Walking for Welland Part 2

Over the last week I have done a lot more walking for Welland; in fact nearly another 20 miles more, some just with Annie and some with Phil and Annie. Following our adventure on the Saturday we set out the next day to complete the route. However, I did rather overestimate our fitness level and four hours in Phil was limping and I was hobbling. The final hour was not the most pleasurable of my life, more a test of extreme endurance, with my hip grinding at every step and Phil groaning behind me. We finished the route though, all 18.75 miles of it (and that's not including the extra 3+ miles we did before finding muddybike man).

On the following Wednesday I decided I was well rested enough, and the weather glorious enough, to start route 2. Annie and I set off from Launde Abbey along what have to be some of the most fabulous bridleways in the country - mile upon mile of wide, grassy tracks just begging to be galloped. The scenary was beautiful, bucolic rolling hills patchworked with white speckled fields of sheep, rusty earthed plough and dark woods. Unfortunately about three miles in my hip started to nag, by four it was screaming. Not one to give up I decided to finish the leg of the walk and found a hazel branch to use as a walking stick. By five miles I was in my own little world of pain, shuffling forward one agonizing step at a time. Like Macbeth, I was now in too deep to go back, so on I battled. The scenary was still stunning, the tracks wide and welcoming, but I was in hell.

After what seemed like an eternity I reached the road and called Phil to come and get me. I managed to find a grit box to sit on while I waited. And waited. And waited. After about half an hour of being oggled and waved at by a farmer who kept coming backwards and forwards with a trailer full of dogs for no reason I could ascertain other than to see if I was still there, I got the "I'm lost" phone call. We spent a few minutes of "you need to turn left" "there isn't a left" "yes there is a left" "well I can't see a left" which disintegrated into that kind of infuriating non-argument that giving directions to someone who doesn't understand them invariably leads to, then we rang off and I waited hopefully. A couple more passes by farmer and dogs. No Phil. Eventually he managed to get what I meant by "turn left" and collected me, Annie and my stick from the grit box.

By this time I was in deep grump and demanded that he walk the last section as I couldn't, dropped him and Annie off at the end of the bridleway and drove off. I found the other end and proceeded to wait for him to turn up. Ten minutes later he called "I'm not doing it", so I had to go back and pick him up again, section unwalked, because his gout was playing up and his ankle hurt.

The final installment of Walking for Welland Part 2 was on Sunday when we actually walked the section Phil was supposed to walk on Wednesday. It was beautiful, the sun shone, there were daffodils everywhere and lambs boinging about in the fields. We didn't push it too hard, just about 4 miles and by the end my hip was beginning to nag and Phil's ankle to niggle so probably a good distance. We finished off with a very large meal at the Rose & Crown Pub in Tilton on the Hill, and returned home to find it was an hour later than we thought it was.

Annie learns to swim

Spaniels are supposed to love swimming. I keep seeing pictures of deliriously happy cockers, including Annie's parents and sister, splashing about in streams or doggy-paddling across lakes and rivers. Annie has so far shown no inclination toward this hobby whatsoever; the nearest she'll get to water is paddling in a puddle, and even then she prefers puddles that are more mud than water. So while we were at the fishing lake today I thought I'd try a more radical introduction to the wonders of swimming - I chucked her in. She swam. However, on struggling out of the lake up the bank, she ran away from me and it took ten minutes before she would come near me again. I apparently have the only spaniel in the world who doesn't like swimming.

There is a bit of a recurrent theme with non-swimming pets. Obviously the cats are averse, but none of my dogs or horses have liked water either. The fluffies are understandable as if they tried to swim they'd probably get waterlogged and sink, like giant powder-puff covered sponges. The arab probably still thought he was in a desert and found even dipping a toenail in a puddle unacceptable. But my other horses also preferred to steer clear of or leap over the tiniest drop of water, and my irish setter hated the stuff. None of these creatures showed any other signs of being infected with rabies incidentally. It's always been a bit of a disappointment to me as I imagined riding my horse through the breakers on a beach or gambling with my dog in the shallows of a lake. Instead, I have spent many frustrated hours knee deep in water at one end of a lead rein with horse planted stubbornly and unmovingly on dry land at the other end, or repeatedly throwing sticks into a pond and shouting "fetch" to a bemused canine.

