Everyday business and a splendid walk

Trips to the vet and the dentist today, so not a lot of spare time. Tim has to have his rabies booster so we can travel to France later this year, and I need to see my lovely dentist for the last of a series of appointments. Add to those the need to spend a couple of hours exercising Tim, and I think I won't get much writing done today. There's no hope for tonight, either, as we're out with friends.

We have sunshine, even though the temperature dipped below zero last night. Tim has left a set of footprints in the frosty grass in our back garden!

Yesterday was the same, weather-wise.  Too gorgeous to sit around indoors, so I persuaded dh to walk up to the Lion and the Lamb  where he could have a shandy and a bowl of chips (and a well earned sit down!) before setting off to walk back. I would call that bribery exactly, but it did add a certain something to the walk. The outward journey is all uphill, though the footpath winds around fields which makes the incline not too bad and the whole hillside is orientated south so we were in sunshine all the way. Tim scampered about running forward and back sniffing everything and nothing.

With the village of Horsley showing up on the horizon, I asked dh if he was looking forward to his shandy. "It'll be a pint of beer, not a shaandy," he said. We sat in the garden at the back of the pub, still in sunshine, and sure enough, he had a pint of Black Sheep with his bowl of chips.

 The walk back is all down hill, and as you might expect, the return trip always seems to go by faster. We paused on Ovingham bridge, which is still closed. Come June, it will have been closed for two years. Peering over the footbridge, we saw workmen using machines to take the rust off the pylons below water level, and marvelled at the flood debris piled up against the footings and on the walkways. Best of all we chuckled at the nice new blue plaque to commemorates the building of the bridge in 1883, and its refurbishment and re-opening in December 2015. Ha! It was open for two days and the the floods closed it again!
We got home with Tim still running about, having completed 5.9 kilometres. Well done us, I say.