A whole month in London!
I stayed home in London for the whole of September. I went to all my fitness classes, made good progress with the baby afghan cross stitch I had started for Leanne, and caught up with all the admin and paperwork which had piled up over the summer as well as making some progress on the decluttering projects (new year resolution!).
I bought a new Freeview recorder and set it up quite easily - the other one finally gave up the ghost after many years and I needed one to be able to record programmes onto DVD for Jayne.
We went to the SRCY Triennial Dinner on Saturday 8th. We had both overlooked it until the day before when I saw it on my phone's calendar. Mike was out ringing QPs in the morning. I booked the taxi to take us to St Martin in the Fields. We went down to the cafe and found it full of normal customers. After a quick look round I checked my phone and found we should have been at Christ Church Spitalfields! We managed to hail a black cab straight away and got there just as they were sitting down to eat. It's a good job we had been aiming to get there at the start as it gave us enough time to get across town and still not be late for the actual dinner. It was a good do - the food was really nice and the speeches were entertaining. We saw lots of people we hadn't seen for a very long time.
Towards the end of the month I was really beginning to get cabin fever at being in London for so long, and was very fed up and bored of walking round the local parks. So I was very grateful when the opportunity arose to go on a couple of proper walks.
On 26 Setember I met up with Diane for a walk in the Surrey Hills near Box Hill. We decided to do the Ranmore Common Circular walk on their web site, starting from the Crabtree Lane car park. It was a lovely sunny day, which was so lucky after the atrocious weather at the weekend (storm Ali), and perfect for walking as the air was cool but the sun was warm and the sky was blue. It was a really good walk and there was not quite as much strenuous uphill as the description suggested. There were some excellent views across valleys to Dorking and to Box Hill and we also went through a vineyard. We had a jolly good catch up too. We were getting hungry around point 7, so we missed out the village of Westhumble (and extensive road walk) at the end and followed footpaths back to the car park (giving us the biggest steep uphill of the whole walk!). We still managed 5.8 miles (750 ft of ascent and descent) and were out for nearly 3 hours, although it was only two hours of walking as we sat down for a coffee in one of the fields for a while. Afterwards we had an excellent lunch at The Stepping Stones in Westhumble - dog friendly and served food all day. I had a 4oz steak with a few chips and a large tomato which just hit the spot.
On 1 October I went out with Maryanne, Madeleine and Kath for a walk starting in Little Missenden. Again we were very lucky with the weather - beautiful blue skies and sunshine but cool air. We met at Maryanne's house to admire the new kitchen and then drove to Little Missenden. There were a couple of times on the walk where we went slightly off route and had to retrace our steps - mainly because Maryanne's map had failed to load on her phone so all she had was a red line. Luckily I was able to keep an eye on things with my software. It was a really nice walk, 6.5 miles, 404 ft of ascent and descent, not too strenuous, and we finished by visiting the church in Little Missenden which has some medieval frescos which have recently been cleaned up. We had a nice sandwich lunch in the Red Lion pub - dog friendly. When I got home I slept for an hour to recharge the batteries before going out ringing at Chiswick in the evening.
I met up with Muffie for coffee at the cafe at the Sunbury Millennium Embroidery - we hadn't seen each other for a very long time and it was good to catch up and hear how the boys were doing. I also went out for supper with Caroline and Pru to Cafe Rouge at Hays Galleria. I wasn't impressed with the new menu, nor with my gristly rump steak, but it was a good evening.
It was Mike's birthday on 22nd and we had a good weekend. On Friday 21st the practice at Barnes was a really good one. We attempted Deva for the QP, which we didn't get but had a good few goes at practising it, and the rest of the evening we rang things well which came round (unheard of these days). We had a really nice meal in the Red Lion afterwards to cap the evening off. On Saturday (his actual birthday) we went to Pizza Express on the Chiswick High Road for a meal - we hadn't been out to eat just the two of us for several months. The following day we both joined the choir for choral evensong.
We went to Richard Sewell's farewell service and reception at Barnes on 16th - a long evening! Just before the service the bishop blessed the two new peal boards. There were many of the Saturday morning crowd ringing so the standard was dire! I kept out of it except for the service touch - stedman doubles which lasted about 30 changes before someone went wrong and it fired out.
