Day Seven

Today has been a blustery day, to use the words of Winnie the Pooh. The sort of day which throws dustbin lids about and knocks over washing poles and bends the tops of trees until they look like they’ll snap. Blows clouds across so fast that the change from sunny to rainy and back is dizzying. Apparently it was windy all night, but I was asleep. We went out last night with Poppy and Dylan and went to bed late and it was really difficult to wake up this morning. I was sleepy, and bed was warm and cosy. I got up eventually, gathered Bet and out we went.

We could do a quick toddle to the pond, or  the twenty minute Nutclough circuit. I decided to see what I felt like as I went along. Which for me, never means a toddle to the pond. If I want to take the easy option I have to make a positive decision right at the start that that is what I’m going to do, and then make myself stick to it. Otherwise, every time I reach a junction and need to decide between easy or slightly more challenging, I find I don’t want to disappoint myself, and think, just  up here, then we’ll turn back. Before long we were up on the hills below Old Town being buffeted by the wind. It was so exhilarating that I’d have probably ended up right on the moors if I hadn’t had to get back to make packed lunches.

Mary Seaton was taking her group up to the Mist stone today, at Nab Hill near Oxenhope. I’ve not seen that Stanza Stone, although we went to the performance up there in May, when Simon A and some of the young poets and dancers were performing. It was cold that evening, and we shivered as we watched and listened, but the performers were amazing, dancing in an old quarry to poetry with no music and making it work. Today it will have been colder still in the wind.