating the 1pm rush of arrivals.

(Post blog note, 6 months later: it seems that I didn’t write anything about our final night and Sunday morning. I seem to recall that we went for a longer walk on the Chatsworth Estate before vacating the site by noon.)

The Fibroid Diaries - Part 4

 (Written on 18 January 2024)

Just a few days shy of being 3-months post-surgery, and I am not just all healed, but feeling almost entirely normal again. The only residual niggles are the numb area above the incision scar (the scar goes right across my lower abdomen, hip to hip and the numb area is a triangle above that, so not a small area) and the ongoing collection of fluid in the tissue above the scar. The numbness just feels odd. The fluid retention can get a little sore. Neither are big issues in the grand scheme of things.

The purpose of this post, however, is to remind myself in the future what the impact of the surgery has been, as I think it will be all too easy with the passage of time to forget how bad things had become pre-surgery. Indeed, pre-surgery I didn’t really appreciate how bad things had become; I’d probably been growing that mass for more than a decade, with its impact creeping up on me so slowly that I’d forgotten what ‘normal’ was.

The main two issues I had pre-surgery (‘main’ as in affected daily life the most) were having a bladder the size of a thimble (I exaggerate, but that’s how it felt), having something constantly pressing (or, if I was moving, then kicking) against that thimble of a bladder. The worst day I remember was during the World Championship Snooker last year when during one frame (admittedly an unusually long frame), I had to nip to the loo five times. I was always getting up at night, and by last spring it was up to four times a night. Then there was the crushed urethra, meaning when I could wee it was usually a slow trickle and sometimes I couldn’t wee at all. 

Now? Well, it’s quite marvellous! I can wee with gay abandon! And only a normal number of times per day. And I can run without a constant feeling of being kicked in the bladder. I’m sure that with time I will be able to visit the toilet and not think “Isn’t this amazing?!”, but I’m not there yet.

Even more incredibly, and completely unexpectedly, getting up at night is currently the exception rather than the rule.

The difference is such that even Mick exclaimed on Monday when, in Ironbridge, we walked for the best part of 2.5 hours then went for a pot of tea (out of which I got four large cups), then went back to Erica for lunch and a crossword, and at no point did I dive behind at bush nor nip off to the ladies.

Okay, enough enthusing (oversharing?) about having a full-size bladder with an uncrushed urethra. Onto other stuff we’ve been doing…

Monday 15 January - Ironbridge

Where was Bertie? He was at Dave Newell Leisure Services in Madeley, having a major service and MOT.

Where was Erica? She spent most of the day in Ironbridge

Weather: very cold and icy, but a glorious, clear sky.

With Bertie due his MOT and overdue his service, and with our usual MOT establishment having shut down, we opted to take Bertie over to Dave Newell to have both of those things carried out, as well as having his fridge serviced and the oil in his gas pipe cleared. Two years ago we went over there just in Bertie, then spent the whole day loitering in cafés and wandering around. Last year we decided it was worth taking both vehicles, so that we could use Erica to go and do something enjoyable whilst Bertie was being fettled. This year we opted for the same two-vehicle approach.

So, Bertie was dropped off and down to Ironbridge (only 10 minutes distant) we went. I’d plotted a route that I thought would take us around 2 hours to walk, so we didn’t waste much time in setting off – discovering on our way that our favourite café is currently closed for a winter holiday.

The route we walked wasn’t exactly what I’d plotted…

We were quite right to be here

We shouldn’t have been here

Or here

Back on track by here. Walking through a field of old brassica stems is not a pleasant experience. I still have a scab on my leg to prove it – and I was wearing thick winter trousers.

…but it worked out fine and gave us more ascent than I’d planned, which I’m sure was beneficial to both of us, but it highlighted once again how much fitness I need to regain. By the end I was also acutely aware of needing to rebuild stamina too.

Arriving back in Ironbridge, a café was needed, and we made the mistake we’ve made so many times before of going in the first one we came to, rather than seeing what’s two doors further on. My only complaints with our café were that someone ordered the last scone moments before I tried to order it, and it really shouldn’t take fifteen minutes to make a pot of tea. The substitute cakes were good, though; the tea, when it finally arrived, was plentiful; and they brushed away our apologies for the amount of mud we’d got on the floor (we’d wiped our feet well on the way in, but I think the mud had been frozen at that point; by the time we left it had defrosted to a soupy spread-all-over-the-floor consistency).

