Symonds Yat

B and I have had a nice day out today. We went off to Symonds Yat which overlooks the Wye valley about and hour and a half drive from here It is one of those places I have meant to go to for years, so today we went.

I packed a picnic lunch and we set off.

We got there and had a problem with the fact that we had no change for the pay and display machine. Iwent off to the cafe and bought some fruit pastilles (cheapest thing they had) to get change so we could feed it to the cash machine. We went off to the viewing place and the views are stunning. You can see five counties from up there and it is tremendous. The view point is on a cliff and the river winds through the valley below you, with mountains in the distance.

There were lots of birdwatchers and we saw peregrines soaring up in the sky. I only know they were peregrines because the birdwatchers - who had powerful telescope things - told us that they were. The peregrines were very rare but have come back and are breeding very successfully there.

Then we went for a nice walk though the woods, not long, just about an hour, but very pleasant, before going back to the car parking area and grabbing a park bench to eat our picnic on

We had brought the camping gas stove and the kettle etc to make a cup of tea, but I had taken the matches out of the box and forgotten to put them back in which did make things a bit more complicated - in fact impossible - on the tea front. B went off to the cafe to buy some matches. They didn't have any for sale, but they gave him one. It was essential to get that one match right, so B did it because if I had you can bet your bottom dollar that I would have broken it and we would still not have had tea.

Ray Mears it wasn't but we did get tea, and a nice picnic too.

Yesterday I slipped and fell over in the kitchen, which has a very hard floor, walloping my right knee and shoulder, which are a bit sore today, but ok. However my left arm is really sore with the muscles aching and really hurting when I try to do thing. Whether or not I pulled the muscles when I fell over I don't know. Very odd though. I hope it goes away tomorrow.