Sykes' Wood

Today we went for a walk through some extremely muddy woodland - nice bit of greenbelt - we've driven past it hundreds of times but never walked there.
Hubby grumbling a bit - I love trying new local walks but often we end up knee deep in mud. There has been a lot of heavy rain recently - so what did we expect ?
All went well until we left the mud and joined a pathway overgrown with nettles. All four of us wearing t-shirts and shorts/sandals. Our older girl Ellie was stung quite badly on legs and then began panicking about bees and wasps. Poor little'un Joe was stung on his back below his t-shirt. Lots of shouting, screams and tears (and that was just my husband). We lifted them over the nearest fence and trespassed on private land briefly to get back to the safety of the open paths. Walk abandoned we headed back to the car. A brief visit to a local playground to cheer them up - then to Wilko's. - a wonderful shop if anyone knows it.
We managed to spend £85 - including about £10 on 'pick and mix' - lots of sugary e-number sweets for our car journey next week.

I'll have to plan a better walk next time to recover my reputation as a person who can find great walks.

Something new

The school summer holidays is the only time I get to start something new - like this.
Most of the year I am too tired or bogged down with long hours of work.
Last year I bought a radio scanner and started to listen to our local airport - I don't get that much time to do it. It may seem a strange thing to try out but I developed the interest from my dad who used to use a police radio scanner. He used to wake my mum up late at night and say "the local fish and chip shop has been broken into but they haven't caught anyone yet." This of course made him really popular.