Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nature. Show all posts

Friday, 18 July 2014

Foremark Reservoir a.k.a. A Very Traditional British Bank Holiday

I'm currently racked with indecision about the best way to forge ahead with my blogging. For a change I feel like I am bursting at the seams with things I want to blog about but I'm still struggling with finding the time and brain space to sit down and compose words, and find nice pictures and all those other things that you need to make a good blog post.

This indecision means that I am about a billion years behind on my blogging. I have been back from America almost four months (how is that possible?!) and still haven't finished blogging about that and things have actually been quite exciting for me lately meaning that the stuff is just piling up and ready to topple over.

I either post about things as soon as I do them and try and play catch up with others when I have the chance, or I start back at the beginning and resolutely work my way forwards.

I've already cocked that plan up by writing my post about The Color Run just after I'd done it....

Oh whatever...


Yeah that's right. Continuing on the theme of my last post, I'm going to ask you to stay in May. Go on, try and remember that far back and think about what you were up to on your Bank Holiday weekend.

Can't remember?

That's probably because it was a miserable piss wet through weekend.

Take a look at the below photo - I call it Bank Holiday Grey...


The Person doesn't automatically get Bank Holidays off so a lot of the time we're not together for Bank Holiday shenanigans but he'd booked this one off and we weren't going to let some absolutely dreadful weather get in the way of our fun. No thank you.

For we are British and that means that on Bank Holidays we go out in the nature whether the sun is out or not.

I borrowed my sister's car and we drove out to make the best of it. You would have to because seriously, look at how miserable it was. When we pulled up it was just so British I could I have cried. Over in the distance there was a couple determined to have a picnic and had their rug spread out, sheltering under a tree. By the kiosk there was a miserable looking teenager who had clearly been dragged out against her will with the rest of the family. And through the drizzle we could spy Super Active Family, with Dad striding out ahead and Mum and child valiantly struggling on behind him, all wearing matching kagoules.


I always act as if I don't like nature and that's not strictly true. If anything I can get very over-excited about nature because I'm still a city girl at heart and generally shy away from woods and trees.

The trouble is that nature for me is synonymous with aimless wandering. I don't really get the point of just "going on a walk". I get it more if you have a dog and you are exercising said canine. But two people, just out...walking...I can't really get my head around it.

"So where do we walk to?" I asked The Person.

"I don't know, you just walk." came the reply.


I was unconvinced.

The one downside of Foremark Reservoir is that you can't walk all the way around its perimeter. That is the kind of walking I can begin to get my head around, although only just. You walk for the sake of walking around the outside of something? It just jars a little in my head sometimes.

But I was there to explore and I was happy to get my nature on, even if there are some pretty steep hills and what feels like perilous steps around the reservoir.

I like trees though. I'm a fan of green. I'm a fan of leaves. All good things in my book.


The main problem with Foremark is that a lot of the time when you're walking around it you can't really see the water. There's a small part with a man-made beach but you can only go so far on that and then you're in very dense woodland for the rest of the time.

It's ok, but, you know, something to look at other than leaves would be nice.

We battled valiantly on for quite a while I think, but in the end the rain was just not stopping. Aimless walking, couple with persistent rain just does not make for a fun day out for me I'm afraid, it was literally dampening my spirits.


The only thing that could make me feel better?

A return to the kiosk to buy a cup of tea and a sit on the bench in the rain, getting a wet bum, because, let's face it, we were already wet anyway.

We watched the picnic couple pack up and silently saluted them. They'd done their best and had fought the good fight, but in the end the British Wet Bank Holiday will always win my friends.

Friday, 17 May 2013

Walk to work - BEDM Day 17

Let us cast our mind's back to last year - this post here details my commute each day. For those who can't be bothered to read it now or can't bring themselves to read it again - let me paraphrase. My commute was horrible. It involved walking 5.5 miles every day and catching a train and all for a job which was so awful it made me cry almost every single day for 4 long months.

Fast forward to now and things are very different.

Most of the time I get a lift into work with my sister but if she's not able to for whatever I reason I make the walk in and out. It's only 1.5 miles which is a piece of cake compared to the last commute, and even better, there's plenty to look at for the first three quarters of the walk. The rest of it is just a long road which is terribly boring.

Confession time. I took these photos in the evening on a walk back home from the gym.

So shoot me. The light was nicer anyway in your face.

First point of interest is this wall of flowers not far up the road from my sister's house. I can never remember what this looks like when it's not all colourful. I'm guessing just like a boring stone wall but right now it's a much welcome burst of colour.


