Long weekends and good news..

 Four lovely days of feeling absolutely no pressure to be productive - it doesn’t get much better than that right now! I’ve never been someone who lives for weekends and has a sinking feeling of impending doom on Sunday nights, well aside from a couple of years in a truly toxic job shortly before I got out of the construction industry anyway. Recently though I’ve really started to empathise with the people for who that is just standard, as it has got increasingly harder to fill weekdays. The good news from today though - notably that English lockdown easing continues as scheduled - means that our upcoming planned trip to Cornwall  can definitely now go ahead which is great news for us! 

I’ve actually really enjoyed this weekend - it’s a rare year when we are at home over Easter, and last year lockdown was still too new and raw, alongside the fact that we would otherwise  have been on Lundy celebrating a pal’s birthday - to truly appreciate the novelty of 4 days empty to fill as we wish. 

Among other things done, we’ve bought the plants for the pots that live on the two balconies, and got those planted up - still a few things to find homes for, but first we need to hope they will all survive the frost expected tonight! 

We also got some nice views of the Thames from the RSPB reserve at Rainham - the reserve still has the one way system in place so instead of going right round we opted to dive out onto the river path via the handy one way turnstile gate part way round, and walked up to the hill at the old landfill site with its great views across to that bit of Kent that likes to pretend it’s London. 

More exploring at Amwell too - just a handful of miles up the road but of course very off limits from here for the past few months so it was lovely to be back. Not a long walk, but a stretch of the Amwell Walkway  which is along the line of a former railway, hence the bridge...

...and then more views  - this time from the new-to-us Widbury Hill. Not massively high but a nice short sharp climb up and then the reward from the top of the panorama of the Lea Valley stretching out ahead of you. One to return to for sure.  

Then today a nice 4 mile loop out at Norton Mandeville - starting of course with the train, rather more graffitied than the last time we saw it sadly, and with more of the interior pulled out too. It is still entirely baffling why someone would go to the trouble of buying the thing, and having it hauled to it’s current position, and then just leave it to rot. 

Underlining that spring is very definitely now with us is the fact that the oil seed rape is bursting into its full yellow glory - and THAT in turn means I’ve been sneezing for the rest of the evening, ho hum! 

For various reasons all our walks this weekend have been relatively short but also all really nice - we’ve deliberately still stayed fairly close to home, it’s nice exploring areas that we’ve been unable to visit for a while, apart from anything else, and we do after all have plenty of further afield exploring planned for the not too distant future, too! 

Robyn 

Long walk Sunday...

 Well, long-ISH anyway - at just over 8 miles this one was far from our longest effort, but definitely racks up as one of the nicest, I think! 

Like so many people, we’re starting to find it a bit of a challenge to come up with anywhere different to walk now - having spent very nearly a year all bar the 4 weeks we’ve spent in the Hebrides having a LOT of time to walk locally, we had rather begun to feel that we’d explored just about everywhere we could around the area, and quite a lot of it many times, too!  With another month at least before we’re going to be going anywhere new, we turned to the trusty OS Maps app for inspiration again, and MrEH suggested that we headed out on a path that I’d found on one of my solo walks a few weeks ago. 

Out through Old Harlow and into Harlowbury - that’s the Harlowbury Chapel above, a scheduled ancient monument no less, and dating back to 1180 it is, by some way, Harlow’s oldest building. There’s no access to the chapel now sadly, other than on occasional open days, but it’s quite nice just to walk past. 

On then and initially through a new housing development which sadly has played havoc with the footpaths  - the developers having seemingly closed quite a lot of them with no signage and no diversions, we had to backtrack and eventually resort to following a road to a completely different to the one we had planned to use, but thankfully did find that one had been restored and were soon alongside the wonderful Gibberd Garden - the former home of our inspired Town Planner and home of rather a lot of his extensive sculpture collection some of which is in plain sight as you walk by - it’s most entertaining to be walking along a lovely lane and suddenly spot a huge pair of stone columns rising up to your right, or a 20th Century polished steel effort of wonderful sweeping curves... The garden is also the home of our local beer festival in normal times - an event which also gives you admission to the gardens themselves, a lovely treat! 

The path then continues down towards the railway line - and gets quite muddy in places - but amusingly continues straight under this fallen tree (there’s plenty of room to pass beneath!) before getting to the bridge - where for a moment we thought flooding was going to cause a problem, but nope, someone had a solution to that...

