Winter’s finally arrived… again!
We awoke this morning to find the garden beneath half an inch of snow. Seems filling the bird feeders and chopping logs for the stove yesterday was done in the nick of time.
Did I say in my last blog entry that we’d have new stuff on the website in November? I hadn’t anticipated just what a chore moving into a new home could be. Instead of the lick of paint and fresh wallpaper we anticipated, we’ve been spending our time ditching carpets (victims of pets that hadn’t been house-trained), exposing a crazy wiring system, adding insulation and generally planning how to get a JCB, three dump trucks and a flame thrower into the bathroom to cauterise the bad-taste suite we’ve inherited.
Gosh, listen to me, I’m getting all domestic in me new pad!
Actually, there’s been little scope for anything else. Within days of moving in I found I’d torn a ligament on my right knee (lifting plant pots, if you must know – in my defence Steph’s growing triffids) and the local doc immediately banned me from the hills and booked me in for a course of physiotherapy at Settle’s Health Centre.
I’ve got to say, the treatment and attention have been superb. Before I’d even left the doc’s surgery he’d dictated a letter to the physio, and before a letter inviting me to make an appointment had arrived the physio, Tim, had called me personally to invite me to drop by.
Since then I’ve had one or two weekly sessions of ultra sound, a gentle exercise regime (on my Dad’s old exercise bike!) and even massage…
And at last things are starting to look a whole lot better - this morning physio John said he reckoned there wasn’t much harm in me returning into the hills, long as I take it carefully.
My gratitude knows no bounds - if this is typical of the advantages of life in the sticks over life in the big city, then I’m sold, totally and utterly.
It’s snowed here before, since we moved in of course, but then I wasn’t able to take advantage. The furthest I got was a mile above the village, to Cattrigg Force with Glasgow pal Stuart, in a grand wee snow flurry.
After that the cold really set in, and Steph and I watched the level of the stream at the foot of the garden drop lower and lower, as the frost held all the moisture on the peat moors high above us. It was a little like living at the foot of a glacier, knowing that a rise in temperature could bring some pretty bad flooding – the last bad flood here was in ’85, before our time.
So I missed that first blast of winter. Instead I’ve been sat on my butt over Christmas and New Year, doing plenty of reading - Jon Krakauer’s into The Wilderness (superb) and John Hillaby’s Journey Through Love (a curate’s egg) are recent completions - and chatting to some very interesting folk, here and in the US, about the fine hikes they’ve been undertaking. The results of those chats will be coming to a TGO near you soon.
But tomorrow I’m going to take John the physio at his word and get out over Fountains Fell and Pen y Ghent with a bit of test gear, a packet of crisps and a few butties. The weather forecast is bright and cold, the pollen forecast low (we need to be told these things, even out of season!).
So maybe, just maybe, I’ll see you out there!
Have fun,
John