As we left we saw a much more comfortable place two doors along with a big mound of scones on display (but maybe they wouldn’t have been so tolerant to muddy shoes?).

Earlier than expected we got a call to say Bertie was ready. Turned out he didn’t need new brakes (we’d expected he would purely based on mileage) nor had his gas line been cleared. Rather than phoning us to clarify what the issue was (the very same issue that the very same chap has resolved before), when he couldn’t see what the issue was, he decided to ignore our request).

As for Bertie’s tail light that we discovered was out when we went to Norfolk in December, before Christmas I took his light cluster off and discovered that we didn’t have the correct wattage of bulb. I chucked in one of the same size but a bigger wattage, hoping, as a temporary measure, it would work even if dim, but it didn’t. We bought the correct bulb, but the weather then wasn’t conducive to taking his rear light cluster back apart, so we left it until we returned from Scotland, two days before his MOT. The new bulb didn’t work either. I took his opposite light cluster off, tested continuity and tested voltage, and concluded that it was a loose or broken wire. Without the time or inclination to sort that out, we decided to allow Dave to do it. On Monday morning, his light was suddenly working again, and remained so for the MOT. I haven’t checked if it’s still working (in which case it may have been a loose connector that was resolved when I reconnected everything) or it may be a broken wire that I moved and will fail again in due course when the vibrations of driving dislodge it. Only time will tell.

Alas, Monday wasn’t such a great day for Erica. On the way to Telford her cab fan stopped working other than on max speed (leaving me alternating between not being able to hear the radio due to the noise of the fan, or not getting any heat into the cab on a -4 degree day). On the way back from Telford her engine management light came on. I’ve replaced her cab fan resistor, so that’s now working again, and she’s booked into the garage on Monday for her overdue service and to find out what is ailing her engine management system (whatever it is, she’s running fine, so at least she didn’t go into limp mode, or cause me to have to call the breakdown service less than a month after opting for the cheaper cover that has a call-out fee).

The faulty item

Had to take half the dashboard out to access it.

(As well as disassembling Erica, I also took the tumble dryer apart on Monday, but concluded that with it needing four new parts, coming to the best part of £100, and with it being over 20 years old, it was beyond economic repair. If I’d taken it apart when it started making a horrible noise, rather than waiting until it broke completely, it may have been salvageable.)

(Post-blog note: Erica went into limp mode on her way to the garage the following Monday, when she was already booked in for a service in any case. She ended up spending a couple of weeks at the garage, as the replacement of her EGR valve was a big job and one they couldn't fit in immediately, and it was of no value us having her back if she wasn't working. We finally picked her up and all was well for the first 25 miles, but then her engine management light came on again. Having spent an arm and a leg on the EGR valve, spirits sank with the thought that the garage had misdiagnosed and fixed the wrong (very expensive) thing. She spent another week off the road, pending her next appointment at the garage (we had her booked in for an MOT the following week, so waited for that appointment to come around). They modified some parameters with the new EGR valve and the problem was solved - phew! In the meantime, we managed to go from 6 January to 5 February without doing a full supermarket shop, managing with just the occasional purchase from the local Co-op to supplement the contents of the freezer that went from bursting at the seams to completely empty in that period. I cannot tell you how many times I said "It's no good, we're going to have to go shopping tomorrow", only then to come up with something else I could rustle up from the ingredients we had in the house.)

And We're Back in the Room...

1 July 2024

There has been rather a hiatus in posting on this blog.

I wrote a few posts back in January, whilst we were away for a weekend at Chatsworth. For reasons that I don't now recall, I didn't publish them and they lay forgotten on my laptop's hard drive.

The next time I wrote a post was in April, at which point I came to realise that the January posts hadn't been published. I went to rectify that, only to find that they were still on the same laptop hard drive. The problem was that in the intervening period I'd got a new laptop, and I was now in Scotland, some several hundred miles away from where that computer. I held the publication of the April post until we got home, but for absolutely no good reason I still didn't get around to posting them. 

