Three picnics in two days – a personal record. Yesterday lunchtimes’ walk was taken from my book ‘The most amazing places to walk in Britain ( page 72 -if you’ve got too much time on your hands and you want to look it up ). All was going swimmingly , we had walked by the Thames In Cookham , gawping at where the rich and famous live i.e. Rolf Harris.Then we went over the fields , climbed Winter Hill, got lost, retraced our steps,got more lost and then the dreaded mobile phone call came ” come to casualty , do not pass go”. I won’t embarrass the victim by naming names , but suffice it to say ,it involved a stud ( steady Georgina) , hard ground, a tackle and an ankle.We emerged two hours later with a pair of crutches , a pair of rugby boots and some ibuprofen- from Ealing casualty, NOT ,Winter Hill Woods.
Then last night we had our picnic in Kew Gardens .On every Thursday it’s open to members til 9pm . It looked so beautiful ,with the Palm House , fountain,Orangery etc lit up . All was going well there too , until we tried to get out . Mr Burly officious security guard ( I know , in Kew Gardens ? ), wouldn’t let us out the main gate , where we’d parked the car, said we had to walk miles ( actually about 300 metres) to Victoria Gate- where we hadn’t parked the car. So we hatched up a plan , created a decoy and snook past him in the bushes. The SAS don’t know what they’re missing.
Then today we did No 12 in our book ”Tea shop walk in the Chilterns.”. pretty uneventful- only got lost twice and never saw a tea shop .
** A bird of prey swooping in and carrying off a pigeon.