Wet weekends
Feb. 6th, 2011 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustWhat with waiting in for the man to fix the water meter, we didn't really get out for a walk last Sunday - a brief stroll round the Botanic Gardens (it's now light until after five, which is a great relief, but the gardens still close at four).
Yesterday we met S. and went for a walk around the grounds at Gibside. Since S. had a dinner date, the plan was to arrive early and leave early; in fact we finished earlier than we had intended, as several paths were closed, some of them for planned forestry work, others for inadvertent forestry, where a tree had been brought down by storms. We still found enough to entertain us: good conversation, a couple of breathless uphill stretches, a clear stretch cut between the trees to provide vista of the monument, some pine-cones-that-weren't, which we couldn't identify, the red kite circling above us, the Derwent running full and fast, the little rapids completely under water, visible only by the splashy turbulence they created... Not to mention the food and craft fair, where we stocked up on pies and chocolate biscuit cake for our tea.
Today we drove across to Carlisle, to celebrate yet another birthday. It had rained in the night (as it had rained the previous night - we had been lucky to catch a dry spell for our walk). In the valleys, the rivers, both the Derwent and the Tyne, were full and muddy, the colour of milky coffee, but pretty much within their banks. Higher up, though, the fields were sodden, saturated, water pooling on the grass and overflowing, pouring out onto the roads in constant streams. It was strange to be driving uphill into the floods. But there were the most trivial of floods, and we reached our destination without trouble - and had a very happy afternoon of tea and cake and celebration of friends we don't see as often as we might.
Yesterday we met S. and went for a walk around the grounds at Gibside. Since S. had a dinner date, the plan was to arrive early and leave early; in fact we finished earlier than we had intended, as several paths were closed, some of them for planned forestry work, others for inadvertent forestry, where a tree had been brought down by storms. We still found enough to entertain us: good conversation, a couple of breathless uphill stretches, a clear stretch cut between the trees to provide vista of the monument, some pine-cones-that-weren't, which we couldn't identify, the red kite circling above us, the Derwent running full and fast, the little rapids completely under water, visible only by the splashy turbulence they created... Not to mention the food and craft fair, where we stocked up on pies and chocolate biscuit cake for our tea.Today we drove across to Carlisle, to celebrate yet another birthday. It had rained in the night (as it had rained the previous night - we had been lucky to catch a dry spell for our walk). In the valleys, the rivers, both the Derwent and the Tyne, were full and muddy, the colour of milky coffee, but pretty much within their banks. Higher up, though, the fields were sodden, saturated, water pooling on the grass and overflowing, pouring out onto the roads in constant streams. It was strange to be driving uphill into the floods. But there were the most trivial of floods, and we reached our destination without trouble - and had a very happy afternoon of tea and cake and celebration of friends we don't see as often as we might.
