This is not mainly a walking blog - part 2

One of the things about doing a walking challenge – and particularly a walking challenge involving hills - is it does improve your level of fitness, even if, like me, you still come out of it in your early 50s and overweight.

How to retain that level of fitness is the next question – and the answer is clearly to keep walking (no problem, I like a good walk), and to continue to incorporate hills in that walking.

So with that loose plan in mind and no real schedule this is some of the walking I've been doing this summer. 

Early June: I revisited the last bit of the South Downs Way (Alfriston to Eastbourne) with the aunt who wasn't feeling up to the charity walk. Definitely more able to appreciate the views when I wasn't so exhausted. 

9th June I did a very familiar part of the capital ring - Streatham Common through Crystal Palace (another hill) and Grove Park. No photos from that though, it's too familiar.

I did take some nice pictures later in the month while on holiday in Cornwall. We stayed in a place called Cardignan Woods and got to Heligan and the Eden Project and Fowey.

Shortly after that I had an eye operation (all went well and my eyesight is hugely improved) and then was dog sitting. 

4th August I had a very loose plan take the tube to Camden, have a quick look in the market (I enjoy the vibe but also enjoy getting out again, the crowds are crazy at the weekend) then walk up to Archway, take the hill up to to Highgate and the ridge across to Alexandra Palace and back. 

Somehow though after a bit of meandering I found myself at Chalk Farm and decided to head up Haverstock Hill to Hampstead instead. A hill is a hill. 

Past the ponds on Hampstead and a zigzag towards Highgate (I had to use google maps for this bit, I'm not that familiar with Highgate).

Then at Highgate I picked up the parkland walk to Crouch End. This follows an abandoned railway line, and the pictures below are of the old station.

By that time I was quite tired so I picked up a bus to the nearest tube and came home. 

The week after was far less hilly. I started in Poplar and walked up the river Lea from Bow Creek nature reserve. 

My aunt’s response to this picture was that Poplar had changed. well some of it has, and a lot is still changing. In ten years it will be different again.

     

That was a very hot day - we seem to have had the odd really hot day or two this summer, but nothing consistent. Near this spot I found a community garden, a public toilet and a small cafe where they also did bottles of frozen water, which was very welcome. 

and then along the River Lea and up the canal to Stratford where I ended up outside the Abba Experience just as it was turning out. I'd seen it advertised but had no idea where it was. People looked like they'd had a great time. 

I've left some things out - a trip to Box Hill, definitely, a wander around Borough and to Elephant and Castle after meeting friends and taking in some tourist bits (the monument and something called the Southwark Needle that I must have walked past a dozen times and never noticed) a canal walk from Byfleet to Ripley, a river walk from Richmond to Kingston - I've no pictures and these weren't 'big' walks. 

The next proper walk though was Leith Hill last week. I last went up Leith Hill in March when I was 'in training' and took the longer, slower path from Dorking (incidentally I just checked google maps for the date – 9^th March - and google thinks I took a ferry to Dorking on that occasion. It occasionally has these blips. It's like a strange parallel universe.)

This time I went from Ockley, which is the steeper side. There is a footpath from the station to Ockley itself,  but you have to know it and my over-reliance on IT sent me down the road. People were very good about pulling around me and slowing down, but I did have to stop a few times or step up on a high bank. Next time I'm going somewhere unfamiliar I'll have to research it better. 

Anyway I got up the hill - quite breathless (I used the route on Fancy Free Walks, which I like because they don't try to make you install an app as so many of the sites do) - stopped for chocolate fridge cake and coffee from the small cafe (it's really just a hatch in the bottom of the tower) and then went up the tower. 

and down again. 

So that was my summer. It's feeling quite autumnal out now but I'm in Cornwall again next week, which will definitely involve some coastal walking. The plan is to get up St Michael's Mount (either the day I arrive or if I check in too late the next day) and then down to Mousehole where I haven’t been since a teenager and have an explore and a cream tea. 

Then I head across to Tintagel (taking the only sensible public transport route and arriving at 6.20 in the afternoon) visit Tintagel next day, do some more walking, and then go down to Truro for the last two days. 

I have some contingency plans around museums and galleries if the heavens open (especially in Truro, where I’ve never been and which looks rich in history) but at the moment the forecast is patchy, which is good enough. I'm never going to be too far from a cafe or a pub if I have to bail out. 

Things

I have been painting:    

Also walking: 

near Reigate, North Downs Way

and last but not least reading:

In the Mountains - Elizabeth Von Arnim 

I’ve started this before, then stopped because it didn’t accord with my ideas of Von Arnim and what I expected and wanted from a book by Von Arnim. Being miserable in the last two months – for good reasons that I'm not ready to go into – it suited me rather well this time round. 

The main protagonist crawls (her word) into the Swiss mountains where she was once so happy before the war, trying to heal from her shattering of faith in goodness, the deaths of loved ones and possibly more that is never explained.

The book is written in diary format and as the diarist heals she starts to look outwards, to her guests, and the attention shifts and becomes more typically fairytale and less interesting, but I was still engaged to the end. 

The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen. 

If this book is even half true Von Arnim seems to have tried to do for real life people what she does so well for her fictional characters. Sadly real people don’t always play along. I was astonished that she ever thought they would.

With a Zero at its Heart – Charles Lambert

it’s a shame I didn’t read this in paperback. The book has a charming cover that doesn’t come through in pixels and certainly not the dull black and white of second generation kindle.  As always though once you start reading you don’t notice. 

It’s written in fragments of memory, sorted loosely, some more significant and some less and really, who knows which is which? Highly recommended. (Pretty sure I first read about this on Savidge Reads, which is also recommended.).

I'm also rereading:

Broken Homes by Ben Aaronovitch. 

I’ve kind of lost momentum with the Rivers of London series. Foxglove Summer disappointed me and I’ve not managed to rekindle my enthusiasm with this one despite thoroughly enjoying it the first time round.

The Pale Horse

One of the creepier Agatha Christies, written in the 60s and in a setting contemporary for the time. Unlike TV Poirots and Marples, eternally suspended in the age of Art Deco and sombre suits, or retired colonels and summer dresses, Christie wrote of what was happening at the time. The Pale Horse starts among the coffee bar set in Chelsea.   

There is no Poirot or Marple in this one, but Marple’s Dane Calthrops (The Moving Finger) and Poirot’s Despards (Cards on the Table) are there, raising the interesting prospect that Marple and Poirot could, under certain circumstances, have actually met.

Also along for the ride is Ariadne Oliver, Agatha Christie’s alter ego, always a joy in small doses like the ones we get of her here.   

One of the things I've always liked about Christie - from when I started reading her in my teens, is that she doesn't despise or have low expectations of the young people in her books. Occasionally one might be naive, or an older character may find their fashions or politics confusing, but there's none of this sweeping dismissal of anyone under 20 or 18 or 14 which you get from supposedly broadminded journos. Third Girl is a good example of that, and so to a lesser extent is this.