Yes, that is a sort of causeway of fallen branches and lengths of old tubing, and yes, back beyond it that is a line of blocks that have been placed as sort of stepping stones to enable you to pass through without getting your feet wet! 

By this stage the sun had largely retreated in exchange for these gorgeous clouds, and it was starting to feel quite chilly, but not enough so that when we realised a little diversion across a field using an obvious and well trodden path would bring us to the river and the option to use the towpath for part of our return towards home. 

And once there we were rewarded with first the reflection of those clouds on the water, and second a nice chat with a couple litterpicking alongside the path - they’d already got three bags pretty much full and sadly this is just one of many times they’ve been out and gathered a similar amount. 

Back through Old Harlow and this lovely yarn bombing had appeared since we passed by earlier! I’ll be keeping my eye out for any more of these appearing now - SO bright and cheerful! Maybe that’s something I could use my elementary crochet skills for? 

Robyn 

Short and sweet...

 

Well, that’s my jury service done and dusted! I attended last week one day which only ended up being the induction before we were all dismissed for the day - as I said in an earlier post. I thought I was returning the following day for a case, but got a call a couple of hours ahead to say that case had collapsed also! Then Monday saw another trip to the court - this time we got as far as jury selection but my name was not among the 12 called out, and so an hour after arriving it was back home again! Then yesterday afternoon saw a call from the jury officer to say that they were in a position to dismiss week 2 jurors. I did have the option to extend for another week - but due to the nature of the trials (both possibles were longer ones, and  the “subject matter” was mentioned as part of the brief summary description) I have declined unless they are really short on numbers. Allowing for how badly my coroners court experience 14 years ago affected me, I felt that probably I was not in the right place mentally to put myself through another “heavy” experience. Thankfully, Coroners experience plus being on my second stint of jury service does carry some weight in this instance and the lovely jury officer said that on that basis she was releasing me from service. 

I’m glad to have been called again - partly because the timing was ideal with my furlough, and partly because it did mean that for a couple of days at least I got to go out, interact with other people, and actually feel a bit more sense of purpose. I feel almost as though it “reset” me a bit in some ways - perhaps because it coincided with the god-awful scaffolding being removed from the outside of the building here, and also that the evenings are now very distinctly starting to draw out. Either way, things suddenly seem to be brighter and rather easier to cope with. 

I also seized the chance for a short walk to kill some time before I was due to be at the court on Monday - a little way along the river, and past the rather fantastic war memorial garden as you can see from the photos. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into its planning - from the rather beautiful benches, to the woven sculpture of the soldier. Admittedly the backdrop of retail units isn’t the best, but it’s still a good effort. 

So now, life returns to what currently passes for normal in this weird situation we still find ourselves dealing with. We’re now starting to tick off the “one year since” milestones here in the U.K. This time last year we were just starting to truly understand what we might be dealing with, although the sheer scale of it certainly took us all by surprise.  

Robyn

It’s good to be back...

Another little bit of normality tonight as the bar at the rugby club reopened for the first time since 20th March. We went down and met up with some of the same friends we drank with there on that night for a few beers - it seemed only fitting that those of us who had helped them drink the stock in the run up to the forced but necessary closure also kicked things off again at the reopening.  

The club is a huge part of both of our lives in normal circumstances - although rugby is primarily MrEH’s “thing” we’re both involved with the team he plays for as I regularly take photos for them as well. Even when I’m not photographing I frequently pop down to the club to meet the guys after matches for drinks and the post mortem. I’m not always the best at socialising, but there, with people I know well, I almost always feel at ease, and that is something I have really missed. 

Now, we have a long weekend ahead. We both had holiday time booked for this coming week originally for the beer festival - with the cancellation of that we cancelled the holiday too, but MrEH left Monday in place as he felt that by then a simple day off might be a good thing. No plans as yet,  we’re playing this one by ear, but the weather is forecast to remain reasonably good so we intend to get out and about a bit!

Robyn 

Long walk Sunday...

Each time we go to the Farmers Market, we park (with permission!) in the car park of the village pub. Yesterday, MrEH suddenly said “you know, we should walk across here for a beer tomorrow, to give something back for the use of the car park for all these years!” Now those that know me will be entirely unsurprised that I didn’t disagree in the slightest with this idea - so late morning today we wandered out to do exactly that.