Rang one handbell peal - Mike's first Cambridge Major in hand - and had several goes at the Lincolnshire with Ian on 5-6 without success. There was also another (unsuccessful) attempt at Cambridge Royal at Steve's.
I bought a new Freeview recorder and set it up quite easily - the other one finally gave up the ghost after many years and I needed one to be able to record programmes onto DVD for Jayne.
We went to the SRCY Triennial Dinner on Saturday 8th. We had both overlooked it until the day before when I saw it on my phone's calendar. Mike was out ringing QPs in the morning. I booked the taxi to take us to St Martin in the Fields. We went down to the cafe and found it full of normal customers. After a quick look round I checked my phone and found we should have been at Christ Church Spitalfields! We managed to hail a black cab straight away and got there just as they were sitting down to eat. It's a good job we had been aiming to get there at the start as it gave us enough time to get across town and still not be late for the actual dinner. It was a good do - the food was really nice and the speeches were entertaining. We saw lots of people we hadn't seen for a very long time.
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| selfie at the SRCY dinner |
On 26 Setember I met up with Diane for a walk in the Surrey Hills near Box Hill. We decided to do the Ranmore Common Circular walk on their web site, starting from the Crabtree Lane car park. It was a lovely sunny day, which was so lucky after the atrocious weather at the weekend (storm Ali), and perfect for walking as the air was cool but the sun was warm and the sky was blue. It was a really good walk and there was not quite as much strenuous uphill as the description suggested. There were some excellent views across valleys to Dorking and to Box Hill and we also went through a vineyard. We had a jolly good catch up too. We were getting hungry around point 7, so we missed out the village of Westhumble (and extensive road walk) at the end and followed footpaths back to the car park (giving us the biggest steep uphill of the whole walk!). We still managed 5.8 miles (750 ft of ascent and descent) and were out for nearly 3 hours, although it was only two hours of walking as we sat down for a coffee in one of the fields for a while. Afterwards we had an excellent lunch at The Stepping Stones in Westhumble - dog friendly and served food all day. I had a 4oz steak with a few chips and a large tomato which just hit the spot.
On 1 October I went out with Maryanne, Madeleine and Kath for a walk starting in Little Missenden. Again we were very lucky with the weather - beautiful blue skies and sunshine but cool air. We met at Maryanne's house to admire the new kitchen and then drove to Little Missenden. There were a couple of times on the walk where we went slightly off route and had to retrace our steps - mainly because Maryanne's map had failed to load on her phone so all she had was a red line. Luckily I was able to keep an eye on things with my software. It was a really nice walk, 6.5 miles, 404 ft of ascent and descent, not too strenuous, and we finished by visiting the church in Little Missenden which has some medieval frescos which have recently been cleaned up. We had a nice sandwich lunch in the Red Lion pub - dog friendly. When I got home I slept for an hour to recharge the batteries before going out ringing at Chiswick in the evening.
I met up with Muffie for coffee at the cafe at the Sunbury Millennium Embroidery - we hadn't seen each other for a very long time and it was good to catch up and hear how the boys were doing. I also went out for supper with Caroline and Pru to Cafe Rouge at Hays Galleria. I wasn't impressed with the new menu, nor with my gristly rump steak, but it was a good evening.
It was Mike's birthday on 22nd and we had a good weekend. On Friday 21st the practice at Barnes was a really good one. We attempted Deva for the QP, which we didn't get but had a good few goes at practising it, and the rest of the evening we rang things well which came round (unheard of these days). We had a really nice meal in the Red Lion afterwards to cap the evening off. On Saturday (his actual birthday) we went to Pizza Express on the Chiswick High Road for a meal - we hadn't been out to eat just the two of us for several months. The following day we both joined the choir for choral evensong.
We went to Richard Sewell's farewell service and reception at Barnes on 16th - a long evening! Just before the service the bishop blessed the two new peal boards. There were many of the Saturday morning crowd ringing so the standard was dire! I kept out of it except for the service touch - stedman doubles which lasted about 30 changes before someone went wrong and it fired out.
Rang one handbell peal - Mike's first Cambridge Major in hand - and had several goes at the Lincolnshire with Ian on 5-6 without success. There was also another (unsuccessful) attempt at Cambridge Royal at Steve's.