So Annie, fear not, I get the message and won't subject you to enforced swimming practice again.

Walking for Welland

Now we're coming near to the end of the Ride Welland website development, one of the key features of the website is still sorely lacking - day and holiday ride maps and routecards. So emboldened by a few sessions on the WII Fit Phil and I set out this morning to walk a ride. As a day ride should be at least 16 miles long, we decided to break ourselves in gently and just do half. In fact, the bit we did this morning was supposed to be about seven miles, so a nice gentle stroll.

We parked cars at each end of the walk (Phil's at the Blue Dog in Sewstern and mine at the Nag's Head in Saltby), and off we set. The route was comprimised from the start, as the idea was that lunch would be at the Nag's Head.....which had a sign on the door saying it didn't open on Saturdays. Not much use for Ride Welland then. So the Blue Dog would be lunch stop instead.

The walk itself was absolutely gorgeous - a bit of quiet lane with wide verges followed by firm track. Some of the track was rutted by 4WDs, but all passable by a horse. An off-road motorcyclist passed us with a cheery wave, the single disturbance in a peace broken only by the songs of skylarks and yellowhammers. We eventually came upon an airfield with lots of gliders; in fact the path crossed the bottom of the runway and we were divebombed by gliders and 'planes coming in to land as they skimmed a few feet above out heads. Not sure how a horse would respond to that.

Past the airfield the track started to deteriorate. The 4WDs had made a tremendous mess, and we eventually had to concede that we could not suggest that riders come this way. As we turned back we heard a cry from farther down the track "I'm stuck". And sure enough, there was the motorcyclist sitting forlornly next to his entrenched bike. Keen to help, I volunteered to hold Annie while Phil joined him in the mud. After 10 minutes of heaving and pulling using Annie's lead and brute strength, they managed to free the bike and the mysterious motorcycist went on his way (I offered to email him a link to the blog but he said he wanted to stay anonymous).

We turned back and traced our steps, back past the airfield, back along the track to another bridleway I had decided to use instead. And what a joy it was! Two huge, grassy fields just crying out to be galloped across, followed by a track through a beautiful beech copse, then another fabulous canterable track with amazing views all the way to the edge of Saltby.

By the time we got back to my car we reckoned we had done about 10 miles because of having to double back and use a different route. 10 miles really isn't all that far on flat ground at a medium walk, but boy did it feel like we'd run a marathon. After a feeble attempt to pretend I'd left my keys in Phil's car we popped Annie in the back and returned to the Blue Dog for a yummy Stilton burger with chips.

Tomorrow we have part two of the ride - another 10 miles.....

Busy busy week

Firstly HAPPY BIRTHDAY PHIL. 45 today (though he probably doesn't want to be reminded of that).

Phew, where did that week go? I seem to have been really busy doing notalot - a day and a bit of paid work and a lot of work on my own website (http://www.mipmarketing.co.uk/) and leaflet, lots of walking and thinking and looking after poorly Phil. After an up and down week he was very sick again on Thursday night and went to see Tina (our lovely GP) on Friday morning. He had raging temperature along with watery, bloody diarrhea and she thinks it could be e-coli, likely caused by Annie licking his face (a warning to others - where dogs' tongues go is not where you would want your tongue to go). He stayed in bed all Friday and didn't eat anything until Saturday night. This seems to have done the trick though, as he's me or less back to his normal self now, if a bit thin and weak.

