By: Blonde One
The journey to work is not usually a pleasant one for most of us. For me it involves leaving the house only just into the hour of 7, sitting in traffic at a big roundabout, then a mad dash through some lanes trying to avoid being struck by white van man! One morning this week though the journey took a slightly different turn. After the big roundabout, I was sat in a newly placed queue of traffic wondering what the hold-up was when a very kind driver coming the other way stopped to tell us that there was a lorry stuck up ahead and we should turn around, go back to the big roundabout, sit in a bit more traffic, then take the long roadwork-full way to work! Thanks to all the DofE expeditions that the Two Blondes do in that area I decided to take a different route. I drove down the narrow lanes (still with their hedges uncut, but the new chippings were more firmly in place), past the campsite that we use with Bronzes and through some of the most gorgeous places that you can imagine. I got to work only a few minutes later than normal but this time I had a big smile on my face and felt ready to tackle the day with a much more calm outlook! It’s amazing what a bit of countryside can do – even just for a few minutes.
I have since used this new route on several occasions when I need a fix of nature.
Retirement allowed us to move from Kingston-upon-Thames to Hereford where we discovered we could still engage in that very old-fashioned occupation “going for a drive”. Try that between KuT and, say, Heathrow or Raynes Park.
Great when we had visitors from the south-east but even better when our routines were established and we both found ourselves with weekly drives for our leisure pursuits. I resumed my longstanding interest in French and for fifteen years Friday mornings have involved a 20-minute drive to the village of Mordiford. A drive that has everything: a few minutes on what laughably passes for a Hereford arterial road, a few more passing through an industrial estate but with a rural prospect always visible, the beginning of a delightfully windy, up-and-downy road from which I can see the meanders of the Wye, passage through the village of Holme Lacy, a steep descent with the forested Dinedor tump ahead, a bridge that crosses the Wye, half a mile paralleling the Wye, ending up among a tranquil cluster of bungalows surrounded by woods.
Understand, this is no adventure. In one sense it’s even better since it transmutes the base metal of what is, in effect, a commute into the gold of a rural transition. A perfect way of observing the changing seasons. Yours was a one-off, mine is a regular but both lift the spirit. And yours at least is a spirit that is eminently liftable, as you have so often proved,