Bye To Junk.

It has been a lovely sunny day but much colder in the wind and/or shade. My first job of the morning was to take another car load of junk down to the recycling centre. Something I always find satisfying.

Most of the rest of the day has been spent clearing up one of the sheds. I've put the bikes in there for the moment but I'm tempted to get rid of those as well as they are looking very old and dilapidated.

Looking across our valley towards Exmoor. Our neighbours' house is the white one in the foreground but our house is completely hidden by the trees.

The drive down to our valley runs on the other side of the long hedge bordering the field with the tiny dots that are sheep.

The country lanes are a joy to drive along. Who needs the Chelsea Flower Show when you have this to admire on your daily journey? I saw a bit of a programme covering the show and in the gold medal winning small urban garden they had included cow parsley though not in such abundance.

This was the road where once I started turning my walks into runs. Being a non-athlete and not too fit (I was actually very anaemic) I started by running from the corner to the second telegraph pole, not a very great distance. I ran 5 or 6 times a week and my only rule was that I had to at least run the same distance as the previous day and attempt to run 1 or 2 more poles if possible. I would then continue by walking to the main road before retracing my steps. Luckily this is a very quiet road and very few people saw me puffing and panting and turning bright red. From such tiny beginnings I was finally running the whole way from the top of our drive to the main road and back , a total of 1.7 miles (I measured it in the car). Unfortunately my knee which had never been too good became so painful that the doctor said I had to give up the running. That was such a disappointment. Now I have to confine myself to walking. It is so much easier to loose weight if you can do some serious exercise but now I'm stuck with eating less, bah!