Saturday Phil and I ventured into Oakham Library (a cost saving initiative - I have always bought new books from the supermarket) and bumped into friends Julia and Peter who have an alarmingly peripatetic lifestyle. Peter works across Europe on aircraft engineering contracts, they have a house in France and a house in Langham, and a few months ago they decided to sell (or rent if they couldn't sell) their UK house, so rehomed their two cats (which I organised for them - they are now renamed and living very happily with our dear ex-neighbours Antida and Wim round the corner in Market Overton), sold all their furniture on ebay and off they went to live in Italy where Peter's latest contract was. Now they're back - Peter's contract ended and the only new work he could get was in Marham which is somewhere over in the fens I think. Unfortunately for them, having sold all their furniture they're living in a completely empty house, not even a bed to lie on or chair to sit on. I suggested Freecycle. It's amazing what you can find on Rutland Freecycle - yesterday someone successfully rehomed a tarantula.

On the way home we popped into the Co-op garage where my friend Sandra works. The Co-op burnt down last year, apparently due to some cleverclogs breaking in using a blow torch. While a new building is erected the store is housed in a huge marquee, which is really quite incredible and doesn't feel like a tent at all. Anyway, had a short chat with Sandra and picked up the Co-op phone number to see if I can get some part-time work to bolster my irregular consulting income. Sandra recently bought a scooter which I would find quite terrifying - she agreed that she finds riding on the main road scarey and sticks to the lanes where possible.

Tonight is pub quiz night; home to Oakham Rugby Club. Thank goodness for that - the Rugby Club is a horrendous venue; a freezing shed. They did make the most amazing supper though.

Other than that, things have been pretty quiet the last week, so not much to report. Some nice but uneventful walks with Annie (yesterday she put up a hare which was VERY exciting) trips to the supermarket and Oakham, signing up with temp agencies and talking to mmmmmm - not saying anymore or my mother will get all excited....

A trip to the hospital

I was woken at 4.30am Sunday morning by the endearing sound of my husband being violently sick in the bathroom. He kindly offered to go downstairs, but then proceeded to be regularly sick in the downstairs loo, which has a squeaky door, so every time I managed to doze off eeearek and I was awake again. At 6am I finally gave up and went downstairs to ask how he was and was there anything I could do, to which he responded "call an ambulance". This elicited a sense of deja vu; the scenario was an almost exact repetition of last summer's appendicitis episode. As the offending body part had been removed then, at least we knew what wasn't the matter.

Rather than waste time and cause gossip, I quickly showered, dressed and ushered Phil (still in dressing gown) and Annie into the car and sped off with them to Peterborough District Hospital. I really wanted to go to Hinchinbrooke as it's a nice hospital, but Phil insisted on Peterborough because it was closer. Peterborough Hospital is perfectly ghastly; a concrete block with few windows and covered in filth; fortunately all the doctors, nurses and staff we met were perfectly lovely. Phil spent the whole journey fidegeting, groaning and occasionally puking into the empty equivite tub he was nursing. He gave an oscar winning performance of being on death's door, and I seriously began to worry he was having a heart attack.

On arrival at the hospital I dropped him straight off at the entrance and went to find a parking place. Leaving an irate Annie alone in the car I found what appeared to be the main entrance of the hospital, although it was locked, and there were huge red-lettered signs everywhere telling people not to enter if they were suffering from nausea or vomiting. I followed a woman in who knew the code, and she promptly disappeared leaving me in an empty atrium wondering where on earth my husband had disppeared to. I wandered up and down a couple of empty corridors, and finally came across an elderly lady in dressing gown and slippers who pointed me back the way I came. So I found myself back in the still-empty atrium, beginning to wonder if I was dreaming this whole episode. At one point a young woman with a baby in a pram appeared and asked me where X-Ray was. Not knowing I pointed to a sign saying X-Ray, and magically a doctor (or perhaps radiographer) in a burgundy-coloured tunic appeared out of a side door, called the name of the woman and they disappeared together through the door before I could ask where my husband might be hiding.

By now I was imagining various pessimistic scenarios, including:
1. Phil had not managed to get through the locked door, had tried to find me again and was now lying dead in a gutter somewhere.
2. Phil had been turned away because he was experiencing nausea and vomiting and was lying dead in a gutter somewhere.
3. Phil had somehow managed to find someone who worked in the hospital, had collapsed and was currently in resuss or the morgue.

