The big walk
Another week, another walk. Although a lot has changed since last week. I’m 34 now for a start (did I mention I had a birthday on the way?) Birthday presents still gratefully appreciated. These Bose Headphones are still on the wish list if anyone’s wondering if they’ve missed the boat?
Bose QuietComfort 35 (Series II) Wireless Headphones, Noise Cancelling with Amazon Alexa – Black
We also now have a working washing machine (woohoo!!). The Samsung engineer was meant to come on my birthday (for which I worked from home for the entire day and as a result only left the house to push the bins onto the pavement). However the engineer was off sick and so they had to rearrange for the Saturday. Luckily they arrived right at the beginning of their pre-announced 2 hour window and were done within 20 minutes of arriving. I can’t tell you what relief it is to know, as I spill pasta sauce down my shirt, that I can now wash clothes at any time of the day from the comfort of my freezing cold, regularly flooded lean-to conservatory. (I’m joking about the pasta sauce, obviously. Nobody regularly spills pasta down their front as a grown-up adult, right?!). (Also, no – now is not the moment to point out that I probably should be doing something about improving the quality of my family house rather than pining over top of the range headphone that I don’t need nor could practically use. Yes, the sound cancelling is that good that I might not hear Piglet crying from another room).
That link again:
Bose QuietComfort 35 (Series II) Wireless Headphones, Noise Cancelling with Amazon Alexa – Black
So I’m 34, my house has that smell of freshly washed laundry and the humidity of a steam room. But more importantly, last night we had the best night’s sleep I’ve had since April 2016 (hint, my son is 2 years and 9 months old – you do the maths). The reason for this sleep is that we (the adults) were self-disciplined enough to be asleep by 10pm and Piglet was so exhausted that he slept for 10 hours straight and had to be woken to get to nursery having already slept through breakfast. Why so exhausted? Well thank goodness you asked – I was in danger of digressing away the rest of the post…
Having spent much of Saturday indoors, waiting for the washing machine engineer and shoe shopping in the afternoon – little people’s feet grow fast! We decided to do another full day out on Sunday. We loaded up for a winter picnic, packed the balance bike, Piglet’s helmet, the outside-teddy-bear, most of the Mountain Warehouse clothing range from the sales and a astonishingly well insulated thermos of hot chocolate. Jumped into the car and rolled our eyes as Piglet fell asleep within seconds of driving.
We headed up to Cookham on the river, not far from our home. This picturesque village was apparently the inspiration for Wind in the Willows and is the starting point of one of the many attractive looking walks in our book of walks for toddlers: Kiddiwalks in Berkshire (Family Walks). After negotiating our way into the Natural Trust car park and unloading the car (both of which gave Piglet time to have a decent nap) we realised it was basically already lunchtime. While this meant we basically had lunch in a car park, it did mean picturesque views of the village from a decent picnic table. More importantly though it meant we could leave the rest of the lunch stuff at the car and walk around with bags of just snacks, water and spare clothes. We were quite relieved when Piglet said he didn’t want to take his balance bike as well…
Once again, lunch principally consisted of sausage rolls kept warm in a thermos this time with a lunch box of crudités, spiced Moroccan nuts, a couple of left-over falafel, a couple of slices of buttered home-made bread and some much-needed hot chocolate. We had to prompt Piglet to eat some of the hot food, such was his excitement to get on – but we realised having got straight out of the car from a nap onto a cold bench, he probably needed some decent food to keep him warm. In the end he got on surprisingly well with a mug of hot chocolate as well. I think he’ll be a camping natural when we get on to it…
We headed through the village riding a wave of superiority that we were walking faster than the traffic, despite definitely walking at ‘Piglet pace’, such was the backlog of traffic queuing for the main junction. We stopped for a quick toilet break and headed up towards the river path for our expedition. The walk was down in the guide as a 3 1/2 mile walk which they were suggesting would take three hours. Even with a toddler this seemed pessimistic to me. Bear that in mind when you get to the end of this post!…
Piglet seemed to love being out for a ‘walk’ walk. He stepped up to full dictator mode: organising us to walk in single file, mostly with him setting an astonishingly slow pace at the front; organising 20 yard races which he miraculously seemed to win time after time; and dictated who should be holding hands with who and where on the path we should be walking. 40 minutes later, mummy and daddy were exhausted and we’d covered something in the range of 1/3rd of a mile.
