but what is normal?

Since the weekend, things have settled down a bit, the weather here is dry and bright although there has been a bit of a bite to some of the strong winds that have brought us this spring like bit of weather.

Monday has been the greyest day, Aunty Bev and myself went to visit Angharad, a lot of travelling but good company and as is our tradition, a roast lamb dinner to boot. My only issue, as usual, is the amount of inactivity during the day, my bad leg really does not like it, i was in some discomfort when we got back to Brizzle, i ended up going for a walk at 21.30 to ease things when all my head wanted to do was collapse in a chair again!

So to Tuesday. With a good forecast and a generally southerly wind source, i decided to do a reverse version of my aborted Birthday ride. And so i set off for Weston s Mare, taking the 'quiet' route to Nailsea and on to Kenn before picking up the WSM - Clevedon bike route to reach Somerset's premier seaside resort, think Skegvegas without, well pretty much anything, lol. I stopped for my Pilchard sandwiches before collecting a few new urban streets as i headed sort of north east away from the coast.

There was a bit more climbing on the return, mostly up to the airport before some nice tailwind assisted roads to Stanton Drew, another bit of climbing over Maes Knoll took me towards Keynsham. The home run now, up onto the Bristol to Bath and soon enough i was back at the house, some 7 hours after departure. 122km, 813m, even a halfway decent speed considering how much faffing i did around WSM, i was pretty happy with that. I felt sure i'd be paying for it later but i escaped the expected cramps so a kind of win win!

Today then, another bright day, its well into double digits this afternoon. Laundry first, for only the second time since October it's ended up on the clothes line, must remember to fetch it in soon, lol. Then i spent an hour weeding and pruning, i couldn't stand looking at the overgrown beds any longer. The last of the carrots are out now, just in time to think about planting this years crop, the fruit canes/bushes/trees are all looking well and the rhubarb is looking much better than this time last year. I'll finish preparing the beds in the next few days then it'll be straight into planting.

TBH i sort of lost interest last year, hoped for crops never materialised or just completely failed, fingers crossed this year will be a lot better.

What else? Lets see, writing, well i'll be back at the keyboard shortly, i've been working on the plot, it's looking like the current arc is taking longer to get where i want to go than i'd envisioned which is a bit of a dilemma It's looking very much like it won't be played out until Book 30, i'm actually writing on two time lines at the moment so rather than confuse things, taking it forward into the next volume may be best.

The weather looks set to remain fair so i'm planning on getting the miles in, my concern over bike viability has been alleviated a little after yesterday but not entirely, three weeks of failures covering both of my regular use machines has made me a bit pessimistic.

I guess that's all for today, i'll be here again on Sunday with the penultimate chapter of Gaby Book 28, for now though,
Ciao,
Madeline Anafrid