I walk along the road up the hill. It's not a big hill but is rather a very long road on a terribly steady incline. Trust me, when you're attempting to run at it you are all too aware that it is up-hill, but when you're walking at a nice steady pace it's hardly anything to write home about.

The apex of the hill is this bridge over the railway track. I look at it and curse it. Because no trains run on this track. This place that I live in doesn't have a train station, despite the fact that it's perfectly placed for people to commute to Derby, Birmingham and Nottingham. *shakes fist*


And then it is on to a very secluded and very long pathway. This is not a great deal of fun in the dark let me tell you. But for now it is light late in the day and the beauty of this long pathway is what is on it...


...First I come to an old fallen down building of some sort. But this is just a prelude to the real show...


The castle! I am still not bored of seeing this on my walks to and from town and to and from work and my guess is that I will never get bored of seeing it. Castles are amezzing and this castle may have seen better days but it is still awesome and a dilapidated castle is better than no castle at all in my opinion.


Chances are when I'm walking down this pathway I'm also looking at the sky because I have a bit of a fondness for the sky. And the chances are that when it is sunny I'm taking a picture of the sky because I seem to have developed a bit of an obsession with blue skies and white clouds...


Coming to the end of the pathway I come out to the church (the clock is broken btw) and then it is a case of dodging past the school-kids on their way to the school opposite and a walk to the end of the road where I come to one of my all time favourite signs ever...


This sign.

I don't know why it makes me so happy. Maybe because it's all looking a little weatherbeaten. Maybe it's the font. Maybe it's that it has the word 'sluice' in it which is a satisfying word to say in your head.


And then it really is a boring walk down a main road which would not only be boring for you to look at pictures of but would have been embarassing for me to take.

And that is just one more reason why this job is better than my last one...

Saturday, 6 April 2013

Easter 2013

I feel it only fair to warn you that this post contains photos of flowers.

I know. I've become that which I rage against.

I'm still having an internal battle as to what I want this blog to be. I'm a person who actually quite enjoys a label and I find it difficult that I don't have an identifiable "thing" but at the same time I also quite enjoy just talking about a load of old bollocks and committing events to the everlasting memory that is the interwebs.

Easter wasn't just about taking part in the Easter Read-a-thon I'll have you know. I was busy doing all kinds of things apart from taking photos of me reading books and giving blood. This was a family weekend, with my Mum and The Person coming over to stay at my sister's for the Easter weekend.

It was also a kind of pre-birthday celebration for most of the people in the house. As I've mentioned in blog posts gone past there are a lot of birthdays in the last weeks of March/first week of April. Easter Monday was my nephew's birthday, the 4th is my and my brother-in-law's birthday and the 5th is my other nephew's birthday. Quite the birthday week.

My sister and all her lot are in Center Parcs this week (damn them!) and I will be with The Person on my birthday so this was a chance to have a little pre-birthday excitement.

This meant that I was allowed to do one of my favourite things ever - open presents early. Hurrah!

My Mum, sister, brother-in-law, brother and sister-in-law had all clubbed together to get me a present and I was allowed to open it up on Saturday night. I was beside myself to discover that it was my most coveted precious of all time. A Cambridge Satchel Company satchel, in my most beloved green with my initials embossed on it.

 Please note I am following one of my Fashion Blogger rules: Don't look directly at the camera. I'm learning!

I have squealed and stuck my head in it and breathed in deeply and generally been in a trance with it ever since. I love it I love it I love it. Although I feel that now I own one I need to seriously think about becoming a Fashion Blogger.

Just kidding.

I would show you better pictures of it but I don't have any so you'll just have to deal with it.

It was a weekend of not a great deal though - a couple of dog walks - which aren't the most stressless of activities given that neither dog is particularly good on a lead (totally my family's fault, they haven't made the effort with training them) - some wandering into the town centre, an awful lot of eating and just having some generally good times.

The collage below nicely sums it up - dogs, food, presents, flowers, nature. BOOM.

Easter L-R: Rosie looking longingly outside; birthday bruschetta; PRESENTS; birthday pavlova; flower alert; Nigella's Spring Chicken; Duck spotting on our Easter Sunday walk; pretty stream; Rowan having a paddle.

And finally I will leave you with this photo of Blinky.

This is not a photo where I just happen to have captured her and she looks like she's pulling an angry face, this is just how she looks all of the time. See what I'm up against?



And yes this post is late. But I think we know by know that they're always late when it comes to me. Please, feel free to re-live your own Easter.