Staying Home Part 2: Day 22

Last night was cold again, with temperatures below freezing, so I felt extremely smug this morning as we got into a nice warm, defrosted car to go to school. I think I have finally cracked the timing on the climate control.

The weather forecast was for a cold but bright day, so I decided to make today my archive free morning. I did an hour or so of freelance work, and then we went out for a walk up Ivinghoe Beacon, a hill about 20 minutes drive away. Like Dunstable Downs, this is an an area where ancient ways meet - the prehistoric Icknield Way and the Ridgeway (now a National Trail), which starts at Ivinghoe Beacon and ends at the neolithic stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire. According to Wikipedia there are the faint remains of an Iron Age fort up there, but I didn't notice anything. 

The day started foggy as well as frosty, but by the time we started our walk there was mist over the valley below us, but it was clear and sunny on the path up to the Beacon. The valley below us in the picture above is called Incombe Hole - the white at the bottom is not a river, but bare chalk. The atmospheric beauty made the slipping and sliding down a muddy path worthwhile -  at least, it did for me. M might not agree. Fortunately only the first section of the walk was muddy (very muddy!).

This stone monument marks the top of the Beacon. The plaque on top is a map of the Ridgway. The height and visibility meant that the hill was once the site of a warning beacon. These days it is sometimes used for filming when somewhere a bit wild looking is needed, and it was used as a location in some of the Harry Potter films - apparently the scene where Harry and the Weasleys use a portkey to travel to the Quidditch World Cup finals was filmed here, and it was also used in the two Deathly Hallows films. I imagine it was picked because it was conveniently near to the studios where most of the filming took place. 

By the time we got up to the top the mist had almost cleared. We walked along to the end of the ridge which along from the top of the Beacon to the rather depressingly named Gallows Hill, then down and back across a field and some more open downland to the car park. For some reason we hadn't walked in this area for at least two or three years, but we definitely won't wait so long to go there again.

While we were out we checked the new covid restriction tiers, and were a bit disappointed to find we are in Tier 2. However, only Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, and the Isle of Wight have been put into Tier 1, so they obviously wanted to restrict it to areas that are quite isolated. I think they are going to decide the tiers on the basis of wider areas than before, so we are now included with the rest of Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes, all of which have higher coronavirus rates than we do. On the positive side, it should mean that our risk will stay low. For us the only major difference between Tiers 1 and 2 is that we are not allowed to meet people from other households indoors (except at Christmas when restrictions will be relaxed for a few days). Shops, gyms, swimming pools and restaurants will all be allowed to reopen, so for us things will be mostly back to the "new normal" of the summer and early autumn. It is a bit awkward for H and her BF as they get things organised for their house, but they will just have to muddle through for now.  

After this morning's fresh air and exercise, inertia largely set in this afternoon. I worked on my cross stitch and watched a couple of episodes of the new series of the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman's  His Dark Materials trilogy. After dinner (burgers cooked by H) I did a bit of online Christmas shopping, and was able to take advantage of some Black Friday reductions. While in theory I would like to do more local shopping to support small businesses, in practice what the girls want is often clothes and other items that aren't available locally, so even when we aren't in a pandemic it means shopping online.