Shincliffe Wood

We met up with Simon and Katie in the woods near Durham on Sunday. At least we thought it would just be Simon and Katie but Helen and Martin decided to come along as well and to bring Charlotte, their daughter. This made us a party of seven, which may have been illegal, though my vague understanding is that children aren't counted in these groupings. 

In any case, I mostly walked well behind the group. I haven't walked with anyone but Bill so far during this pandemic, even when it was permitted. My experience walking with him is that he's prepared to come much closer to groups of people that I want to. He seemed irritated with my caution and I felt pressured to take more risks so we stopped walking together. That experience suggested I wouldn't be happy walking with other friends either. It's not so much them as navigating all the other people around. A nice sit down in a front garden is much more conducive to pleasant, relaxed conversation. Sadly, for some period the government decided only public places, not private spaces were appropriate for meeting, so that ruled out private gardens, which struck me as short-sighted on their part.  

It turned out to be quite a lovely walk of about four or five miles. It seemed much longer given the terrain and the occasional crowds. I must admit I felt a bit overwhelmed at times. Even though signs everywhere warn to keep a 'social distance' even outdoors, no one appeared to pay it any mind whatsoever. We went along the riverside, crossed a bridge and continued the other side of the river until a detour took us through a wood full of blue bells. The white flowers, Bill's app told us, were stitchwort. I don't know what the lovely chartreuse coloured leaves were but the blue bells - which look more purple to me - and those green leaves made a wonderful contrast and reminded me of WI colours - or suffragette colours.

Though I didn't have much conversation, I got a lot of crochet done in the car on the way down and back. We did this 30 minute trip twice since Bill thought we were to meet at 11 but upon checking when we arrived, it was 1. So we went back home, had lunch, and returned. My blanket I've worked on for about three years is finally done - except it needs blocking. I see errors that could be fixed, but I'm fed up with the thing. I'll send it off to some refugee camp or other as originally planned. It was mostly about being a learning project. What I learned was not to knit a blanket of squares using scraps of yarn others have discarded. 

I saw on Facebook that a couple of former work colleagues, Jamie and Bev, had also just been to Shincliffe Wood the very same day. Shame we didn't run into them - it would have been nice to chat.