By road, Matching Tye where the market is held is only 4 miles away, but naturally we had no wish to walk any more of it on the roads than we had to, so a nice circular route was worked out returning via a field a couple of miles from home where we happen to know there are plum trees... first though, the way there. Once through Newhall - the slightly odd new development on the outskirts of Harlow that I have written about here before, it was retracing steps from a route we walked in the opposite direction on one of our first longer walks at the beginning of lockdown - over the motorway, then across to the village of Hobbs Cross before continuing on a short stretch of road then off across fields again. Some gorgeous views...

...albeit a rather more cloudy day than we might have hoped for mid July! Our plan had been to just have a beer or two at the pub, but a quick sneaky peek at their menu indicated some rather tempting sounding sandwiches, and more importantly cheesy chips, so we decided to have lunch too. (Get us - lunch out, just like the olden days...!) The beer was a choice of Sharps Doom Bar or Greene King IPA - not exciting options but both (he had the GK, I went for DB) were well kept and perfectly drinkable, and the food was delicious.

A brief burst of excitement on the way back as we spotted a striking small mainly yellow bird sitting among the crop in a field. Yellowhammer? Nope, wrong bill shape. That also ruled out Siskin or the rarer Serin - but we eventually realised that in spite of the completely wrong habitat what we were looking at was a Yellow Wagtail - a lovely and unexpected surprise.

Masses of fantastic wildflowers everywhere still as well - the last of the poppies, yellow agrimony, field bindweed with its little pink & white  striped flowers, some of the orchids we found close to the motorway the other week, and various other things including the blue beauties above - not sure what they are as yet but MrEH is looking them up as we speak. Also plenty of butterflies still - countless Large White, Gatekeeper,  Speckled Wood, as well as the tiny orange skippers, and the odd Ringlet, Red Admiral and Peacock.

Onwards towards home then - over the motorway - FAR busier again now...

...then to the field with the plums....some, but not that many yet, we’ll return again in a week or so. A good 10.5 miles in the end though - the longest I’ve done in boots for a while, but with (hopefully!) our Hebrides trip not too far away in the horizon, I need to get my feet used to wearing them again.

Now to turn thoughts towards the week ahead. Possibly another aviation adventure - that is TBC at the moment. Other than that though nothing specific planned - let’s see what happens!

Robyn

Day 90...

Another a Sunday and another walk out exploring the local area. MrEH’s turn to choose the direction today, and he opted for out over Harlow Common towards the motorway, then south towards its junction with the main road back into town. Paused for a while on the Common to have a chat with the resident ponies...

..then on along the footpath, with some unexpectedly good views through the trees. 

...OK, occasionally slightly marred views, but still... ;-) 

Our trusty OS Map has started to look a bit battered now - and we’ve talked about possibly buying a more up to date one and then marking up the paths we’ve walked on the current one. Realistically, if it hadn’t been for the restrictions put in place by Covid-19 and the lockdown we probably wouldn’t have explored half the areas we have over the past few weeks, but it’s been such good fun, it’s definitely one of the good things to have come out of this crazy situation. 

People have a habit of saying that our local area is dull, boring, featureless - and I guess even living here you have a habit of  comparing it with other areas of the country, and finding it wanting, but on a day like today, it really is quite beautiful. A lot of today’s walk was close to the motorway - and yes, slightly marred by the traffic noise which is now back to approaching normal levels - but still some stunning views.

Also stunning wildlife - wildflowers, butterflies, and birds. We’re gradually learning more about the flowers and the butterflies - today’s highlights include seeing absolutely MASSES of Skipper, Small Tortoiseshell and Gatekeeper butterflies, some beautiful wild roses and also these rather wonderful orchids...

...which we’re struggling to identify at the moment. Bizarrely these seem to mainly be clustered around the motorway - we’ve not seen them anywhere else locally! We also saw a Yellowhammer again today - you might remember that we only saw our first of those a few weeks ago, so it was a definite treat to see another!

Robyn

Day 74...

Today... A socially distanced walk with my parents and the dog, and an apparently entirely abandoned underground train drive unit, in a field...

We have no idea of the backstory that lead it to be there - as far as we can tell it’s about 80-odd years old though - late 1930’s “P” stock we think. It would have run on the District line, which makes it ironic that where it has ended up is not a million miles from where, until, the mid 90’s, the Central line terminated.

Yes - that’s the dog, looking as though butter simply wouldn’t melt. Best not to be fooled by that expression... She’s not a Poodle although looking a little like one after a “short back and sides” at the groomers earlier in the week. She was clearly delighted to have a couple more people to pay her attention today anyway!

