Skip to main content
The three of us played hooky yesterday and drove an hour-and-a-half to the village of Great Missenden, where Roald Dahl lived, worked, and is buried. I'd taken several walks there in the past and knew it to be a lovely area for walks. It's in the Chiltern Hills, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (yes, that's an official term) that is northwest of London. 

It was unseasonably warm yesterday -- almost 80 F -- and very sunny. We packed a lunch and had a great day out. We find that getting out of Cambridge and into the countryside is very good for our collective mental health.

Emma is getting better at walking. We did about 4 miles yesterday, having walked 4.5 miles this past weekend.  She was tired, but uncomplaining.










In other news, the roses that cover the front of our house are blooming. The flowers completely cover Emma's window! There is also a bird nesting above our door. I think it's a wood pigeon. I don't hear any baby birds as of yet, but I am checking daily. 



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Now into Week 8 of lockdown. We are trying to fight the good fight against boredom, anxiety, and fear. Some days are better than others. On weekdays we continue with our daily routine of schoolwork, Zoom calls, arts and crafts, and TV programs (or, for Emma, Youtube videos). There is enough going on that the days feel relatively full. There is also some variability. On Tuesdays Emma and I watch a children's astronomy session on Youtube. This is a live presentation by the Institute of Astronomy Cambridge and it's excellent. On Tuesday afternoons Emma has art club. On Wednesdays she takes an online Minecraft course called "Exploring Ancient Civilizations." On Thursday mornings she has ukulele club. And on Friday afternoons she does a yoga class. Weekends are harder for us, as we ditch the schoolwork and therefore our daily routine. This past Saturday we went for a 12 mile bike ride to Wandlebury Country Park, a place we'd never been before and knew nothing a...
The roses have been unbelievably gorgeous this spring. They have really made my life a little bit happier. So today I am just going to post some photos I've taken over the past few weeks. Enjoy. 
We spent last week on holiday in Exmoor, a national park located in the south west of England. Exmoor is on the smaller side (267 square miles) and its landscape is a mixture of open moors, woodland, river valleys, and rocky coastline. It's pretty sparsely populated; villages are small, few and far between. It's very green, very hilly, mostly populated by livestock, and generally skipped over by American tourists.  We rented a house for six nights with Richard's colleague, Simon, and his 10-year-old daughter Tia. We stayed in Oare, which is listed as a village, but is really a church surrounded by two or three houses. You can see a photo of our house below.  The Victorian novel (now slightly outmoded)  Lorna Doone  is set in Oare and the surrounding countryside. My bad photo does not do it justice; it really is gorgeous.  This part of England tends to be cool and wet; highs in the summer are only in the mid-60s (Fahrenheit, of course; I've never ...