A Picnic on Ashdown Forest

Ok, so the photo is not of us eating a picnic, but I think its a great photo Dan took so I'm using this one :)

I gave myself an area on the list called "Romance". Some on this list are proving tricky to complete and will need more time. Why on earth I thought it was a good idea to romantically surprise Dan I don't know. I know what I'd like, but I'm finding it hard to get inside his head.

Anyway, I live quite close to a beautiful forest and hardly ever go there for a walk or picnic, so I chucked it on the list to make sure I made the effort at some point.

After a unseasonably sunny Easter, the weather round here deteriorated, so after a few weeks was rain when the sun came out we nipped out to the forest and braved the winds for a mini adventure.

Ashdown Forest is the location A A Milne used in her childrens books Winnie The Pooh. I read them growing up and I must admit, it still holds some kind of magic for me. We drove out and stopped at one of two car parks I know on the forest. We walked off to the quarry where we sat out the wind to have lunch and then climbed a tree I remembered as a kid to see if I could get higher now. I could, but find if I do this kind of thing in trainers I am very wary that I lack the grip of my climbing shoes and found it scarier than I should!

We took our stuff back to the car and then found in the car park a post with some leaflets describing walks. It was SUCH a good leaflet. From the car park there were two walks, we picked the longer and got given the description as we went. No tricky maps to follow, but directions using the locations that were in the stories. So we set off first to the Heffleump Trap. They helpfully pictured the first stop so you could identify when you arrived. Then we headed off back to the quarry we'd had lunch in, which was actually Roo's Sandy Pit via the A A Milne memorial which has fantastic views. Then the route took us to The North Pole and up the hill past Eeyores Gloomy Place.

Then I suggested a diversion. We were at the track to take us back to the car, but hadn't really been walking long, plus it was hot. And I was certain the second of the car parks I knew was straight ahead and always, ALWAYS has an ice cream van.

Dan being a trusting sort of boyfriend let me lead him off route into the forest and gently teased me as trudged further and further from the junction with no ice cream van in sight....

My hunch was correct, but on foot it took us longer to get there than expected. Luckily the ice cream van was there, but the exposed position and strong winds meant I was freezing within minutes so we headed off back to the car, returning the leaflet for others as suggested.

It was a perfect Saturday mini adventure. The discovery of these fab walks taking you past points mentioned in the books is genius, and I may have to go back and do some more!! I need to see Winnie The Pooh and Tiggers house I think :)

A week without TV or Internet

I'm blogging this several months after my week without tv or internet, which wasn't my intention (I'm lazy and forgetful - oops!) but at least will give a perspective on what happened next.

The week off was unbelievably hard. I felt like I was missing on facebook, that things might have happened and I wouldn't know I felt very out of the loop. I found myself reaching for my mobile to check for updates at any spare moment. I had NO attention span, and was unable to to "be". It was actually quite alarming.

I found I had to work more at work. Everytime a thought popped into my head about a film I wanted to watch, or what the opening hours for such and such was, I had to put it out my head and keep working. It made me feel quite ashamed to see how easily I will leap on the net for five minutes even though I'm in the middle of a task.

Almost straight away I realised I hadn't needed to give up TV at all. I didn't really miss it, there are very few regular shows I watch. Instead, I watch whole series when it suits me on my BT Vision. However, two or three evenings I was at home, eating dinner in silence in front of a blank TV thinking, why I am putting myself through this? Thirty minutes of television to me company while I eat is not a habit that needs breaking!

I found my flat was tidier. I didn't end up surfing for rubbish on the net, so I was bored enough to wander the flat, find things to do and go to bed at a reasonable time. I actually read my bible once or twice (see the task to read the Bible all the way through, I haven't got very far yet...).

Then there was an earthquake in Japan. I couldn't check the news. I couldn't see what people were saying facebook. I didn't know how many were hurt or what had happened apart from a discussion with work colleagues. I had my one sort of "cheat" where a work colleague had an article from the bbc website up and called me over so I could just "happen" to read over her shoulder for a second.

And then the week was over and I hit facebook with a vegence and decided to sign up to Twitter which was an odd response! But I have discovered Twitter is very different to facebook and I have been so inspired by some of the people I follow, I wish I'd done it earlier.

And now? The flat is a mess. I haven't read the bible for weeks. I still check facebook and twitter almost immediately on waking (mostly to stop myself from going to straight back to sleep). I am better at not spending whole evenings surfing for random rubbish, but this might be because I have not really had an evening in for weeks. So I just come home and go straight to bed!

Writing this has reminded me that I was a bit calmer and had a better attention span when I went cold turkey. So I think I may try to cut back a bit. It would be good to try and restrict my use to just lunch times at work, so my little flat gets the benefit of more free time at home!

I'm very glad I did it.