This was today’s other triumph - my latest sourdough attempt. A little flatter than I would ideally like as it stuck to the cloth lining the bowl I proved it in, which pulled out some of the rise as I detached it. The texture however is the best I’ve achieved so far - lots of lovely air holes and a far more open crumb. The taste has been good on all the loaves so far, but it’s definitely getting even better week by week as the starter improves too.

Robyn

Gnat Display Team - North Weald

A couple of weeks ago I was idly browsing on twitter early one Saturday afternoon - MrEH was out at rugby, and I had the afternoon to myself. Suddenly I spotted a tweet from our locally based aerobatic team saying that as the weather was clearing, they were getting ready to get their three Folland Gnats airborne - after my very own "Scramble! Scramble!" moment, I found myself in the car with camera and stepladder, heading in the direction of North Weald airfield. 

Not being sure exactly how long they'd take to get ready and head away, I started off "landside" as it were - the car-park side of the runway fence - with the "non-live" side of the airfield being used for the Saturday market there were a fair number of folk there just having a look to see what was going on and I was able to let a couple of them know that something a bit special was going to be taking off in a while, and sure enough, before too long this happened...

That gives you some idea of the sort of blast you get behind three jets taking off! Takeoffs from that direction at North Weald are fab as jets are still nice and low as they come past you...

 

Once they'd headed off to go and do their display practise (they're currently getting ready for the 2014 display season) I hopped back into the car and drove around to the "live side" - there's a car park round there for the cafe MrEH and I like, and I'd been told you could park there and then walk back around the perimeter road to the Gnats hangar. The first thing you pass, pretty much, is this...

...yes, our local Air Ambulance. Note it's "G-HAAT" registration - Herts Air Ambulance Trust is the name of the charity that runs it - good eh? (The London one currently bears G-EHMS - standing for Emergency Helicopter Medical Service) Apologies to it for cutting it's tail and rotors off by the way - I couldn't get any further back than that!  Thankfully all was quiet for them on this particular day and I was pleased not to see it lift at all while I was over there.  

I wandered on in the direction of the Gnats - they'd arrived back by this time, and the first thing I came across was this sitting basking in the sunshine... 

...G-TIMM (XS111), painted in a Red Arrows coloursheme to represent the plane flown by former, legendary Reds team boss Ray Hanna. I will admit I dug in my pocket to get at the 50mm lens for this one, she just looked SO good sitting under that rather fantastic sky! On then to take a look at the newest member of the team - meet G-MOUR...

...and I think you can see from that just how lovingly these grand old ladies are polished - this one (XR991) will have her 50th birthday later this year (the youngest of the team's three aircraft, in fact!), yet you'd never know it to look at her! She wears the colourscheme of the Yellowjacks, one of the forerunners to the Red Arrows, and will be performing her first display season with the team this year.

The engineers were busy turning the planes around for their next sortie - the fuel truck did the rounds of all three of them...

...and once that was done preparation for another takeoff began...

...crewing in G-TIMM...

 ...then time to get the engines going - a fantastic sound always, but from that range, frankly even more so - wow!

Time for canopies down and taxi out...

...and this is the third member of the team G-RORI (XR538) wearing the paint scheme of No. 4 Flight Training School based at RAF Valley. No. 4 FTS still exists, now flying the Hawk T2 instead, the Gnats having been retired as the RAF's jet trainer in 1969.

As the three jets taxied out, we wandered across the grass to get as close as we were allowed to the runway - still a fair way back but thankfully my 100-400mm lens has enough reach to allow for some close shots nonetheless...

You can really see the three colourschemes there too, and how well they work together - I'm thoroughly looking forward to seeing the display at an airshow this season!

Finally the three-ship came back and did a nice pass over the airfield with smoke on before their break to land.

 It was absolutely superb to spend time around these three fabulous jets. It's truly fascinating watching the engineers getting the planes ready to go out, and there is truly nothing quite like those engines up close, and the smell of jet fuel. Hopefully I'll get back over to North Weald again at some stage when they're up - it's definitely an advantage of having a "local" (just a few miles away) airfield!

Robyn

Thanks to the Gnat Display Team for being OK with this - and I hope my efforts at staying out from underfoot were good enough! Thanks also to Richard for information about where was OK to walk on the live-side.  :-)

Is it nearly here yet?