As I pondered these outcomes, I followed a different corridor and suddenly came upon a cubical stuffed full of doctors and nurses. I poured out my story, one of the nurses referred to a clipboard, and said "He's in the waiting room". As I had assumed the atrium (which had a reception desk and was full of chairs) was the waiting room I asked what she meant. It turns out that the waiting room I had discovered, the one by what looked like the main entrance, was the outpatients waiting room not the A & E waiting room. She pointed me down a thin corridor and I emerged in the right waiting room, where my husband sat in his dressing gown with his equivite tub still looking as though he was about to pop his clogs any second.

After a wait of about 45 minutes we were finally called through to see a triage nurse and Phil put his heart and soul into an oscar winning performance of someone who is unlikely to survive more than ten minutes. The poor nurse had to keep asking him to sit up on the chair rather than sliding off it onto the floor or keeling over backwards. It seemed to work, as we were hurried through to the A&E ward and another nurse came and attached Phil to an ECG machine.
Fortunately, despite a poor first reading (Phil was still in the throes of his performance and couldn't keep his legs still) it seemed that his heart was fine. A nurse came back little later with some Gaviscon and painkillers, which Phil took then promptly threw up, so a little while after that the nurse came back again to insert a canula and take blood. Unfortunately for Phil this particular nurse was clearly a beginner at this, and stabbed him with shakey hands a couple of times before admitting defeat and asking another nurse to do it for her. After taking bloods, the nurse slowly inserted a syringe full of morphine, and Phil at last stopped writhing.

A charming young doctor appeared and asked questions and prodded about as doctors do. And the prognosis was......probably acid indigestion brought on by last night's curry (and when I thought about it later, initiated by the two plus litres of cola he drinks every day). Phil wasn't having any of this and insisted that it must be a peptic ulcer caused by a virus. Fortunately the medicine the doctor prescribed works for both conditions, so Phil can maintain his conviction that there must have been more wrong with him than a bit of heartburn.

As we then had an hour or so to wait for the blood results to come back, the doctor directed me to a nearby park and I took Annie for a run. The park was great - a huge field full of birds to chase and with the River Nene running through floated by swans for Annie to bark at (they hissed back). After half an hour walking around the park and a quick trip to Asda, I returned to find Phil asleep. A little while later the doctor came back with the blood results, proclaiming Phil to be fit as fiddle except for a bit dehydrated, so they attached a bag of saline to him and told us we could go when the bag was finished. As this would take about an hour I settled into the chair next to him and managed to fall asleep for a few minutes.

Finally the bag ran out, Phil was discharged and settled into the back seat of the car with an exhuberent Annie. We were home by 1pm and both of us (and Annie who sleeps with us as she can't be left alone for more than 5 minutes without tearing the house apart) managed to catch up on a little sleep during the afternoon. Phil is still poorly today but merely in intense pain rather than unbearable agony, so some improvement there.

A busy few days

The last few days have been welcomingly busy as I have been given some consultancy work helping with the Ride Welland Equestrian Tourism & Leisure project. I was full time Project Manager for Ride Welland before leaving for the more secure, permanent position (haha) I was made redundant from. Shortly before I left I started the management of the design and build of the website, and it is this I am working on to bring it to completion.

Whilst a considerable amount of the work is fairly tedious, some bits are fun. I needed some photos for parts of the site, so I rustled up a couple of friends and their horses and hopped in my shiny new car with my trusty Nikon SLR. Firstly I met with Chris and her lovely black mare, Millie, who posed for me outside the White Lion for a photo to illustrate "Where to eat with your horse". Chris is the wife of the Lord Lieutenant for Rutland, a role I still don't really understand, but means they're in the local papers a lot and get Christmas cards from the Royal Family.

Then I toddled off to a village near Uppingham and the farm, livery yard and B&B owned and run by Sue. There I helped Sue groom and tack up the huge and gorgeous bay Rufus, who was good as gold and very chilled, and took some photos outside the front of the B&B for "Where to stay with your horse".

The website is still a way off completion, but should be live by the end of April. I'll post a link when it's ready.

