Morning Walks

We are having a heatwave this weekend so have gone out for our daily walk in the mornings before it got too hot, which also fit in nicely with M's work shifts - this has been his first weekend back, working 1pm to 7pm both Saturday and Sunday. We have a country park nearby which, oddly, we haven't been to since lockdown. Initially because it is just a bit too far to walk, and then because once the carparks opened up again it got busy. Yesterday we parked in a village near to one of the paths into the woodland and did a three mile route round the eastern section - there are two centres with visitor facilities, Stockgrove to the east and Rushmere to the west. We walked past, but not through, the ancient woodland which makes up part of the site and is now designated an area of special scientific interest.

The lake is an artificial one and not very deep. It was originally part of a country house estate owned by the lord of the manor and used for rowing and fishing - the base of an old boat house is still there. The house and estate was used for military purposes during the Second World War and later as a school. The estate was bought jointly by both Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire County Councils (the county boundary runs through the park) and turned into a country park for public use. The house itself was eventually subdivided and turned into private housing. The lake looked beautiful in the morning sun.

A lot of the woodland is made up of fir trees, planted relatively recently for commercial use, though I don't know whether felling will fit with the conservation plans for the area, so it may be that the trees will now have a much longer life than originally intended. The land where they were planted was originally open heathland, and there are a couple of areas which have been cleared to allow the heath to regenerate. 

This morning we aimed to take a western route around Rushmere, but took a wrong turning and got back to the lake. We did eventually make it to the Rushmere visitor centre by another route. This section of the park has a wooden sculpture trail which is intended to spark imagination, like this Fallen Inn fairy house. Today's walk turned out to be a bit tougher, with some unexpected hilly bits! Apart from exercising (I also did some Fiit classes) I have had a very lazy weekend, apart from doing some online grocery shopping and doing some financial stuff. TG was also lazy, which H worked at the cafe today and M worked his normal weekend shifts. M was apprehensive about returning to work, not so much because of Covid, but because of the need to get up to speed with changes over the past few months and generally feeling out of practice. He was given a return to work training plan, which meant this weekend was spent learning what had changed and listening in to other call handlers. I think it went better than he was expecting it to, and he enjoyed catching up with people.