Do you know, I think spring may have sprung! We've been enjoying some lovely weather and warm temperatures down here for the past couple of weeks, so after lunch today we decided that it would simply have been rude not to get out and enjoy it! First stop was our own little bit of pocket-handkerchief sized garden, where things have simply shot into life over the past little while. Our gooseberry bushes are covered in leaf, and this rather sprawling purple-flowered thing (Fay! Help!) is covered in purple flowers...

For some strange reason we also have a single lone daffodil out there - the other side of the flat has lots, but we've never had planted any on that side, so we're mystified! Lots of signs of other bulbs coming up too, including some that we only put in back in the Autumn - we've long since forgotten what any of them were so it'll be interesting to see what we get!

After a bit of pottering in the garden we decided to venture further afield.  We're fortunate to have some great walks from where we live - today with the exception of having to cross one fairly major road we were entirely walking through woodland and open countryside. Indeed it was while we were alongside the major road that we spotted these...

...a proper sign of spring! The other thing we saw lots of today was butterflies. It feels like there are more out than normal for this time of year and MrEH identified Peacocks and Small Coppers before I finally managed to creep up on and photograph this gorgeous Comma...

 I'm not great at butterfly recognition but the Comma's raggedy wing edged means even I can tell that apart from all the others! They're tricky to photograph when they first appear in the spring as they're full of life and energy and usually flutter away quickly when they sense movement nearby. This one seemed quite content basking in the sunshine though, as were we!

We walked to the pub. Our walks usually seem to involved a pub at some stage, although in fairness that's rarely the sole objective, generally more of a distraction. Today though that was the end goal - our closest local Good Beer Guide pub at Churchgate Street. Very good it was too - very deserving of its place in that publication. On the way back we spotted this rather unusual stile...

Yes, it is crafted from yellow gas pipes, and yes, it does have a footpath running straight round the edge of it. MrEH climbed over it - because he's a boy, and if you point boys at something they can climb over, apparently they have to do so. It's in the rules, or something. I - it won't surprise you to hear - took the path. Frankly even with the step up I'd still have struggled to get over it I think - it's every bit as big and chunky as it looks!

Have you noticed quite how much Blackthorn flower there is this year? Everywhere we look there are great drifts of it,and all the other blossom is coming out now too to join in the party - it's glorious!

Did you get out and about and enjoy the sunshine this weekend?

Robyn

Winter Wandering...

Yesterday was one of those glorious winter days - you know the ones I mean, sun out, blue sky, and a refreshing crispness in the air, a promise of colder weather yet to come, but for now, it's chilly but not unpleasant. Wanting a leg stretch, we donned walking boots (Mr EH) and Wellies (me) and took ourselves for a stomp off through the woods near to where we live.

We chose the long way round to get into the woods - walking first up the road a short way then across onto this playing field - and you can see why - as I said, G-L-O-R-I-O-U-S!  It rapidly became clear when we realised how sticky it was underfoot a) why MrEH's rugby match had been cancelled and b) that wellies were the sensible-foot-wear-of-the-day. *grin* Anyway, as we were on the playing field we decided to see if we could pinpoint where the Hazel tree was - easy to spot at this time of year...

...and not quite as advanced as last weekends dangly little beauties. Just a small tree this one, and it bore precisely NO nuts last year, so we've issued it with a "must try harder" warning and will check back in late summer to see how it's doing.  The next thing to catch my eye was this gorgeous little moss busily creating its own miniature world on a fallen tree....

 Amazing things, mosses and lichens - one year we returned from the Hebrides with more pictures of lichen than of almost anything else!  Enough of looking down though, let's look up instead...

Take one tree canopy, add a dollop of blue sky, and pinch of white cloud and a dusting of sunshine - just gorgeous and I just bet you can see why it caught my eye! I love these "looking straight up" photos - the trick to getting it to actually look like what you see when you just look up is to bring the camera to resting on your upturned face - never mind that you can't see the screen, trust me on this! Of course if you've got a camera with an *actual* viewfinder, so much the better.

A bit further on, and with the sun behind us now, we got the benefit of all those lovely long wintery shadows. And the colours! Brown from the tree trunks, flashes of bright green mainly from ivy, and the red of the fallen leaves.

Just to finish up, I persuaded the camera back into macro-mode for a quick shot of these rather soggy looking mushrooms. No idea what they are - although I suspect MrEH will identify them at some stage. Wouldn't it be nice if they were edible though! (And yes, before you say it, we are VERY careful about this and only ever eat anything we are absolutely 100% certain about!)

Robyn