Then pub quiz team

Phil and I are members of the Black Bull Quiz Team, and we play home and away most Tuesday evenings throughout the winter months. We are provided with a supper at half time, and the quality of the food at each venue is subject to much analysis. Last night we managed a narrow victory (away) of 86 v 42 points over the Black Horse in Greetham. The Black Horse provided a lovely shepherd's pie and chips.

The quiz team is captained by our very own postmaster, Alan. Alan is a Z list celebrity by dint of appearing in, and winning, the Weakest Link, and telling the world he sells mouldy vegetables and likes wearing women's clothing. The other mainstayers are David and Celia (Annie's sitters) who are fearsomely knowleadgeable (a little bird tells me they ask each other questions in bed), although Celia did raise a laugh last night when she answered 12 to the question how many players are there in a polo team. Charge of the light brigade comes to mind.

The main problem with the Rutland Quiz League is that nobody wants to be in the first division, so toward the end of the season we all start trying to lose. Although I haven't experienced it, apparently the first division is very serious and the food not so good. We managed to lose two games in a row until last night (possibly partly due to the fact that David and Celia were absent), but are still dangerously near the top of the second division. It's very difficult, not to say unethical, to deliberately get questions wrong if you know the right answer. However, David and Celia are away again soon, so we'll probably manage to lose those games more easily.

VTOL and other air activities

There's been rather a lot of activity in the air this morning, some a bit mysterious, so I took Annie to the Crash Gate. As well as managing to take this pic of Harrier doing it' s VTOL thing (right), I observed a largish, passenger-type jet (left) flying round in big circles and not quite landing every 10 minutes or so (I think it's still doing it now). Or it could be a series of identical jets I suppose. The 'plane flies down to a few feet above the runway, landing lights blazing, but instead of landing speeds off, up and away again. This seems a rather pointless exercise, and I've been trying to come up with an explanation. Is is pilot training in how to not quite land (in which case I would have thought actually landing would be more useful)? Or is it flown by a pilot who's scared to land and keeps nearly getting there and then thinking "eeeek, can't do it" and flying off again? Is the landing gear not dropping like that 'plane a few days ago, so it keeps coming round for another try? Is it testing the engines?

Here's a picture of the Crash Gate as described a few days ago. There's nothing amongst the various warning signs to say you can't take photos, so hopefully I won't be whisked off to jail like those pensioners in Greece.

My shiny new car

Hoorah, hoorah, I have a new car! After trying four yesterday (no. 1 a rust bucket which was curiously a different colour at the back than the front; no. 2 a rust bucket the size of a thimble and colour of radioactive sick; nos. 3 & 4 nice enough cars but being sold by a secret dealer so over budget) then being told that the the first four cars I called about this morning had been sold (one ten minutes earlier) I was feeling rather despondent, and seriously considering a friend's offer of a loan of her scooter. Then I came across this gem and fate was sealed.

We did have venture out of Rutland into East Northamptonshire, but it was fine as the village was gorgeous and the cottage the car lived at even prettier than ours. The chap selling the car is moving to Zanzibar to run a beach hotel - a genuine reason to sell if ever there was one. I played a hard negotiating game with the owner as I test drove the car, along the lines of "I'm desparate, I want to buy it now". We then continued this fierce battle over a cup of coffee in the lovely garden, while Annie tussled with the owner's black lab, and the owner for no apparent reason other than he had the hangover from hell, knocked £100 off the price. Presumably he wanted to get rid of us quickly so he could have a lie down.

Anyway, about the car. It's a top of the range Mondeo and has everything you could possible want - leather seats and electric absolutely everything. Comparing this car to what I saw yesterday is like comparing Annie with Anne Widdicombe. There are a couple of tiny rust patches which I hope to T-cut (when I learn what that is), a tiny tear in the leather cover on the passenger door which superglue will fix, the rear view mirror needs to be stuck back on and the CD autochanger doesn't work for reason not known. Other than these minor faults, it's absolutely perfect.

So now we're officially a two Mondeo family.