So now here we are in July, and I'm about to travel back in time to January....

Wednesday 27 December - Perth

Where was Erica? To her surprise, and ours, she spent the night in the Park & Ride car park at Perth, where parking is free.

Weather: Bit rainy and a bit blowy.

After Christmas with Ma-in-Law in Halifax, it was an early start yesterday morning to drive up to Newtonmore in one go. Aware of a yellow weather warning for Storm Gerrit, I’d been keeping an eye on the forecast for Newtonmore and there was nothing that suggested our journey was ill-advised. The A9 is a major route that receives a lot of winter weather, and it is generally kept clear and open, but in any case, we were scheduled to arrive at our destination some hours before the forecast said it was going to snow.

The first part of the journey was unremarkable, and we arrived at Hamilton services right at lunch time. Making lunch was something of an endeavour; as we weren’t going to be spending a night during our transit north or south this time, we didn’t pack light, so Erica’s rear was well loaded (in hindsight, making some sandwiches before we left and packing a flask would have been a good plan).

It was as we lunched that I received a message from Ali in Newtonmore containing a screenshot of the Drumochter webcam:

This didn’t look promising, but we were going to be stopping in Perth for some groceries, so we would review the situation when we got there.

A short while after arriving at the Park & Ride in Perth (no point going to the supermarket and adding more to Erica’s load if we were going to be spending the night) the A9’s woes increased when the section between Dunkeld and Ballinluig was closed due to flooding.

Ignoring the flood issue for the time being, we refreshed the Drumochter webcam page obsessively, even though it only updates every half an hour, and for a while we were convinced the feed wasn’t working, until we realised that the variances in each half hour snap were so subtle that it was like a tricky game of spot the difference.  Those vehicles first appeared in front of the webcam in the image at 1029. They were all finally gone at 1654 (at 1629 all bar one had gone), by which time a major incident had been declared (I have no idea what that actually entails, but it sounds like resources have been allocated and attention is being focussed!).  

The webcam images are approximately 30 minutes apart, but looked liked a game of Spot the Difference for most of the day.

It didn’t take that long for us to decide that we were spending the night in Perth, and thanks to having a bedroom, kitchen, living room and toilet with us, the fact that there were more thwarted motorists than hotel rooms available didn’t affect us.

It’s amazing how much stuff you can cram into Erica’s cab when you need to – it swallowed five crates, one massive food chiller bag, three bags of shoes, a carrier bag of snacks and my knitting bag. That left the back clear for us to move around and to get the bed out.

Looking back from the passenger seat mid-journey. Had I known this photo would come in useful for the blog, I might have made more of an effort to make sure it was sufficiently illustrative.

The bed was out not long after 8. 'Lights out' was just after nine. The only disturbance was at eleven when I peered out to see a truck with orange lights flashing but I couldn’t see what they were doing to create the banging. We woke up just before 6am, when the temperature inside had dropped to a not-quite-comfortable-without-a-hat level, and soon had Erica’s heater making us comfortable again (don’t know how cold it got inside, other than it was low enough to kill the batteries in Erica’s room thermometer).

As we drove away just before 7am, we saw we’d been joined by 7 motorhomes at some point. I wonder if any of them had intended to spend the night there?

McDonalds provided us with a quick breakfast (we had breakfast makings with us, it was just too much effort to retrieve them from the back of a cupboard), over which we established firmly that the A9 was still open. Police Scotland had announced it to be passable at 2030 last night, but Google was still showing it to be closed at Drumochter. Thankfully, the A9 Traffic Info Facebook Group had recent confirmations from real people, and even better, the chaps on the next table had just driven down from Inverness.

The rest of the journey was uneventful. Half the carriageway was underwater just before Ballinluig, but traffic lights had been set up and at that hour of morning there was no queue.We arrived in Newtonmore 25 hours after leaving Halifax.

Snowy and grey but road completely clear. 

So, an unplanned night in Erica. No hardship to have broken the journey in Perth, but had it been planned we wouldn’t have troubled ourselves to leave Halifax until noon, giving us less time to sit around, listening to the rain drum down, in Perth.