Changes of pace were prompted by playing hide-and-seek with ‘outside bear’, inevitably hidden in a tree (there really isn’t anywhere else to hide on a towpath if you want to avoid a toddler going for an impromptu mid-January swim. All three of us took turns to hide the bear with varying levels of difficulty. A personal highlight for me was Piglet realising that he’d run out of time and just dropping bear on the grass in front of us and looking around innocently. Only to then, 3 seconds later, miraculously find him!
After clocking about a mile, Piglet was now alternating between wanting to run races and being too tired to walk a handful of steps. In hindsight, deciding not to bring any sort of carrying apparatus was a bit of a mistake and he ended up on my shoulders when we realised we were near a pub, getting a bit cold, and maybe in need of reconsidering whether we were really going to make it all the way around the pre-agreed loop.
We staggered into the warm pub (The Bounty) and found a table next to the open fire, removing endless layers of clothing. How can three people wear so much? A couple of bitter shandies later and we were really getting into the swing of a cold-Sunday walk. Piglet had himself a glass of water and slightly more salted cashew nuts than I’d intended him to have. The pub even had a good selection of kids books and looked like it served decent food (although we didn’t have anything). I noticed a very detailed allergen menu hanging up from the food blackboard though so look out for a future post!
Chin chin!
Such was the joys of an open fire, decent drinks and books to keep Piglet happy – it was probably a good 30 minutes before we looked at the dying light out of the window and realised that “reconsidering whether we were really going to make it all the way around the pre-agreed loop” was a bit of mute point considering we were pretty much as far away from the car as we were meant to get. Considering it was now 3+ hours since we’d left the car and the sun was due to set in 50 minutes – we were probably going to have to up the pace a bit.
Time considered, we decided that although we were about half way round the loop it would be better to turn back the way we now knew, rather than brave onward hoping to end up at the car. Piglet started off on mummy’s shoulders, but within 3 minutes was complaining that his back hurt. After re-arranging t-shirts and jumpers and coats, we realised that it was his posture on mummy’s shoulders that was hurting. Luckily (for him!), I could take him much more on my neck than mummy and keep him comfortable. As such – we set off, power-marching back to the car with a 13 kg child on my neck, staring firmly down at my own shoes and hoping I could keep walking quicker than the sun would fall.
In truth, with Piglet being carried, a clear purpose to keep to the walking and knowledge of the route in reverse; we actually got back to the car much faster than I expected (not feared, did I say feared?). Piglet even walked some of the last few hundred metres, although it was very clear that he was tired by this point. We sowed the hope of there being a hill to run up at the end of the path (without being 100% sure we could keep that promise). With pure luck, there was a small flood defence at the edge of the field for him to run up (winning again, would you believe it?) and keep him happy. He celebrated by jumping into a much deeper puddle than we’d realised, drenching himself and us and covering his boots in thick, grey silt. We disrobed our hundreds of layers and got in the car, driving home with the satisfied weariness of a good day out.
To Piglet’s delight we got home to the combination of a bath for him and daddy’s best attempt at a rushed roast dinner. The excitement raised, slightly unreasonably, by the prospect that we might be having “roast-beast” in the style of The Grinch. He had hugely enjoyed the book from the library over Christmas and took particular pleasure in helping to carve with his incredibly blunt plastic knife in tribute to the end of the book (if you know it). Well-exercised, washed and full of roast dinner – he went to sleep at the end of a very satisfying day. As did I, if wondering whether I’d ever be able to look up at the ceiling again.