Storm Doris.

Gale force winds due to Storm Doris blew through the night and all day long. At least they have blown away the low cloud and the sky is blue once more with clouds racing across. I went into town this morning and took extra care driving by the trees in Burridge, keeping my eyes on the trees and then speeding up a bit to get past safely. I got held up at the hospital traffic lights and a quick look on line has yielded the information that they are putting in a small roundabout instead of the lights.

My trip to town today was to meet a friend for coffee at Lindsey's. We both had the raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake which is my favourite though I wouldn't turn up my nose at any of the varieties on offer. We had a great catch up and were in there chatting for about an hour. I had parked at the all-day car park so I was able to take my time walking back down the High St. popping into some shops and then going to the library. Then I went over to BJ's and used some of the gardening vouchers I'd been given at school for my 60th birthday to buy some plant pots. My acers are in ordinary plastic pots and the 2 oldest ones desperately needed re-potting. I had been keeping my eyes open for some nice plastic pots and rather liked the 2 grey pots. It was quite funny at BJ's as a number of the plastic pots had blown all over the place. I was hoping to get a third matching pot but they didn't have anymore in the colour and size (the paving slab is 2 ft. square). The smaller dumpy pot is frost proof terracotta. I found it at half price in the clearance corner. Ceramic pots look better in the long term but filled with soil they can be extremely heavy. I've already re-potted 3 acers into the new pots. That was much harder than I anticipated as the big acers were very hard to get out of their old pots. In the end I had to smash the sides of one of the old plastic pots because no matter how much I loosened the sides with a kitchen carving knife the acer wouldn't come out.

I also dropped into Tesco's for some shopping. I had seen these mugs the last time I was there but decided that I didn't really need another mug. This one was one of two in the half price section, all because of a tiny chip on the bottom. It's only noticeable if you run you finger around the bottom so I had to have it. Driving home the winds shook my little car a number of times as I drove over the New Bridge. Then as I was coming up to the Muddiford turn-off there was a Road Closed sign on the main road which leads home. The sign also said access only to Wooley Lodge a place name I didn't recognise. I decided to stay on my normal road as there are a couple of detours I could take further up if necessary. Luckily the road was clear all the way for me, I think Wooley Lodge is at the top of Zig-Zag, part of the Arlington court estate. We were going to take a drive down to Woolacombe in the afternoon as it's wild and stormy but a quick view of the beach web cam showed that the wind had flattened the waves which were messy but small so we decided not to bother.